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

assessing deviation from coursecountersteeringchange of deviationFigure 2: examples of simple feedback loopsSelf-regulation of systems by feedback, defined by Wiener as a method of controlling asystem by reinserting into it the results of past performance, became an engineering principlein particular in cars, aircraft, missiles and air defense systems 126 . A feedback loop is a circulararrangement of causally connected elements, in which an initial cause propagates around thelinks of the loop, so that each element has an effect on the next, until the last “feeds back”into the first element of the cycle. The consequence is that the first link (“input”) is affectedby the last (“output”), which results in self-regulation of the entire system. Feedback is thecontrol of a machine on the basis of its actual performance rather than its expectedperformance. In a broader sense feedback has come to mean the conveying of informationabout the outcome of any process or activity to its source.The cyberneticists distinguished between this type of “negative” or “balancing”feedback, which dampens the effects of change and leads to less of the action that is creatingit, and “positive” or “reinforcing” feedback, in which changes return to the system and amplify achange in the same direction 127 . It was recognized as the essential mechanism of homeostasis,the self-regulation that allows living organisms to maintain themselves in a state of dynamicbalance.From the beginning cybernetic theorists were aware that feedback is an importantconcept for modeling not only living organisms but also social systems. Like an individual, asocial system is an organization that is bound together by a system of communication and ithas a dynamics in which circular processes of a feedback nature play an important role. Theyrecognized the similarity between the concept of feedback, the interplay of thesis andantithesis in the dialectic of Hegel and Marx and or instance the economic theory of AdamSmith that argues for the self-regulation of markets. All of these ideas implied circularpatterns of causality that can be represented by feedback loops. It was the majorachievement of cybernetics and informed investigations in other fields, such as biology andpsychiatry.126 Joseph O’Connor & Ian McDermott, The Art of Systems Thinking, (Thorsons, San Fransisco, 1997),p.236.127 Capra (1996), pp. 56-64.104