The Systemic Turn in Human and Natural Sciences: A Rock in The Pond

221 Pages·2019·3.535 MB·English

by  Lucia Urbani Ulivi

Contemporary Systems Thinking
Lucia Urbani Ulivi Editor
The Systemic
Turn in Human
and Natural
Sciences
A Rock in The Pond
Contemporary Systems Thinking
Series Editor:
Robert L. Flood
Maastricht School of Management
The Netherlands
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5807
Lucia Urbani Ulivi
Editor
The Systemic Turn in Human
and Natural Sciences
A Rock in The Pond
Editor
Lucia Urbani Ulivi
Department of Philosophy
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
Milan, Italy
ISSN 1568-2846
Contemporary Systems Thinking
ISBN 978-3-030-00724-9 ISBN 978-3-030-00725-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00725-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960444
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Preface
It was as early as 1978 when Evandro Agazzi first proposed introducing into the
domain of human sciences, including philosophy, the concept of “system” that
cybernetics and engineering had acquired and were largely developing in their
domains. Agazzi, as scientist and philosopher, could trace back to Aristotle and to
the scientists operating after Galileo the early origins of the systemic idea, clearly
showing that if the term “system” can be accredited with some novelty, the corre-
sponding concept is an ancient way of looking at the things of the world that has
permeated our culture since early times. But this approach was met with an almost
total sunset in the early twentieth century, with general mechanicalism trailing
behind metaphysical materialism, drawing the natural sciences toward a reduction-
ist point of view and philosophy to a mostly formal and analytical attitude.
It is only fair to acknowledge that reductionism and analytical approaches have
produced significant results in many fields of contemporary knowledge offering
great contributions to relevant scientific discoveries and to consequent technologi-
cal applications, but it is no less important to clearly limit their validity within spe-
cific fields and objectives, taking care not to improperly accredit them as the best
and only methods of knowledge in every domain.
The suggested limitation has been totally overlooked, and a paradigm derived
from scientific and technological success became pervasive, while the few voices
observing that an individual entity escapes description in terms of its constituents,
and that many problems are unsolvable if an entity is reduced to the sum of its ele-
ments, were obscured or muted without any discussion.
In time the pervasive triumphalism met with disappointment in many fields—
just consider Artificial Intelligence—and it is nowadays increasingly and widely
recognized that analytical or mereological approaches in ontology, and also reduc-
tionism in its many forms in epistemology, are inadequate for solving many prob-
lems and that we should introduce and support the diffusion of new concepts and
different attitudes in research. The demand for “new ideas” is perceived in various
fields, and finding new paths, methods, and points of view in the comprehension of
our contemporary world is, if any, the proper task of philosophy.
v
vi Preface
The concept of “system,” to some extent and for proper objects, is a good
candidate for fulfilling such a demand, since it no longer considers the elementary
constituents of an object but rather the phenomena emerging from the relations and
interactions among its elementary parts.
The systemic point of view makes it possible to reconstruct several domains,
both philosophical and scientific, introducing fresh ideas into research in view of a
general rational vision of the world on a more comprehensive basis.
The birthdate of systemic thinking is traditionally fixed as 1967, when biologist
Ludwig von Bertalanffy published his major work, General System Theory, opening
a new attitude in research.
Nowadays systemic thinking is widely recognized and appreciated in various
fields, and the production of books, conferences, and seminars testify to its vitality
and conceptual richness, but its diffusion in many fields and throughout culture, in
general, is far from achievement.
This book makes a return to Agazzi’s program with two main focal points: firstly,
contributing to the consolidation and expansion of system theoretical thinking in
order to integrate the general reductionist and analytical attitude still broadly domi-
nant in our culture and, secondly, keeping the pace with the rich and fast-growing
systemic researches now expanding in different disciplines.
Since the time of von Bertalanffy’s pioneering studies, systemic researchers have
faced many problems, both internal and external to the systemic horizon, that were
unknown or unperceived in the early days of systemics. Since then the concept of
“emergence” underwent a widespread debate, and previously unexpected ideas and
theoretical problems, such as those of interdisciplinarity, complexity, identity through
dynamics, logical openness, quasi-systems, and incompleteness, entered onto the stage.
As a consequence many classical concepts underwent an important rethinking,
including causality, abduction, objectivity, and epistemology, and also the concept
of solution was revisited through dynamic and multiple approaches. All this fol-
lowed in the wake of an update of traditional systemic references, to the point that
we can now distinguish “first systemics,” based on the concept of organization,
from “second systemics,” focused on coherence. The researches of Gianfranco
Minati contributed greatly to the identification and distinction of the two phases of
systemic thinking and warned also against the risk of “systemic reductionism.”
To meet both of the aforementioned objectives, a branch of systemic research
called “Systemic Researches in Philosophy, Sciences and Arts” was opened in 2009
at the Department of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Milan, hosting semi-
nars—both public and privatissimums—and conferences whose results have been
regularly published in dedicated sections of the Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica
and in three volumes, all titled Strutture di mondo. Il pensiero sistemico come spec-
chio di una realtà complessa, ed. Lucia Urbani Ulivi, Bologna, Il Mulino 2010,
2013, and 2015, that provide an appreciated contribution to both continuity and
novelty in systemic research.
The participants—mostly well-known academicians—have been working
together for many years, taking part in and holding lectures, seminars, and debates,
discussing and comparing ideas through the practice of interdisciplinary work.
Preface vii
Presenting this book is the occasion for evaluating the many systemic activities
over the last 10 years, trying to answer the questions: have the impressive contacts
and exchanges of views among the representatives of different and also heteroge-
neous sciences merged into a new general perspective? Have the investments of
intellectual energies, organization, and time been rewarded? Has all this activity
been fruitful?
The investment has been rewarded, certainly as far as the public outcome is con-
cerned, but if we ask a more subtle question, whether the many contributions and
activities have been able to dismiss many prejudices and to change at least to some
degree the general paradigm of our culture, then the answer is not so optimistic: the
message in the bottle has been thrown in the vast ocean of shared culture, but
whether somebody will collect it depends on many heterogeneous factors, mostly
out of control. What John Dupré says is certainly true that culture is strongly norma-
tive in regulating our ideas and behaviors and that it is at the same time ephemeral
and easily changeable, but cultural changes are hardly predictable, and ideas can
stay still and steady for centuries. So we can only forward the message, and wait,
and hope.
There is one last question that should be posed: which are the original contribu-
tions and new ideas likely to accredit this book as worthwhile reading?
I will briefly sketch out some relevant traits.
Vitiello and Giuliani, physicist and biologist, respectively, underline the relevance
of the unobservable as the origin of the observed, linking the explicit behaviors of
phenomena to hidden variables that remain opaque to direct knowledge. They suggest
that there is much more to understand besides the plain data.
Matelli traces a clear conceptual link between the ancient idea of body and the
contemporary concept of system, deeply rooting the contemporary in its ancient
origins. She also suggests that a necessary ingredient for comprehension of ancient
authors is a knowledge of the ideas, values, and objectives structuring their cultural
context.
Economists Lamperti, Monasterolo, and Roventini clearly show that complexity
is hardly understandable using classical models, while Fontana in architecture and
Ingegnoli in bionomics underline the limits of seeking “functional optimization” in
both built and natural environments.
Jurists Cafagno, D’Orsogna, and Fracchia, introducing systemic perspective into
environmental legal studies, suggest viewing the environment as a common with
legacy value.
Frigerio, philosopher of language, proves that a radical version of the principle
of compositionality cannot be maintained, while I suggest a fresh start in philoso-
phy of mind, considering mind and brain as different constituents of the human
being, viewed as a system.
All these contributions strongly support a new manner of looking at our world: the
place where the observer and the observed are defined in terms of each other, where
continuous and interlaced phenomena of emergence take place, obscure to complete
and precise comprehension, far from predictability, readable through principles with
viii Preface
local validity, and open to creativity as the main resource for successfully interacting
with complex and irreducible phenomena.
Whether or not such suggestions will be accepted and developed depends on
many circumstances and not only on their value.
I wish to express my deep gratitude to all participants in this venture, and I espe-
cially want to mention Evandro Agazzi and Gianfranco Minati for their support and
encouragement and also for freeing the philosophical debate from many inherited
limitations, for opening new directions in research, and for offering solid results,
which should encourage other researchers to keep the path open and constantly
trodden.
Milan, Italy Lucia Urbani Ulivi
Systemic Thinking: An Introduction
Evandro Agazzi
Abstract In the 1970s, General System Theory was still the object of a radical
controversy between enthusiastic supporters and fierce enemies, the firsts being
attracted by the fact that GST was offering a legitimacy to concepts like those of
ordered totality, global unity, goal-oriented processes, specific function, multilevel
realities, and emergent properties that are frequently and profitably used in several
sciences, from biology to psychology, sociology, and other “human” sciences. The
enemies rejected such concepts considering them as vague, imprecise, and belonging
to the superficial level of common sense language, but that should be banned from
the rigorous discourse of science. This attitude was in keeping with the positivistically
inspired scientific culture still predominant in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Systemic Point of View
At a distance of nearly four decades from that historical period, the systemic way of
thinking has shown itself as the most proper tool for understanding complexity and
investigating complex realities and stimulates reflections capable to revisit the clas-
sical philosophical concepts, the basic metaphysical and ontological principles, the
deepest sense of fundamental developments in the history of science, the critical
appraisal of merits, and the limitations of many present research programs in vari-
ous fields.
“What are systems, what is a system?”
The answer to this question is not simple, not because this term circulates only
in specialized sophisticated languages but because, on the contrary, it has acquired
E. Agazzi
Panamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico
ix
x E. Agazzi
a very large display of applications in a variety of contexts. So, for example, in ordi-
nary language we speak of linguistic system, legal system, political system, economic
system, bureaucratic system, productive system, industrial system, energetic system,
railways system, metric system, and so on. In addition, within specialized disciplines
one finds the mention of several systems, like muscular system, nervous system,
endocrine system, and a lot of other systems in biology; numerical system,
Boolean system, Euclidean system, and equation system in mathematics; or elastic
system, gaseous system, and isolated system in physics, not to speak of the many
systems that are considered in chemistry, crystallography, astronomy, geology,
and geography and in the domain of humanities, the capital notion of philo-
sophical system.
Such a variety of applications may at first produce the reaction of considering the
notion of system as endowed with a vague and confused meaning belonging to ordi-
nary language that can only give rise to ambiguities and misunderstandings and
must be overcome and replaced by a rigorous and technical treatment. This impres-
sion is wrong, because this generalized use rather testifies that it belongs to common
sense, that is, to that complex set of basic concepts and principles that make possible
our understanding of reality and whose meaning is, therefore, not ambiguous but
analogical, that is, such that it must be applied partly in the same way and partly in
different ways to different kinds of reality. If this is the situation, the stimulating
task is that of making explicit that common semantic core that underlies the analogi-
cal use and makes it possible.
This core can be described in a rather intuitive way by saying, for example, that
a system is an entity constituted by parts that are linked by mutual relations, making
up a complex-ordered unity which is endowed with its own individuality in the
sense that it is characterized by its own properties and functioning that are different
from those of its constituent parts though depending on them to a certain extent.
In a shorter way, we could perhaps say that we mean by a system an ordered totality
of interrelated parts whose characteristics depend both on the characteristics of the
parts and on the web of their interconnections.
GST can be considered as an effort for making explicit and precise this concep-
tual core, by revisiting sometimes concepts and principles that philosophy has
already defined and analyzed in the past but have been neglected or abandoned for
several historical reasons, especially as a consequence of the predominance attained
by the conceptual framework of certain successful sciences in Western culture.
The History of the Notion of System
The System of the World
The concept of system (or, better, the term “system”) is so widely used in our
linguistic contexts—as we have already noted—that we can be spontaneously con-
vinced that it has belonged to our learned vocabulary from times immemorial; but