Posted by ""Richard Turnock"" <richardturnock@comcast.net> Thoughts about System Dynamics
I'm studying the reference posted by Martin Kunc: ""Path Dependence, Competition, and Succession in the Dynamics of Scientific Revolution. Organization"" Science, Vol. 10, No. 3, May-June 1999. This paper lead me to buy ""The Road Since Structure"" with essays from 1970 to 1993 by Thomas Kuhn, edited by Conant and Haugeland. Also, I've studied an outline of Kuhn's original book ""The Structure of Science Revolutions.""
I've read ""From the Ranch to System Dynamics: An Autobiography"" by Jay W. Forrester, D-4197-3 (edited January 2000) that I found on the Internet. Quoting from this last reference:
""It now seems clear that we are asking for a paradigm transition of the kind discussed by Kuhn. Such a transition tends to be strongly resisted both because it contradicts past assumptions and because it is difficult to understand from within the prior perspective. A pessimistic, but not entirely unrealistic, picture of paradigm revision suggests that adherents to an older paradigm are seldom converted; instead they are in time replaced. If then we hope for a time when managers and political leaders possess a more effective grasp of how their actions affect the future, what are we to do?""
Next Forrester discusses how ""the education system compartmentalizes knowledge"" and how subjects are ""taught as if they were inherently different from one another even though dynamic behavior in each rests on the same underlying concepts."" Forrester goes on to discuss the intervention into K12 schools he and others have sponsored. (I have participated in teaching teachers SD and agree with his discussion about the education system.)
Quoting from ""The Road Since Structure"", page 119, an essay titled ""The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science"", Kuhn says: "".I've suggested that the plausibility of this view depends upon abandoning the view of science as a single monolithic enterprise, bound by a unique method. Rather, it should be seen as a complex but unsystematic structure <my
emphasis> of distinct specialties or species, each responsible for a
different domain of phenomena, and each dedicated to changing current beliefs about its domain. For that enterprise, I suggest, the sciences, which must then be viewed as plural, can be seen to retain a very considerable authority.""
My Opinion
System dynamics is the systematic structure of all domain specialties that Kuhn denies exists. Practitioners in domain specialties deny this systematic structure exists. In addition, system dynamics is not just another Kunian science revolution as suggested by Forrester. System dynamics is the unifying theory of domain specialties and threatens the authority of each. Also, system dynamics threatens the funding for each domain specialty. In the future, system dynamics will have a higher priority in funding for education, science research, government spending and business expenses. The system dynamics revolution has the potential to initiate a paradigm shift in all domain specialties, not just one, including revolutions in the institutions of education and science.
Richard Turnock
Posted by ""Richard Turnock"" <richardturnock@comcast.net> posting date Sat, 7 Jan 2006 19:35:57 -0800
QUERY Scientific Revolution
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Richard Turnock richardturnock c
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Mike Fletcher mefletcher gmail.c
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QUERY Scientific Revolution
Posted by Mike Fletcher <mefletcher@gmail.com>
In comment and response to your post, I think it would be safer to say that System Dynamics spans disciplines rather than unifies them. The System Sciences in general tend to be more interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary as Russell Ackoff called it) so that its practice and conclusions, as you suggested, might challenge or confuse the practitioners of specific paradigms.
In some sense the argument regarding spanning or unifying nature of some ""meta-paradigm"" (possibly system dynamics) is not really useful, since there is only one science, with methodology that spans all sub-disciplines. As many others have commented, the splitting of science into ""fields"" is totally arbitrary - perhaps due to human need to boundary questions so that somewhat useful answers can actually be obtained.
System Dynamics, and many of the System Sciences, do in some sense, challenge long accepted paradigms of thought. For example, System Dynamics used the old analytic trick ""rephrasing the question"" when it examines systems by examining feedback, delay, and behavior-over-time rather an 'factors' or 'events.' This underlying perspective or frame of reference for understanding the world is largely at odds with how such things are normally taught. Friction probably also results from some fundamentally differing assumptions in regards to causality with underlie some different paradigms.
Another potential friction is Systems Dynamics and non linearity. It is not uncommon for some to question the rigor behind SD table functions - perhaps because it challenges some of the underlying assumptions of their particular Kuhnian paradigm. I'm not a mathematician, but as Holland comments: ""whole branches of mathematics are are devoted to finding linear functions that are reasonable approximations when linearity cannot be directly established."" This most likely resulted from two reason: to make the problem tractable and ""solvable"" (with assumptions stated or unstated), and the problems of computational power, which until recently was extremely limited.
Is the 30 years or so since computational power makes such attempts practical sufficient to overcome the ""learning delay"" of the scientific community in respects to the acceptance of the idea that examining inherently ""unsolvable"" non-linear systems is indeed Science? Using Max Planck's wry comment as a yardstick, 30 years is not long enough for old practitioners of 'outdated' ideas to die off in their entirety so that the 'brilliant' new theories can gain wide
acceptance. (In my mind there are no outdated ideas, only ideas that
have been updated, or in need of updating.)
These factors, and perhaps others I have not mentioned, might be causes for some of the Kuhnian ""paradigm resistance"" you speak of.
Kuhn's Work, (and Sterman's Paper and Model concerning Kuhn's
theories) are very interesting and necessary look at how humans can make what appears to be ""clean"" scientific methodology, messy. The ""messiness"" of Kuhn does, not in my view, detract from 'cleanliness' postulated by Popper in his writings on the Philosophy of Science, even though their views seem to be in direct opposition. But as Heraclitus pointed out, that which opposes provides benefit. While Kuhn may discuss science as it actually practiced, Popper (and others over the last few 1000 years) have discussed how is should be practiced. Thus Popper and Kuhn are both right, and both wrong depending on ones frame of reference.
The shift you mention towards being cross-disciplinary is laudable, but unlikely, because there are powerful reinforcing loops for practitioners to know ""more and more about less and less"" (as the saying goes) despite the fact that most real breakthroughs tend to cross discipline boundaries. (Not to say that no useful work cannot be within ""normal science"" as Kuhn defined it.) The drive towards being more effective by being more cross-disciplinary is in my (perhaps pessimistic view) currently a weak balancing loop which only occasionally kicks in.
Michael Fletcher
Posted by Mike Fletcher <mefletcher@gmail.com>
posting date Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:40:24 -0500
In comment and response to your post, I think it would be safer to say that System Dynamics spans disciplines rather than unifies them. The System Sciences in general tend to be more interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary as Russell Ackoff called it) so that its practice and conclusions, as you suggested, might challenge or confuse the practitioners of specific paradigms.
In some sense the argument regarding spanning or unifying nature of some ""meta-paradigm"" (possibly system dynamics) is not really useful, since there is only one science, with methodology that spans all sub-disciplines. As many others have commented, the splitting of science into ""fields"" is totally arbitrary - perhaps due to human need to boundary questions so that somewhat useful answers can actually be obtained.
System Dynamics, and many of the System Sciences, do in some sense, challenge long accepted paradigms of thought. For example, System Dynamics used the old analytic trick ""rephrasing the question"" when it examines systems by examining feedback, delay, and behavior-over-time rather an 'factors' or 'events.' This underlying perspective or frame of reference for understanding the world is largely at odds with how such things are normally taught. Friction probably also results from some fundamentally differing assumptions in regards to causality with underlie some different paradigms.
Another potential friction is Systems Dynamics and non linearity. It is not uncommon for some to question the rigor behind SD table functions - perhaps because it challenges some of the underlying assumptions of their particular Kuhnian paradigm. I'm not a mathematician, but as Holland comments: ""whole branches of mathematics are are devoted to finding linear functions that are reasonable approximations when linearity cannot be directly established."" This most likely resulted from two reason: to make the problem tractable and ""solvable"" (with assumptions stated or unstated), and the problems of computational power, which until recently was extremely limited.
Is the 30 years or so since computational power makes such attempts practical sufficient to overcome the ""learning delay"" of the scientific community in respects to the acceptance of the idea that examining inherently ""unsolvable"" non-linear systems is indeed Science? Using Max Planck's wry comment as a yardstick, 30 years is not long enough for old practitioners of 'outdated' ideas to die off in their entirety so that the 'brilliant' new theories can gain wide
acceptance. (In my mind there are no outdated ideas, only ideas that
have been updated, or in need of updating.)
These factors, and perhaps others I have not mentioned, might be causes for some of the Kuhnian ""paradigm resistance"" you speak of.
Kuhn's Work, (and Sterman's Paper and Model concerning Kuhn's
theories) are very interesting and necessary look at how humans can make what appears to be ""clean"" scientific methodology, messy. The ""messiness"" of Kuhn does, not in my view, detract from 'cleanliness' postulated by Popper in his writings on the Philosophy of Science, even though their views seem to be in direct opposition. But as Heraclitus pointed out, that which opposes provides benefit. While Kuhn may discuss science as it actually practiced, Popper (and others over the last few 1000 years) have discussed how is should be practiced. Thus Popper and Kuhn are both right, and both wrong depending on ones frame of reference.
The shift you mention towards being cross-disciplinary is laudable, but unlikely, because there are powerful reinforcing loops for practitioners to know ""more and more about less and less"" (as the saying goes) despite the fact that most real breakthroughs tend to cross discipline boundaries. (Not to say that no useful work cannot be within ""normal science"" as Kuhn defined it.) The drive towards being more effective by being more cross-disciplinary is in my (perhaps pessimistic view) currently a weak balancing loop which only occasionally kicks in.
Michael Fletcher
Posted by Mike Fletcher <mefletcher@gmail.com>
posting date Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:40:24 -0500