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

e true. Thus tested and refined, it became the basis for most of his thoughts thereafter 2 . Inthis essay he combined concepts from the seemingly unrelated fields of mathematical logic,physics, and thermodynamics. Boyd thus became the first individual ever to link Gödel’sIncompleteness Theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the Second Law ofThermodynamics 3 . But other concepts are either explicitly or implicitly incorporated in it aswell, such as the arguments of Polanyi, Popper and Kuhn. The essay consists of an abstractand eight paragraphs. The essay is rendered in its entirety without explanatory text orinterpretation, as the essay is self-explanatory (when read with the previous chapters as aconceptual background), contrary to the presentations that follow it. The only difference liesin the bibliography, which I have included not at the end of the essay, but as Appendix A ofthis study.The heart of the essay is the discussion about the nature of knowledge and the waywe can obtain knowledge. It is highly philosophical and obviously rooted in the debate onscientific progress and the nature of knowledge that raged in the sixties. Not surprisinglyBoyd associates these epistemological issues with struggles for survival. The fundamental,unavoidable and all-pervasive presence of uncertainty is the starting point. It leads to therequirement to learn, to develop adequate mental models, and to continually assess theadequacy of these models is the basis for survival for any organism. This process requiresboth analysis and synthesis, both induction and deduction.Because fighting a war is about the survival of a unit or a social organism like thenation-state, the insights from this discussion about the process of learning – or rathermaking sense of this constantly changing world - cannot be anything but relevant for warfighting and strategic theory. Boyd returned to the notions developed in this essay whendeveloping his ideas about the character of a good command and control system and theessence of the strategic game. In 1996, he condensed his ideas in his final presentation, andin the five slides that make up this briefing again he returns to themes introduced in theessay. In the abstract of the essay he introduces the central theme. Then follows the literal andentire text of the essay including Boyd’s use of underlining.‘Abstract’To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts ofmeaning. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out how we destroy and create thesepatterns to permit us to bath shape and be shaped by a changing environment. In this sense,the discussion also literally shows why we cannot avoid this kind of activity if we intend tosurvive on our own terms. The activity is dialectic in nature generating bath disorder andorder that emerges as a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to achanging and expanding universe of observed reality.GoalStudies of human behavior reveal that the actions we undertake as individuals are closelyrelated to survival, more importantly, survival on our own terms. Naturally, such a notionimplies that we should be able to act relatively free or independent of any debilitatingexternal influences —otherwise that very survival might be in jeopardy. In viewing theinstinct for survival in this manner we imply that a basic aim or goal, as individuals, is to2 Ibid, p.118.3 Hammond, The Essential Boyd, p.8.176