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

process of analysis and synthesis, based on experience, culture, genetics, one’s relationshipswith others, etc. His starting premise, contained in his essay, is that the world isfundamentally uncertain, truth is an arena of combat, knowledge is a weapon as is thecapability to evolve one’s knowledge base. Indeed, Boyd’s work itself, Boyd’s approach inmaking it, and Boyd’s views on combat and strategy implicitly are pregnant with postmodernepistemological principles. Although Boyd would feel more acquaintance with Kuhnthan with Lyotard, Bourdieu, Derrida or Giddens, Boyd does implicitly include ideas whichthese authors have suggested.As is the case with post-modernism, at the heart of Boyd’s view on war and strategylies the fundamental issue of epistemology. The first step Boyd takes in developing (whatlater turned into) A Discourse is an attempt to discover how we develop knowledge, how welearn, and contains the explicit recognition of fundamental uncertainty. His observation wasderived from physics and mathematics, that undermined fundamentally the predictivepotential of science and the certainty of knowledge, core features of post-modernism.Moreover, post-modernism and complexity theory arose during the period Boyd formulatedmost of his ideas, insights and explanations. And post-modernism and complexity theoryshare the notion of knowledge as unfolding, evolving, as a dialectic process and uncertain.This epistemological understanding is the foundation of his subsequent investigations inhistory and his attempt to derive meaning from it.Boyd also makes a pluralist approach part of his theory for conflict. Linking hiswork with postmodern security theory, his work revolves around perception and affectingthe perception of the opponent, while conscious of the fact that the act of observing willaffect observed reality. Ideas, practices, doctrines, and frames of reference matter. Reality isambiguous, in particular when an opponent manipulates our perception of it and to uncover‘truth’ one needs to combine, and select from, views from several perspectives on the samephenomenon. To survive one needs to have a repertoire of frames of reference and severalcausal models (both are captured in Boyd’s ‘orientation patterns’) to make sense of what ishappening and to adequately react and anticipate. One needs to know different paradigmsand be able to operate within those in parallel. Additionally Boyd stresses that one shouldconstantly modify and improve one’s orientation patterns, and this not only links his workwith Complexity Theory, but also with structuration theory and deconstructionism of thesocial sciences. The OODA loop as an epistemological and as a behavioral model fits incomfortably with post-modern epistemological and agency-structure discussions.The OODA loop itself indeed is a epistemological statement. It is an abstract andtheoretical model of the way we derive knowledge from our environment. The OODA loopmodels the way the brain functions or malfunctions. Boyd’s theory of rapid OODA loopingis about affecting the functioning of the brain (individual and/or some sort of collectivemental capacity that lies in military headquarters) and the capability to make sense of theworld. More importantly Boyd’s theory implicitly contains propositions about the way weperceive the world, make sense of it, classify the events and act according to our perception.It contains explicit statements about the nature of knowledge, about information and aboutthe limitations of our understanding of the world. Epistemology explicitly forms thephilosophical foundation and the starting point of further investigation. Epistemology, howwe derive knowledge and act upon it, is the core issue of the OODA loop, and Boyd’s focuson cognition - the vital importance Boyd attaches to Orientation - emanates from thisinterest in epistemological questions. Schemas, mental models, paradigms and orientationpatterns refer to the same notion. Boyd shows how we can relate it to warfare.When Boyd argues for rapidity and variety in tempo within OODA loops, he isbuilding upon a higher-level capability, which he presumes to exist, to adapt and evolve one’s313