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

Grand MessageThis long list of past contributions by these people suggests a ‘Grand Message’ for now andfor the future, Boyd continues 85 . And this grand message is an elaborate restatement of theideas of Gödel and Heisenberg first introduced in the essay, but now (almost) in layman’slanguage. In the mathematical/logical sense, Boyd asserts, the theorems associated withGödel, Lowenheim & Skolem, Tarski, Church, Turing, Chaitin, and others reveal that notonly do the statements representing a theoretical system for explaining some aspect of realityexplain that reality inadequately or incompletely but, like it or not, these statements spill outbeyond any one system and do so in unpredictable ways. Or, conversely, these theoremsreveal that we can neither predict the future migration and evolution of these statements norjust confine them to any one system nor suggest that they fully embrace any such system.If we extend these ideas and build upon them in a scientific/engineering sense, wecan say, according to Boyd, that any coherent intellectual or physical systems we evolve torepresent or deal with large portions of reality will at best represent or deal with that realityincompletely or imperfectly. Moreover, we neither have nor can we create beforehand asupersystem that can forecast or predict the kind of systems we will evolve in the future torepresent or deal with that reality more completely or more perfectly. Furthermore, such asupersystem can neither forecast nor predict the consequences that flow from those systemsthat we create later on. Going even further, we cannot determine or discern the character ornature of such systems (super or otherwise) within themselves. These findings imply that:People using theories or systems evolved from a variety of information will find itincreasingly difficult and ultimately impossible to interact with and comprehend phenomenaor systems that move increasingly beyond and away from that variety – that is, they willbecome more and more isolated from that which they are trying to observe or deal with,unless they exploit the new variety to modify their theories/systems or create newtheories/systems.This reveals that, ‘while we can comprehend and predict some portions of the everchangingworld that unfolds before us, other portions seem forever indistinct and unpredictable’ 86 .Underlying dynamicsAfter reading his previous work it is obvious Boyd has reformulated here one of his earlieststatements that we must constantly make sure we develop adequate mental models to makeup for the ever present and unavoidable level of uncertainty. For his present audience hekeeps this insight hidden until later. Instead he raises the question ‘what all this have to dowith our ability to thrive and grow in such a world that is seemingly orderly and predictableyet disorderly and unpredictable? 87To get at this question, he suggests ‘to take a closer and more general look at whatscience, engineering, and the pursuit of technology produce and how this is accomplished.Furthermore, suspecting that these practices and pursuit are not wholly accidental norobvious and that they seem to change us in some ways, he also suggests to examine whatkeeps the whole enterprise going and how this enterprise affects us personally 88 . In other85 Ibid, p.14. The next section almost literally follows Boyd’s text on p.14..86 Ibid, p.16.87 Ibid, p.17.88 Ibid, p.18.263