Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

As Ludwig Bertalanffy noted, the great shock of 20 th century science has been thatsystems cannot be understood by analysis for the application of the analytical proceduredepends on two conditions. First, the interaction between parts is non-existent or very weak,second, the relationships describing behavior of part is linear. These conditions are notfulfilled in the entities called systems, i.e. consisting of parts “in interaction” 117 . Theproperties of the parts are not intrinsic properties but can only be understood within thecontext of the larger whole. Instead of focusing on the parts, systems thinking concentratedon basic principles of organization. Analysis means taking something apart to understand it;systems thinking means putting it into the context of the larger whole. As McDermott andO'Connor assert in their overview of systems thinking:breaking a whole into its parts is analysis. You gain knowledge by analysis. Building parts intowholes is synthesis. You gain understanding through synthesis. When you take a system apartand analyze it, it loses its properties. To understand systems you need to look at them aswholes 118 .Capra notes that ‘what is destroyed when a living organism is dissected is its pattern. Thecomponents are still there, but the configuration of relationships among them - the patterns -is destroyed’ 119 .Not surprisingly Boyd recommends both analysis and synthesis to comprehend theworld, and an opponent’s system. One of the early works Boyd had read for Destruction andCreation actually centered on this dichotomy. In Two Modes of Thought James Bryant Conant,one time President of Harvard and under whose auspices Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structureof Scientific Revolutions, discussed the benefits and dangers of the theoretical-deductive andempirical-inductive approach respectively. He asserts that ‘the great scientists can and haveused both modes of thought’, without a combination science does not progress 120 . Indeed,he continues, the reconciliation of both types is essential for the continuation of a freesociety in an age of science and technology 121 .Already in Destruction and Creation Boyd devotes a considerable section towards thissystems-theoretical theme. He notes how deduction, analysis and differentiation are relatedand can be referred to as unstructuring or destruction, hence destructive deduction. But applyingthis to a “comprehensive whole” will result in parts but also in loss of order and meaning.He contrasts this approach with induction, synthesis and integration, which can be labeled ascreative or constructive induction. Both however are required:the crucial step that permits creative induction is the separation of the particulars from theirprevious domains by destructive deduction. Without this unstructuring the creation of a newstructure cannot proceed - since the bits and pieces are still tied together as meaning withinunchallenged domains or concepts 122 .Elsewhere, in order to make a point in his discourse on the essence of strategy, he notes that:117 Bertalanffy, p.19.118 Boyd, Strategic Game of ? & ?, p.10.119 Capra (1996), p.81.120 James Bryant Conant, Two Modes of Thought (Trident Press, New York, 1964), p.31. This short bookincludes several examples of scientific breakthroughs in the 19 th Century. Darwin is included in thissurvey.121 Ibid, p.91.122 Destruction and Creation; pp.5-6.102