Systems PDF
Preview Systems
SYSTEMS SYSTEMS New Paradigms for the Human Sciences Edited by Gabriel Altmann Walter A. Koch W Walter de Gruyter DE G Berlin · New York 1998 ©Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Systems : new paradigms for the human sciences / edited by Gabriel Altmann ; Walter A. Koch, p. cm. Includes index ISBN 3-11-015619-9 (alk. paper) 1. Social sciences-Methodology. 2. System analysis I. Altmann, Gabriel. II. Koch, Walter Α., 1934- H61.S993 1998 300'.l'l-dc21 Die Deutsche Bibliothek — CIP Einheitsaufnahme Systems : new paradigms for the human sciences / ed. by Gabriel Altmann ; Walter A. Koch. — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1998 ISBN 3-11-015619-9 © Copyright 1998 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., D-10785 Berlin. - All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Coverdesign: Rainer Engel, Berlin Printing: Werner Hildebrand, Berlin Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer GmbH, Berlin Prefatory note We would like to express our gratitude to our associates who untiringly helped us in overcoming all sorts of difficulties. Our thanks go to Anke Möller, who assisted us in many an editorial chore. We are deeply indebted to Andrea Schulz, who patiently and assiduously tried to improve on the style and the layout of quite a few manuscripts. Bochum, June 1997 Walter A. Koch Gabriel Altmann Preface Besides different revolutionary achievements in particular sciences, honoured by the Nobel price, there are merely three inventions of a general kind having an epoch-making impact on all sciences. The first was the reduction of speech to writing that happened in different places simultaneously or successively and after some millennia of develop- ment reached a state in which any drastic (but necessary) change would lead to unforseeable difficulties. Science without writing is not imaginable since it is the instrument of transmission and storing of knowledge. The recognition of the ambiguities and semantic fuzziness of natural language led to the second major invention, namely the establishment of a more precise language, called mathematics, whose development accelerates and whose application in all sciences steadily increases. In the theories of some disciplines nothing goes without mathematics, others, especially the humanities, still kick and struggle against it giving flimsy pseudo-reasons as a kind of alibi. The problem does not lie in the object of research itself but in the erudition of the researchers, in the tradition, in the incessant rise of new disciplines (widening, not deepening), in the state of the art of some disci- plines and in a deliberate theory avoidance, called in a euphemistic way "rather cultural interests". Many scientists in the humanities consider mathe- matics as a threat braking by its complexity the free flight of thought and not as a possibility of organized thought. The third invention whose roots lie in the last century is the coining of the concept of system. Though it is younger than the first two it captures a greater part of reality than e.g. a hieroglyph or geometry. It shows that there is a point of view from which all real phenomena have something in common. Disregarding the emergent phenomena arisen in the course of the evolution, it enables the physicist to speak to linguists, the biologist to discuss with the social scientist, the literary scientist to come to a common basis with the economist, etc. without forcing each other to trespass the boundaries of their own disciplines and without forcing the other to see language as an organism or music as a wave phenomenon. VIII Preface If this world view succeeds to penetrate all disciplines then a reform of education at the universities will be necessary. Today, systems thinking is used in different disciplines in four different ways, all of which have equal rights and are necessary. In the first step one tries to interpret one's research object as a system, i.e. to identify some entities as parts, other ones as environment, and still other ones as bonds between the parts (structure) and one tries - usually in analogy to other sciences - to make conjectures on some properties or on the behavior of this system. As a rule, this phase is finished when one realizes that one exaggeratedly relied on analogies some of which were entirely false, other ones did not exist at all and that there are still other phenomena that seem to be emergent. In the human sciences this stage is presently over but occasionally one finds some stubborn cases. The second phase begins with conjectures about structure, behavior, evo- lution, growth etc. of the particular system. Since they are mostly verbally formulated, the majority of these statements is isolated. For example, the descriptions involve bonds merely between two variables; the conjectures are weakly testable and do not always have the status of scientific hypotheses; most hypotheses have a low level status, i.e. they merely generalize observations; bonds are described at best by means of correlation; it is not easy to draw conclusions from the existing conjectures; simplicity is still a methodological rule; etc. However, it is at this level where the interest in quantification arises and one smoothly glides to the third phase in which one is obliged to be more consistent. One begins to measure; to represent the results of measurement by curves; to test statistically isolated hypotheses; to join ever more variables, an activity supported by the mathematical apparatus without which one cannot live at this stage; one begins to interpret the curves, e.g. to collect causal, associative, probabilistic, mechanistic or even teleological, etc., foundations; one accepts more and more easily the methodology of some more developed sciences and - as a sociological consequence at least in this century in the human sciences - one gets isolated from the research community. Often, this is a very positive symptom. But times change, the century, even the millennium ends and the human scientists have another thousand years to pass in Markovian frog leaps to the fourth stage in which they can set up theories of their particular systems. In these theories the laws will be derived by means of systems of difference or differential equations or by means of other mathematical tools. However, in Preface IX all of them there will be at least a trace of social and psychological variables, no matter whether a linguistic, literary, cultural or semiotic, etc. theory is concerned. The equations will contain a steadily increasing number of vari- ables and in the future a particular discipline will, perhaps, treat its objects merely as systems with specified boundary conditions and take account of emergent phenomena. Thus the first two years of university studies could be dedicated merely to mathematics and systems theory. In this volume we try to make a step towards this Utopia and present different views, methods and results from different domains, beginning with physics and ending with semiotics, admitting a clash of champions but hoping that a clash is better for catharsis than an uninterested coexistence. G. A. W. K.
The list of books you might like
