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

The reflexive nature of modern social life consists in the fact that social practices areconstantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those verypractices, thus constitutively altering their character’ 48 .The production of systematic knowledge about social life becomes integral to systemreproduction….knowledge applied to the conditions of system reproduction intrinsicallyalters the circumstances to which it originally referred 49 .An actor uses his knowledge to analyze and adapt to his environment. If he notices that hisknowledge does not produce the desired result he will seek alter his knowledge. At the sametime the environment is constituted because of knowledge about it and that knowledgeallows us to control it at the same time, and alter it. Knowing about the economic behaviorof people and nations allows us not only to observe and understand, but also to designeconomic policy thereby altering the economic behavior and perhaps even altering the rulesfor economic behavior and thereby invalidating previous knowledge about economicbehavior. Knowledge is thus reflexive. Knowledge and observation lead simultaneously tounderstanding and to uncertainty. This is what Giddens the “double hermeneutic” of sociallife 50 . The double hermeneutics problematizes exactly the relationship between selfinterpretationsand second order interpretations. For not only do observers rely on first-handinterpretations, but their interpretations, in turn, can itself have a feedback on the former’, aphenomenon already noticed in this study in describing the nature of complex systems suchas an economy or armed forces in combat. And not surprisingly it is noted that this doublehermeneutic feature of social life differentiates social science from the natural sciences 51 .This is mirrored in various passages in Boyd’s work. In Organic Design for Commandand Control for instance he again emphasizes the centrality of Orientation, which isan interactive process of many-sided implicit cross referencing projection, emphatics,correlations, and rejections that is shaped by and shapes the interplay of genetic heritage,cultural tradition, previous experiences and unfolding circumstances. Orientation is theSchwerpunkt. It shapes the way we interact with the environment – hence orientation shapesthe way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act. We need to create mental images,views, or impressions, hence patterns that match with activity of world 52 .Boyd’s key post-modern insight from science is the fundamental uncertainty inherent in anysystem for observation, explanation and prediction and the reflexivity of knowledge.Deliberately he refers to this in his discussion on the essence of strategy, making the pointthat ‘we need an external environment, or outside world, to define ourselves and maintainorganic integrity, otherwise we experience dissolution/ disintegration’ 53 .The growing awareness of inherent uncertainty of social life and the conscious anddeliberate embedding of reflexivity of knowledge in institutions is what for Giddens marksthe nature of the post-modern condition. Boyd’s understanding about knowledge, derivedfrom Heisenberg uncertainty principle, about the role and development of orientationpatterns, his ideas of evolution of organizations, the evolutionary nature of the development48 Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford, 1990, p. 38.49 Ibid, pp. 53-54.50 See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge, 1984), p. 284.51 Guzzini, p.162.52 Boyd, Organic Design for Command and Control, pp.15-16.53 Boyd, Strategic Game of ? and ?, p.28., and further pp.39 and 41.294