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

friction, which is infused with the notion of unpredictability and uncertainty stemming fromthe interactive nature of strategy and battle, and from the limits of human cognition, shouldbe at the heart of it 146 . In fact, enhancing friction in the opponent’s system is considered aprime stratagem 147 . He bolsters his argument with referring to Albert Einstein, WernerHeisenberg, Kurt Gödel and Claude Shannon who laid the physical and mathematicalfoundation for the philosophical insight that human knowledge is limited by definition 148 . Allinformation is imperfect. There is no absolute knowledge, he quotes Jacob Bronowski, anauthor whose work Boyd too had studied 149 .With an eye on contemporary scientific developments, and with direct reference tothe work of John Boyd, Pellegrini expects that the shift from the Newtonian framework ofcause and effect determinism to the new science concept of probabilities and trends (asembedded in chaos and complexity theory), as well as the shift from the force of heavymechanics to the new particle wave theories of force, will change man’s concept of thebattlefield, emphasizing the capability for rapid observation and action 150 . While theNewton’s metaphor of the “Majestic Clockwork” may have influenced military theory duringlarge parts of the past 200 years, this model was seriously undermined by the discovery ofquantum mechanics and the Special and General Laws of Physics that show that man’sunderstanding of the universe will always be incomplete and tenuous. Work in biology(especially DNA and the workings of the human brain), artificial intelligence and Chaos andComplexity Theory now suggest, according to Pellegrini, that the world is composed ofcomplex systems which interact with, and adapt to, each other making it even more difficultto obtain knowledge about how the universe functions 151 . In that, Pellegrini nicely capturedthe essence of the scientific Zeitgeist during which Boyd developed his ideas.The formative factors of Boyd’s A DiscourseThus, science and philosophy provide frameworks for investigation and systems ofknowledge for the military theorist, consciously as well as unconsciously, alongside factorssuch as experience and organizational context of a strategist. This leads to the subject andstructure of the next three chapters in which the following four categories of influences thatcan be discerned in Boyd’s work will be addressed:• Boyd’s professional background;• The strategic and defense-political context of the US in the period in which Boyd developedhis ideas;• Boyd’s study of military theory and history;• Boyd’s keen and evolving interest in scientific developments and the scientific Zeitgeist duringwhich he developed his ideas on military strategy.All four will be explored in some detail, for a premise of this study is that understandingBoyd requires awareness about his formative factors, in particular in light of the fact that one146 ibid. p.119, 121.147 Ibid, p.120.148 This is not incidentally similar to Boyd's use of these scientists. Watts was thoroughly familiar withBoyd's work and actually cites Boyd and the OODA cylce in his endnotes, see pp. 127. In fact heextend his appreciation to Boyd for assisting him in completing the book.149 Ibid, p.109.150 Ibid, p.iii.151 Ibid, p.8.38