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

undertakes to improve its own performance 37 . The growth of scientific knowledge, itself aform of social discourse, a field of knowledge and meaning production, can thus be fruitfullyapproached and understood from a post-modern perspective. In this, Boyd’s discussion inhis Discourse on Gödel and Heisenberg could as easily have included Lyotard.In fact, various authors consider insights offered by Einstein, Gödel and Heisenberg askey elements of late- or post-modernity. Lyotard himself was much influenced by theseauthors, as by chaos theory and information theory 38 . Both Stephen Toulmin andChristopher Coker for instance refer to them. For philosopher Toulmin relativity theory andthe uncertainty principle are indications of attempts to “humanize” modernity, due to thefact that these scientific insights put the human back in the center. Coker includes adiscussion on Heisenberg to build the argument that the West is developing a post-modernway of conceptualizing and waging war which puts the human back on center stage, inreaction to the era of modern, industrialized war and de-humanized war 39 . In any case, thisdiscussion strongly suggest close parallels between Boyd’s view on knowledge and theessential uncertainty surrounding us on the one hand, and post-modern views on knowledge.Structuration TheoryIf these two post-modernists perhaps take the argument a bit too far, another link betweenBoyd and postmodernism is less tenuous. And it lies in the relativity of the act ofobservation, deriving knowledge from observation, and making predictions upon thisanalysis. Key is the concept of reflexivity of knowledge 40 . This concept is central toStructuration Theory, a theory developed by sociologist Anthony Giddens, and it is currentlythe most widely employed sociological theory of change. Social change can be explained byeither focusing on contextual, structural factors or on the actions of agents. Giddenscombines them in a ‘notion of duality’, and explains that both need to be examined and thatboth are mutually constituted. Agents act according to the structural factors that constrainthem and they form structures by abiding by them, but also by changing them. Theindividual both initiates change and participates in it. Structures – rules, ideas, institution andresources recursively implicated in social reproduction - can be changed by action 41 . Thestructure-agency debate is relevant for strategy for, as one author notesstructures do not determine outcomes, but define the potential range of alternative strategies.Agents have the opportunity of choosing from several strategies within the structure.Strategic action is the dialectical interplay of intentional and knowledgeable, yet structurallyembeddedactors and the preconstituted contexts they inhabit. Eventually, structure may alsobe transformed by agency over time 42 .37 Cilliers, p.117.38 Watson, p. 668.39 Coker asserts that ‘with quantum physics a new form of measurement was introduced in which thewhole possibility of science depended on man, no longer on impersonal events. The universe existsonly as a series of approximations within the limits determined by our relationship with it. This isparticularly true of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle’; see Christopher Coker, Humane Warfare(Routlegde, London, 2001), p.16. Coker’s work is filled with references to postmodern authors.40 For an introduction to Giddens, see McLennan, pp.342-347. McLennan positions Giddens as ahappy compromise between Enlightenment and (the more extreme and nihilistic versions of) postmodernism.41 Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, ‘The Gordion Knot of Agency-Structure in InternationalRelations: a Neo-Gramscian Perspective’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol.7 (1), p.2242 Ibid, p.27292