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

the system by the environment or other systems. Ashby noted that ‘the severity of constraintis shown by the reduction it causes in the number of arrangements a system can take tocounteract opposing elements’ and ‘that when a constraint exists, a system can be takenadvantage of because it is predictable’ 132 . Thus only by incorporating required variety intointernal controls can a system deal with the variety and challenge posed by its environment.Any system that insulates itself from diversity in the environment tends to atrophy and loseits complexity and distinctive nature, an insights Boyd was to adopt.The basis of the open-system model is the dynamic interaction of its components(and not the feedback cycle as in cybernetics). In cybernetics the goal and function offeedback is the maintenance of a desired value. The theory of open systems isthermodynamics but in open systems order can increase and entropy can decrease. Incontrast, in closed feedback mechanisms entropy increases (which is information of themeasure of order), therefore information never increases. Information can be transformedinto noise but not vice versa. An open system can “actively” tend toward a state of higherorganization, i.e., it may pass from a lower to a higher state of order. Notably, according toBertalanffy, a feedback mechanism in open systems can reactively reach a state of higherorganization owing to “learning”, i.e., information fed into the system 133 . These insights werelater on refined and mathematically under girded by Ilya Prigogine and form the basis forchaos and complexity theory 134 .The structure of the brainSystems everywhereCybernetics and systems thinking had a large impact on cognitive science, biology andpsychology, psychiatry, the concept of mind and organization theory. B.F. Skinner based hismodel of “stimulus-response” on it which forms the heart of the behaviorist school ofpsychology. Skinner asserted that in order to understand human behavior we must take intoaccount what the environment does to an organism before and after it responds. Behavior isshaped and maintained by its consequences. In the 1960s and 1970s his theories enjoyed avogue and in many clinics “behavior therapy” was adopted. Although criticized for analleged under appreciation of the influence of experience and thought, (and free will)behaviorists are generally credited with discovering much what we know about learning,conditioning and the proper use of reward and punishment 135 .In Skinner’s work Beyond Freedom and Dignity, which Boyd studied for his first essay,Skinner extends this idea to the problem of equality and freedom. Skinner saw human natureas the product of evolution and as an adaptation to the environment. The environmentexerts a confining influence, a measure of control, on man. For Skinner, freedom is merelythe state in which man does not feel the control that is exerted over him. Freedom ismoreover the lack of averse stimuli in the environment. Manipulating and shaping theenvironment to effectuate a decrease in averse stimuli thus becomes the obvious method forpeople to enhance freedom 136 . While difficult to assign direct linkage, the echo of Skinner132 W.Ross Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1956, pp.127-131.133 Bertalanffy, p.150. In popular system thinking, this feature is enclosed in the notion offeedforward, actions which are the result of expectation and anticipation. See O'Connor &McDermott, pp.48-52.134 Capra, (1996), pp.46-50.135 Ibid, p.13, and Watson, pp.495-96.136 Watson, p.551.106