[Kb-complexity] Scientific Method --> Kant --> Systems Theories...?

[Carol Webb <carolwebb75@yahoo.com>]

Dear All

Continuing the thread of conversation on systems
thinking etc, for me I have to go back and consider
all this in the light of 'where we came from'
theoretically speaking, and this includes considering
again what we think we understand by rationality, the
scientific method, Kant, systems thinking and theories
from there, and then how you integrate this with
organisational theory and an understanding of
complexity science.

The concept of ?rationality? was central to the
scientific method, which arose in the context of the
?scientific revolution? in the 17th Century backlash
against religious doctrine and dogma, which had, until
then, dominated as the major resource for
understanding the laws of nature. The scientific
method had particular implications for the sciences of
physics, astronomy, and philosophy, which then began
to emphasise the role of the individual scientist in a
capacity of objective observer, formulating and
testing what were predominantly causal hypotheses on
the governing laws of nature. Divergent schools of
thought based on differing epistemological and
ontological perspectives arose out of this endeavour.
These included dogmatic rationalism, or, the realist
scientific perspective, and, radical scepticism. In
dogmatic rationalism, or, the realist scientific
perspective, reasoning individuals were seen to be
able to formulate hypotheses based on the nature of an
existing external reality that can be reliably
observed as truth. This was understood to be perceived
through the mind, the body, and its senses. In radical
scepticism, proponents suggested that all knowledge
was relative and unreliable because the mind was held
to impose an order of its own on the sensations coming
from the external real world through a series of
accidental, repeat connections. In this sense,
intelligibility was perceived as reflecting the habits
of mind rather than the nature of reality. This
pointed to the constructed, relative and plural nature
of accounts of the world in which there is no truth,
only many different stories of equal worth (Stacey,
2003a). 

Kant then bridged these two perspectives through the
dualistic postulation of his transcendental idealism
in which he held that while we know what we know
through sensations coming from the real world ? or,
that we know reality through the capacity of the mind,
the mind also imposes some kind of order on this sense
data so that we cannot know reality in a direct manner
? or, the categories through which we know are given
outside our direct experiences. This dualistic
postulation, Stacey (2003a) argues, justified the
scientific method and enabled Kant to develop a
systems theory in which the development of nature
could be explained with a theory of formative
causality, and human action could be explained with
rationalist causality. In later systems theories,
reports Stacey, individuals became conceptually
designated as parts in a system called a group,
organisation, or society, where systemic phenomena had
to be explained from the perspective of an individual
outside the system ? a system being a whole separated
by a boundary from other systems, with an inside and
an outside. Retrospectively, this systemic perspective
has been associated with a mechanistic metaphor
(Hatch, 1997), complementary with reductionist
science, where a unit of analysis, or phenomena of
interest, was seen as the sum of its parts, and where
the focus was on the nature of the part rather than on
the interactions between them (Stacey, 2003a). How
this perspective made its way into recent
organisational and management theory is seen in terms
of developments that took place in science in general
and in scientific management in particular over the
course of the 20th century.

The mechanistic metaphor and reductionist approach was
embraced by  early proponents of scientific management
(Taylor, 1911; Fayol, 1916). Scientific management
inherited the same philosophical assumptions as the
scientific method and transferred them to the
workplace so that leaders and managers were meant to
stand in control as objective observers outside the
immediate system, which could be represented by the
mechanistic metaphor in that the organisation was seen
as a machine and the employees parts of that machine
(Hatch, 1997). 

The three main systemic theory strands - general
systems theory (Boulding, 1956; von Bertalanffy,
1968), cybernetics (Ashby, 1945; Ashby, 1952; Ashby,
1956; Beer, 1979; Beer, 1981; Wiener, 1948), and
systems dynamics (Forrester, 1958; Forrester, 1961;
Forrester, 1969; Goodwin, 1951; Philips, 1950; Tustin,
1953) - developed over the course of the 20th Century
and as the whole system came to be understood as more
than the sum of the parts, attention was also placed
on the interaction of subsystems in the way they
formed systems, and in the way systems formed
suprasystems (Stacey, 2003a). 

These views were adopted and integrated into
organisational theory.

I then personally see Complexity Science (as a broad
label), as presenting a dilemma. On the one hand it
offers another set of theory which is coherent with
systems theories, but on the other hand it also makes
you stop and question them. 

I resolve this by accepting some ideas presented by
the theory of complex adaptive systems, but then
looking at the principles which stem from there (such
as self-organisation and emergence, edge of chaos,
diversity, etc etc), and trying to make sense of their
meaning and implications somehow according to the way
Stacey proposes in his complex responsive processes of
relating (CRPR). CRPR isn't a systems based theory,
it's a process based theory, based on a temporal
metaphor, not a spatial one. Stacey argues that this
resolves problems with boundaries (which don't exist
in 'reality') between social and individual.

It's my feeling that this view offers a lot of food
for thought and really challenges the way a lot of us
perceive complexity science and then what it means. 

All comments welcome! Looking forward to developing
this conversation further...

Best wishes, Carol


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