System–Environment Relations in the Theories of Open and Autopoietic Systems: Implications for Critical Systems Thinking

This short paper revisits Bertalanffy??s open systems theory and Luhmann??s theory of autopoietic social systems in order to highlight the linkage between systemic complexity and the carrying capacity of the environment. Being paradigmatically focused on biological complexity, Bertalanffy??s work shows this linkage to be relatively unproblematic. In contrast, Luhmann argued that autopoietic social systems are likely to develop excessive complexity which overstrains the environment??s carrying capacity. The paper synthesizes these conceptions into a framework of discretionary social decision-making aimed at preventing systemic complexity from becoming excessive. Rooted in the idea of balancing the system and the environment, this framework determines the optimal level of systemic complexity as that level which systems can maximally attain without incurring the risk of self-destruction. The system?Cenvironment balance is shown to be the general systems theory core of Ulrich??s critical systems heuristics and critical systems thinking more generally.     

Science as Systemic Intervention: Some Implications of Systems Thinking and Complexity for the Philosophy of Science

This paper sidesteps the usual starting points for debate about complexity and the philosophy of science, which tend to assume that science is primarily about observation. Instead, the starting point is intervention, defined as purposeful action by an agent to create change. While some authors suggest that intervention and observation are opposites, it is argued here that observation (as undertaken in science) should be viewed as just one type of intervention. We should therefore welcome scientific techniques of observation into a pluralistic set of intervention methods, alongside methods for exploring values, reflecting on subjective understandings, planning future activities, etc. However, there is a need to explicitly counter a possible pernicious interpretation of this argument: intervention could (erroneously) be viewed as flawlessly preplanned change based on accurate predictions of the consequences of action. This is the mechanistic worldview that systems thinking and complexity science seek to challenge. Therefore, having redefined scientific observation as intervention, the paper revisits insights from systems thinking and complexity to propose a methodology of systemic intervention. Some brief reflections are then provided on the wider social implications of this methodology.     

Emergence: A Systems Theory’s Challenge to Ethics

The paper reconstructs Niklas Luhmann’s diagnosis of the dysfunctional character of moral communication in the modern society by emphasizing the emergent character of today’s moral problems. In the systems-theoretic literature, emergence means the irreducibility of the properties of the whole to the characteristics of its parts. Two arguments have been advanced. First, the dysfunctional character of moral communication has been traced back to the emergent character of many moral problems. Moral communication has thus been shown to be not inherently dysfunctional, but rather needful of semantic forms that take account of the emergent properties of the economic and other social systems. Second, these properties highlight the moral aspect of the precariousness of system–environment relations as seen by Luhmann. As a moral problem, this precariousness can be resolved through greater sensitivity of social systems to their environment, social and natural alike. Accordingly, the emergent properties of the economic and other social systems can be captured by recasting the concept of responsibility as the individual-level or organizational-level projection of the environmental sensitivity of these systems.     

社会大规模群体行为仿真概念建模框架ARE

任何一个仿真系统中,概念建模是首要的也是最关键的环节。针对EATI(实体、行动、任务、交互)和EBI(实体、行为、交互)概念建模框架在社会域概念描述方面的不足,为体现大规模社会民众群体行为的涌现性特征,将实体和行为有机结合起来用主体Agent进行描述,并采用复杂网络的有关研究成果建立Agent之间的社会结构——社会关系网络,以及突出强调环境对行为的影响和制约作用,用智能环境的思想来简化行为描述的复杂度,提出了大规模社会群体行为建模的Agent、社会关系网络、智能环境(Agent Relation Environment:ARE)概念建模框架,给出了该框架所涉及的一系列概念的定义,并对框架的内容和特点进行了较为详细的阐释和探讨。     

复杂性与社会系统--卢曼思想研究

在三个层面上揭示了卢曼理解的社会复杂性概念的含义 :旨意层面、社会结构层面与功能分化层面。由于科学的任务在于理解和还原复杂性 ,而科学在至今占主导地位的本体论的认识论指导下无法满足这一要求 ,卢曼提出了他的差异论的认识论根据。在这一认识论的视景中 ,人类的实践活动以及科学研究本身被理解为建构系统的活动 ,而建构系统的活动又被界定为设定和标示差异的活动     

Systems,Design, and Entrepreneurial Thinking: Comparative Frameworks

The philosophies of design thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, and systems thinking have widespread application in diverse fields. However, due to the inherently abstract rhetoric and lack of commonly accepted frameworks, these philosophies are often considered buzzwords and fads. This article deconstructs the rhetoric and literature from leaders of these three philosophies and identifies their fundamental tenets. A conceptual framework that captures the differences and convergences between design thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, and systems thinking is presented. A series of four case studies derived from diverse settings like healthcare, agriculture, and social networks further illustrate these interconnections. The article argues that the emergent integration of these philosophies, as captured in the fundamental tenets, presents the most compelling opportunities for the practical application of these theoretical frameworks.     

Teaching Systems Theory/Thinking/Behavior: Systemic Behavior Instead of One-Sidedness: Making Bridges Among Specialists

In the current real life, systems theory is an abstract background of systems thinking,which is a part of systemic behavior. The systemic behavior is the alternative to the currently prevailing one-sidedness that puts all of humankind in danger of self-destruction due to the crucial over-sights(all the way to world wars) that unavoidably result from the current over-specialization(along with crucial, but partial insights), if the specialists fail to practice creative interdisciplinary cooperation.This contribution is a next phase of research after the contributions by Matja? Mulej, Zdenka ?enko and Viktor ?akelj(2017) and by Matja? Mulej, et al.(2013). Although the abstract background and thinking that the systemic behavior applies, are very necessary, theory and thinking are no longer enough for systems science to be a relevant science and practice helping humankind find the way out from the current blind alley and survive as a healthy civilization with a healthy social and natural environment. The suggestion in this contribution therefore reads: Let us systems and cybernetics scientists make/enable the transition to systemic behavior, which applies all the many theories, which are components in the background of systemic behavior in practice, next to each other and/or in synergy. Analysis, i.e., studying per isolated parts is too overlooking and one-sided to be enough. So is teaching on a single one out of several systems theories. Reality is too complex. Teaching is a part of this necessary effort, which must lead to a global peace and survival of humankind of today instead of the current hating the human descendants.     

跨学科的系统思维与综合创新

美国圣菲研究所的宗旨和理念就是开展跨学科的复杂性研究,认为一种新型科学正在从这种跨学科综合中涌现出来。系统思维和系统科学实际上就是跨学科研究的结果,而跨学科研究也是系统科学的基本研究进路。其中,类比、隐喻与模型是系统科学的主要研究方法。复杂性科学研究的一个前沿与创新,就是在跨学科的视野下,运用隐喻与计算机模拟探索复杂系统突现的动力学机理。     

复杂性科学与利益冲突

专家与政府对利益冲突研究存在简单因果分析的共同缺陷,传统科学下的简单线性思维方式对利益冲突的解释力有限。复杂性科学及其思维方式有效改善这种简单因果关系,用复杂性科学从纵向解剖利益冲突的诱发机制与复杂性表征后发现,在无序思维、分形思维和生成思维指导下建立一种具有复杂性特征的利益冲突防范与治理机制是可行且有效的。     

A Holistic Approach for Designing Human-Centric Trust Systems

Online trust systems, albeit existing as technical implementations, aim to translate the role that trust has in the traditional world onto the virtual platforms. Establishing the inter-dependence between these systems and the human-factor is essential for reducing, but more importantly for understanding the inherent complexity of the open social platforms, and for improving the user-experience and system-performance. This work determines the systemic features of trust and introduces a novel framework of design-properties based on the principles of General Systems Theory. We determine the systemic properties which lack in the current technical solutions, and incorporate social factors into the design-guidelines of trust systems. We introduce four influence-factors and demonstrate that accounting for those factors leads to compliance with the generic system-principles. Finally, we employ case study analysis following the premises of case study research established in the social science literature. By performing semantic analysis of the state of the art on trust systems, we are able to identify two semantic clusters to which trust research belongs, and to choose in a non-random manner the representative case studies for evaluation upon our framework. To our knowledge, this is the first study applying fundamental social science principles from General Systems Theory and case-study research for the purpose of theory-building and evaluation of technical human-centric solutions.     

Complexity and Change: Two "Semantic Tricks" in the Triumphant Oscillating Organization

This article is about the effects of the semantics "complexity and change" used for intraorganizational communication about the relation between organization and environment. Our hypothesis is that communications along this semantic will have profound effects on the organization as to steering as it undermines the idea of organizational unity and establishes the future or utopia as the frame of reference for communication around steering. Our empirical findings from the development in the Danish central administration points in that direction. This is not necessarily implying organizational breakdown, however it might provide the basis for "oscillocracy" that is steering through acceleration of communicative flexibility and ambiguity. As theoretical frame we have chosen the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann and his communicative systems theory, which is introduced at the beginning of the article. In the central part, we present our empirical findings and at the end of the article we reflect upon oscillation.     

The Self-Organization of Social Movements

The New Social Movement Approach and the Resource Mobilization Approach are the dominant approaches in social movement research. They focus either on macro-aspects and externalism or on micro-aspects and internalism. This paper suggests that the notion of self-organization is one way of taking into account both internal and external, structural- and action-based aspects of social movements and that it allows a dynamic concept of protest. The emergence of social movements is not determined, but a complex result of crisis, resource mobilization, cognitive mobilization, self-production—searching for singular laws of the emergence of movements is an expression of one-dimensional, linear, and deterministic thinking. Protest and social problems are non-linearly related. Social movements are part of the civil society system, by producing alternative topics and demands, they guarantee the dynamic of the political system. Existing system-theoretic approaches on social movements (Luhmann, Japp, Ahlemeyer, Hellmann) are rather uncritical and ignore the productive relationship between human actors and social structures in processes of social self-organization. Social movements are dynamic communication systems that permanently react to political and societal events with self-organized protest practices and protest communications that result in the emergence and differentiation (production and reproduction) of protest structures (events, oppositional topics, alternative values, regularized patterns of interaction and organization). The dynamic of social movements is based on the permanent emergence and mutual production of protest practices and protest structures. The self-organization of a social movement is a vivid process, it is based on the permanent movement and differentiation of actors and structures that communicate public protest, a social movement is only a movement, as long as it communicates protest and moves itself. In critical phases of protest new social systems of protest emerge whose form, content and effects are not determined, but dependent upon old structures, i.e., old structures enable and constrain new structures. The emergence of new protest issues, methods, identities, structures, and organizational forms starts as singular innovation, if it is widely imitated then it spreads within the protest system and transforms the system as a whole. In terms of Hegelian dialectics this means that novel qualities sublate the old structure of the total system, i.e., the system is transformed, reaches a higher level, incorporates old qualities, and creates new qualities. In critical phases protest can spontaneously and quickly spread and intensify itself. This reflects the idea of complexity thinking that small causes can spontaneously have large effects. The notion of self-organization as the idea of the networked, co-operative, synergetic production of emergent qualities and systems should be employed in order to arrive at a dynamic concept of protest. In order to reflect the increasing complexity of society and the emergence of a stratified knowledge society, a multidimensional model of class that is structurally coupled to the concept of social movements is suggested.

复杂科学的研究对象:非线性复杂系统

首先从系统科学的困境入手，以还原论、经验论及“纯科学”为基础的经典科学遇到难题需要吸取系统论和人精神方面发展成为新的科学即复杂科学。复杂科学的兴起是物质、生命和人类社会进化的必然。复杂科学以非线性复杂系统为研究对象，与自然科学、社会科学和思维等科学相结合，在特定的观测、实验和理论条件下，能够得到创新。     

A Note on Knowledge Creation in Open-Source Software Projects: What Can We Learn from Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems?

We use the sociological systems theory proposed by Niklas Luhmann to complement a socially-oriented view of knowledge with the role of technical infrastructure in knowledge creation. We highlight the self-referential character of knowledge creation and draw upon illustrative examples from open-source software. We discuss why knowledge creation processes are often prone to breakdown and propose three conditions that may stabilize knowledge creation processes: perceptibility, systemic memory, and modularity.     

Enabling Political Legitimacy and Conceptual Integration for Climate Change Adaptation Research within an Agricultural Bureaucracy: a Systemic Inquiry

The value of using systems approaches, for situations framed as ‘super wicked’, is examined from the perspective of research managers and stakeholders in a state-based climate change adaptation (CCA) program (CliChAP). Polycentric drivers influencing the development of CCA research pre-2010 in Victoria, Australia are reflected on, using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to generate a boundary critique of CCA research as a human activity system. We experienced the complexity of purpose with research practices pulling in different directions, reflected on the appropriateness of agricultural bureaucracies’ historical new public management (NPM) practices, and focused on realigning management theory with emerging demands for adaptation research skills and capability. Our analysis conceptualised CliChAP as a subsystem, generating novelty in a wider system, concerned with socio-ecological co-evolution. Constraining/enabling conditions at the time dealing with political legitimacy and conceptual integration were observed as potential catalysts for innovation in research management towards better handling of uncertainty as a social process using systemic thinking in practice (StiP).

     

中国改革的系统论思考——社会和谐与社会悖论问题研究

社会悖论性问题是现实社会中面临的二难问题,是社会复杂性的显著表现,是影响社会和谐的深层次问题。可运用数理逻辑对逻辑悖论的研究成果和系统科学对复杂性的研究,分析社会悖论性问题的理论成因为怪圈结构,及现实成因为社会系统的"形式化";进而区分两类怪圈:优圈与劣圈。认为解决各种社会悖论性问题,在于改变我们传统的机械社会观、改革我们形式化的各种社会体制为优圈新结构,这将是社会和谐的基础及长效机制。     

Community Development and Renaissance Social Humanism: Some Lessons for Systems Science

Starting from the crisis in our communities—research has indicated it to be widely spread—the author explores the scientific tradition preceding the rise of modernism in order to draw out a more humane way of thinking that may help our contemporary societies. He discerns between two types of Renaissance humanism, one characterised by its cleverness, the other by its compassion and desire to restore dignity to the lives of people struggling to escape the clutches of medievalism. The father of the latter is Erasmus of Rotterdam and we follow the development of his conception of a social humanism as it branches out, through the work of his successors, into every scientific discipline, both natural and human. These disciplines are united by an embracing systemic idea of philosophy that unites the mind with the heart and which Erasmus called “Philosophia Christi”. We examine the two main pillars upon which this philosophy is built, love for our neighbour and education as the only legitimate instrument to change society, and the extraordinary impact it had on science and on communities living in the seventeenth century. We contrast this with the idea of power, the chosen instrument of modernity to transform society, and trace some of its tragic outcomes. We conclude by discussing the incorporation of an Erasmian type of social humanism into systems education and the future development of such programmes.     

Critical Systems Thinking on the Inefficiency in Post-Earthquake Relief: A Practice in Longmen Shan Fault Area

The Longmen Shan Fault area is one of the most active seismic zones in the world, has a relatively dense population and a low economic development level. Therefore, the provision of effective post-earthquake relief is very important for saving lives and restricting financial losses. However, providing urgent relief is a complex problem that requires efficient coordination between the organizations, and departments involved, and the specific environments, for the supply of urgent materials, energy and information. In practice, although there are sufficient relief supplies, because of the lack of systemic thinking, relief activities are often chaotic leading to inefficiencies and even increases in the damage and loss of life. In this study, a critical systems thinking approach is used to reflect on the system contexts, boundaries, structures and functions of the emergency relief systems. Using systems modeling we constructed simulations for different relief plans and their consequences, and a work shop of metasynthetic engineering was constructed to integrate the different views, knowledge and contexts. At the practical stage, after the model’s validity was verified from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake data, based on the 2013 Lushan earthquake simulation results, some recommendations are made to improve future post-disaster relief operations. Finally, the significance of critical systems thinking is demonstrated to ensure effective and efficient of post-earthquake relief. Some limitations and future research also have been presented in conclusion.     

从系统思想到系统实践的创新——钱学森系统研究的成就和贡献

本文介绍了钱学森从系统思想到系统实践创新过程所取得的成就和贡献,包括建立系统科学体系与系统认识论、系统综合集成方法体系与系统方法论以及系统工程与系统实践论.它们分别反映了钱学森系统科学思想、系统综合集成思想和系统实践思想也就是系统工程思想.这些成就具有重要的科学价值和实践意义以及现实意义.     

点与线的复制：基于网络思维的系统观

＂复制＂是一种普遍存在的现象,其表现为重复、拷贝或再造某种事物、结构或关系。这种现象在生命系统中尤为明显。通过把系统表征为由点（属性）和线（关系）所组成的网络,网络思维可以作为考察各种系统的认知工具。这种思维除了可以进行诸如还原、切出、背景化和层级化等多种表层操作以外,还具有更深层的点和线的复制。以对部分与整体、系统和环境的辨析为引导,本文首先简要回顾了鲁曼系统理论中的系统观发展史,然后以现有系统观的生命系统模式作为框架,提出把复制性作为网络思维的图式（基于点线符号的网络）及其考察的对象（系统）的基本特性,从而为利用网络思维考察各种系统提供新的理论依据和分析视角。