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

The final region is the boundary between the stable and chaotic zones. Known as thecomplex region or the “edge of chaos”, it is a phase transition zone between the stableand chaotic regions.Systems poised in this boundary zone are optimized to evolve, adapt, and processinformation about their environments. As complex systems evolve, they appear to movetoward this boundary between stability and chaos, and become increasingly more complex.Deep in the ordered regime perturbations cannot propagate through the system. Deep in thechaotic regime the system would be too sensitive to small perturbations to maintain itsorganization 53 . Thus complex behavior is on the border between predictability and nonpredictability.Complex systems are somewhat more stable and less active than are thedynamics of chaotic markets or seasonal fluctuations in the size of insect populations.Complex systems possess characteristics of both stable and chaotic systems. One the onehand they exhibit sufficiently stable behavior to allow retention of information, to transferinformation across different systems and across time, and to reproduce themselves; on theother hand, they are sufficiently chaotic to permit the creative use of information and toallow change.SchemataA key behavior of complex systems is their ability to process information and use ofschema’s 54 . This is similar to the idea of mental modules of systems theory (and theconnection between schema’s and Boyd’s work does not have to be addressed at lengthagain). The systems sense their environments and collect information about surroundingconditions. They then respond to this information via a set of internal models that guidetheir actions. In the data stream a system identifies particular regularities and compressesthem in a concise schema’s or internal models ( in psychology schema’s refer to a patternused by the mind to grasp an aspect of reality). This schema is used to sift through data insubsequent stages, to describe the environment and make predictions of events. Thedescriptions can be more or less accurate, the predictions can be more or less predictable andthe prescriptions can lead to more or less favorable outcomes. All these consequences arethen fed back to exert ‘selection pressures’ on the competition among various schemata(here we see the familiar doctrine process surface, doctrines can be seen as internal modelsfor military organizations).There are two kinds of internal models, or schemata; tacit and overt. A tacit internalmodel simply prescribes a current action, under an implicit prediction of some desired futurestate (a notion Boyd included in his command and control philosophy). An overt internalmodel is used as a basis for explicit, but internal, exploration of alternatives, a process oftencalled lookahead 55 . A schema thus has several functions: a description of an observed system,a prediction of events, or a prescription for behavior of the complex adaptive system itself.Whether Complex Systems adapt to change depends in part on their capability to processinginformation, to form and select adequate models and to anticipate. Thus variants of themodel are subject to selection and progressive adaptation 56 .53 Capra, (1996) citing Stuart Kauffman, p.204.54 See John Holland, Hidden Order, How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Perseus Books, Reading,Massechussetts, 1995), pp.31-34 and Gell-Mann, pp.17-25.55 Holland, p.33.56 Gell-Mann interestingly makes the comparison between schemata and scientific theories, notinghow Popper's falsification principle acts as a selection mechanism. However, he also notes that science136