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

These insights implied, for Boyd, that:We need to create mental images, views, or impressions, hence patterns that match withactivity of world.Systems theory enters strategy when Boyd next advances the idea that:We need to deny adversary the possibility of uncovering or discerning patterns that matchour activity, or other aspects of reality in the world 188 .The systems theoretical principle of the necessity of applying a multitude of perspectivescomes to the fore when Boyd asserts in Organic Design:Orientation is an interactive process of many sided implicit cross-referencing projections,empathies, correlations and rejections […] 189 .expose individuals, with different skills and abilities, against a variety of situations - wherebyeach individual can observe and orient himself simultaneously to the others and to thevariety of changing situations 190 .In The Strategic Game of ? & ?, which he finished one month after completing Organic Design,he includes several statements referring to this theme, exemplifying the fact that indeed thisissue is of an essential nature for Boyd:To discern what is going on we must interact in a variety of ways with our environment.We must be able to examine the world from a number of perspectives so that we cangenerate mental images or impressions that correspond to that world 191 .We can’t just look at our own personal experiences or use the same mental recipes over andover again; we’ve got to look at other disciplines and activities and relate or connect them towhat we know from our experiences and the strategic world we live in 192 .When he discusses the ways to maintain interaction with the ever changing world so as toensure one’s ability to adapt, he asserts further that this is accomplished:ConclusionBy an instinctive see-saw of analysis and synthesis across a variety of domains, or acrosscompeting/independent channels of information, in order to spontaneously generate newmental images or impressions that match up with an unfolding world of uncertainty andchange 193 .Scientific debates and insights thus directly informed Boyd’s thinking, and awareness of theworks Boyd studied and the themes he was interested in help explain his work. As science188 Ibid, p.16. underlining in original.189 Ibid, p.15.190 Ibid, p.18.191 Strategic Game of ? & ?, p.10.192 Ibid, p.45.193 Ibid, p.58.119