Posts on Cybernetics and Systems Theory
Unedited posts from archives of CSG-L (see INTROCSG.NET):
Posts on CSGnet comment on cybernetics from time to time. Note thespirited thread kicked off by Rick Marken's post: Systems theory(940219.1330).
Note also discussion of Albus in the thread: NEWCOMER.002.
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Date: Sun Mar 22, 1992 2:24 pm PST
Subject: Radio Control System
[from Gary Cziko 920322.1550]
I was recently reading Bill Powers "The Cybernetic Revolution inPsychology" in _Living Control Systems_ and took note of hisobservation:
"Not many [cyberneticists] who led that movement [cybernetics] had everdesigned and built a control system, or cursed and sweated to make it workproperly, or experienced any extended personal interactions with a workingcontrol system; the interactions tended far more to be between cyberneticistand block diagram." (p. 104).
While I don't think that I will ever design a control system or curse tomake one work, I couldn't help noticing a "digital proportional radio controlsystem" for $49 in a local hobby shop and so figured that this might be a wayfor me to at least interact with one (an artificial one, I mean; I already havelots of experience with the living kind).
This is a Hitec "Challenger 260" 2-channelsystem that includes a pistol grip transmitter (reference level manipulator)and receiver connected to two servomechanisms (it is made for controlling speedand direction of model powered boats and cars). Pulling the trigger and turningthe wheel on the transmitter move wheels on the two servos. I replaced thewheels with two four-leggedspiders that came with the kit and attached rubber bands to one arm oneach.
With either the transmitter or receiver turned off, one can quite move thespiders for a total range of about 90 degrees (it's a bit stiff and I don'tknow how "good" this is for the servos). But with the both transmitter andreceiver on, they really fight to respect their position reference levels. Youcan feel them vibrate and fight back when you try to disturb then. While it ISpossible to overpower them, I am quite impressed at how strong and stubborn thetwo little servos really are--themore you try to push them around, the more they push right back at you (verymuch like most people I know!).
The rubber band is a nice way to add disturbances. I can ask someone topull the rubber band hard any which way and it makes virtually no difference tothe position or pattern of movement that I am sending with the transmitter.This is a very nice demonstration of why controlling reference levels is theway to go. I let the servo control system worry about the rubber band disturberand it makes no difference to me, the upper level reference signalsupplier.
While Powers's and Marken's computer demos are great, there is something tobe said for the real physical interaction that these servos provide. Also aneasy way to give my students hand-onartificial control system experience. Highly recommended.--Gary
P.S. My 10-year-oldson was also impressed, but made it clear to me that he would be much moreimpressed if the system were installed inside a racing car or boat! I'll see ifI can stall him with a line-trackingrobot (follows dark lines on white surfaces by controlling for low infraredreflection) for about $50 that I ordered today from the new Edmund Scientificcatalog.
Gary A. Cziko
Date: Thu Mar 26, 1992 10:14 am PST
Subject: Meditations on Open Loops
[From Rick Marken (920326 9:00)]
I see this morning that there is a long post about open loop behavior fromBill Powers. I haven't read it yet. I decided to post something I wrote lastnight and make a fool of myself before reading what Bill has to say:
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After finishing a personal reply to Martin Taylor I started to ruminateabout open loop control (again). The ruminations began with an obviousobservation (that I made in my note to Martin). Open loop means NO LOOP. Thereis a problem with the expression OPEN LOOP: it implies that LOOPS are commonand sometimes they are OPEN. I don't like that. I think what is common (inscience and in the universe) is cause-effect. That is, NO LOOP. This is what the term OPEN LOOP really refers to; situationswhere one or more variables have an effect on one or more other variables etc.where none of the variables have an effect on themselves (via any of the othervariables). What is less common is where a variable is the start of a chain ofcause effect where the last effect in the chain is the cause of variations inthe variable in the first part of the chain --a causal LOOP. When this happens (and in the universe it is apparently rare)the circle of causes and effects has very low gain; cause1 = f(cause1) where fmakes the effect of cause 1 on itself quite small. What was amazing was thedevelopment of LOOPS that not only have VERY HIGH GAIN but also have NEGATIVEGAIN. So far the only loops of this kind that we know about exist on earth.The search for intelligent life in the universe is a search for the existenceof other high gain, negative feedback loops.
So OPEN LOOP behavior is really a verbal trick. It is an attempt to give aLIFE SCIENCES-like name to processes that have been studied in the natural sciences fordecades. The idea that OPEN LOOP processes can be responsible for the behaviorof living systems (a behavior we refer to as CONTROL) is exactly the same assaying that causal variables (like gravitational force) can be responsible forthe "purposeful behavior" of a leaf as it wafts to the ground. Aristotle waslaughed out of the gym for claiming that leafs "seek their natural place" onthe ground. But now, 2500 yrs later, life scientists are being celebrated forexplaining purposeful behavior with cause -effect models --ie. physics models. Go figure.
William T. Powers noticed a "fact of life" that should, perhaps, have beenobvious to others, given the maturity of control theory as a discipline at thetime of his observation. But no one else in the life sciences noticed (or waswilling to notice) this fact: when there is high gain, negative feedback fromthe output to the input of a system, then cause-effectmodels are no longer appropriate. Powers also showed why negative feedbacksystems would look like cause-effectsystems --the kind that people assumed they were all along.
There was a BIG PROBLEM with this apparently simple discovery. It was madein the 1960s, about the time that the life sciences in general, and thebehavioral sciences in particular, were settled comfortably into a life ofstudying cause-effectrelationships using a statistical/experimental paradigm bequeathed topsychology by R. A. Fisher. What Powers found was that negative feedback madethis entire approach irrelevant; it was, quite frankly, ALL WRONG. Who wouldbelieve this? It turned out that nobody would (except for a few degeneratesfrom the midwest--likeme). Some people did like Powers' language --hearing the strains of a new approach to that good ol' cybernetics. But many(most?) of those who liked Powers' control theory (other than the crazydegenerates) kept thinking that it could not really mean what it meant --that the whole cause-effectkit and caboodle of psychology had to go. That was too rough. There had to besomething good left in all that 100 plus years of work by so many smart,ambitious people. So they tried to preserve what they could --and, of course, that meant that they could not get the point of control theory.The prime example of this is the Carver/Scheier approach to controltheory.
But the fact of the matter is that when there is negative feedback involvedin the relationship between an organism and its environment then cause effectlaws are no longer applicable, They are not partially applicable, sometimesapplicable or sort of applicable. They are WRONG. EVERYTHING that psychologythought it knew would have to GO because it was all based on the assumptionthat behavior was the last step in a cause effect process. The fact thatoutputs effect inputs WAS noticed by classical psychology but its existence wasthought of as a minor nit. It was just an extra relationship to be considered --sure, said the psychologists, we know that "feedback" is important. But a lotof behavior is OPEN LOOP, they said --thus inventing a term that was to haunt control theorists to this day. Itsuggested that psychologists knew there were LOOPS in behavior --but it said the existence of these LOOPS was not really THAT important, and,besides, the LOOPS are usually OPEN anyway.
The fact is, there is no other way to go. I don't want to be a radical or"religious zealot" as it appears I am perceived to be. But the uncomfortablereality is that it just can't work both ways --if organisms are negative feedback control systems, controlling perceptualvariables relative to internally specified reference signals, then all the"facts" in your intro psych book are not facts at all. They are, well,illusions that result from looking at a control systems as cause effectsystems. They are illusions in the same sense that it is an illusion to look ata falling leaf or rising steam as examples of purposeful behavior.
Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Regards Rick
Date: Wed Nov 11, 1992 11:36 am PST
Subject: Second Order Cybernetics
[From Bill Powers (921111.0900)]
RE: Carver & Scheier and Vallacher: all of these people started theirwriting about control theory after learning about my work and discussing itwith me. They understand it to a certain degree, but are trying to merge itinto existing methodologies and concepts. This has never succeeded, and they donot succeed, either. I have invited Carver & Scheier to meetings of theCSG, but they have been too busy to come.
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RE: Second order cybernetics etc.
Margaret Mead suggested second-ordercybernetics --applying cybernetic concepts to cyberneticists, or "Cybernetics of Cybernetics"--at the first annual symposium of the American Society for Cybernetics. Theproceedings, published in 1968, nowhere mention the date or location of thissymposium, but it must have occurred before 1968. They appear in _PurposiveSystems_, edited by von Foerster, White, Peterson, and Russell, and publishedby Spartan Books (1968). At this time my work on what is now called PCT hadbeen in progress for 15 years, but it is not mentioned.
In this field Mead was a dilettante as were many of the others at thesymposium. She was just trying to get one-upon all these cyberneticists, whom she didn't understand at all. It was in thisvolume (p. 26) that the neurologist Ralph W. Gerard said "I have alwaysregarded a drop of water sliding down a slightly inclined plane as showing allthe manifestations of purposeful behavior." "Always," I presume, meant bothbefore and after learning about cybernetics, sufficient proof to me that Gerardknew nothing about purpose and what cybernetics had to say about it (or mighthave had to say). At some time or other, Gerard became a President of the ASCas a reward, I suppose, for his ignorance.
Cyberneticists have been floating upward into the cloudy realms ofphilosophy ever since, when they have not been promoting a technocracy orsupporting Marxist revolutions by implementing expensive and unworkable centralcomputer control of the economy. Of control theory they would know essentiallynothing, were it not for Cliff Joslyn's recent work. I spent many yearsattending cybernetics meetings and even giving the occasional paper, but mymessage was generally received with hostility or simply ignored. Only a fewpeople, like Heinz von Foerster, gave me any support. All the support fadedaway when it was realized that I did not buy Ashby's conclusions about controltheory, that I thought Maturana was confused, and that I thought control theorywas more important than recursive self-computationsof awareness.
For the most part there is nothing of interest to me going on incybernetics.
Best to all, Bill P.
Date: Wed Nov 11, 1992 3:46 pm PST
Subject: MESSAGE FROM MARY
[from Mary Powers 921111] Jixuan Hu:
You can tell that Bill Powers is pretty disenchanted with the ASC.Actually, the Control Systems Group was, in 1983 and 1984, a group within theASC, but after two meetings in which we found we were only talking to eachother, we began to meet independently. Some of us attended further ASCmeetings, and you might want to look up The Conference Workbook for "Texts inCybernetics" for the ASC meeting in Felton, California if you want to compareGlassersfeld, Maturana, and Powers. The Powers text from that book is alsoreprinted in Living Control Systems I. But you should read his Behavior: thecontrol of perception.
The ASC deals in abstract generalizations, and PCT is concerned withmodelling organization. They both are founded on Wiener's book, which by theway is about control and communication, not communication and control. Butcybernetics has always downplayed control, while PCT considers itfundamental.
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Rick:
> You can't tell what people are doing by watching what they aredoing.
No indeedy. You apply the Test for the Controlled Quantity. I ran across anice quote about the Test. Almost 3 centuries old.
Search then the ruling passion; there alone
The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent, and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.
This clue once found unravels all the rest.
Alexander Pope, 1688-1744
Happy unravelling! Mary P.
Date: Sat Feb 19, 1994 2:44 pm PST
Subject: Systems theory
[From Rick Marken (940219.1330)] Bill Powers (940219.0845 MST)
> Term like "self-aware","self-controlling,"and "self-tuning"create a titillating picture of some sort of bootstrap process. But when itcomes down to modeling such systems, there is no bootstrap process. It alwayscomes down to one system acting on a different system.
Yes indeedy.
You might add "self organizing" to the list as well; this is surely theking of the "self" prefixed pseudo-scienceterms of the "systems theory" gurus --the one's who are after the real "deep understanding" of life. I know this nowbecause I have seen the enemy (of PCT) and it is NOT S-Rbehaviorism. It is "systems theory".
Last night, on the recommendation of the teacher of our extension class on"Mythology in literature", we rented a movie called "Mindwalk". He didn't saymuch about it except that it's a good example of a modern approach todeveloping a mythology.
It was a revelation! I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to knowexactly what pseudo science is and what PCT is NOT. As a movie, it's a piece ofdreck but as a tutorial on "new age" science (names like Priggione, Bateson andMaturana are mentioned) it's definitely worth seeing. It has a great 3 personcast (led by Liv Ullman), a great location (Mt. Saint Michel) and a horriblescreenplay. It is based on "The Turning Point" by Fritjof Capra (sp?) who alsocontributed to the screenplay. It's sort of a "My dinner with Andre" forphysics mystics.
Liv Ullman plays a retired physicist who spends her time meditating at Mt.Saint Michel about the non-mechanisticimplications of modern physics. She runs into these two guys, one anunsuccessful presidential candidate and the other his campaign manager, andthey discuss the importance of Ullman's new world view --which she calls "systems theory".
Systems theory goes beyond the crass clockwork "mechanism" of Newton'sphysics. The motivation for Liv's abandonment of classical physics seems to belittle more than the fact that atoms are mainly made of NOTHING while thingsobviously feel like SOMETHING (why this presents a bigger problem than the factthat the world doesn't look like light particles --as Newton surmised long ago--is beyond me). Liv solves the "NOTHING IN ATOMS" problem with "systemstheory":the solidity of experience comes out of INTERDEPENDENCE, HOLISM, SELF-ORGANIZATIONand other SYSTEMS stuff like that. There seem to be two central tenets ofsystem theory: one is the idea that the world is no longer a clockworkmechanism but a SELF ORGANIZING system: the second is INTERDEPENDENCE of allthings on all other things (I could see why GAIA and Chaos fans would bewelcomed into the temple of systems theory) . [Irrelevant side note:I wasreminded recently of the fact that, in an old TV show --forgot which one --the good guys worked for CONTROL against the bad guys who worked for CHAOS;sounds like CSG-Lto me].
I had a bit of an epiphany as I watched this movie (which came out in1991). I suddenly realized from whence came all these "hot" movements inpsychology: dynamic systems, non-linearsystems, artificial life, chaotic attractors, etc etc. They all come out of theSYSTEMS THEORY silliness that these poor actors had to discuss in the movie.Some people must take this stuff seriously --seriously enough to put up the money to make a movie (even this low budgetpuppy must have come in over $1,000,000 --if only for the film --although it doesn't look like they wasted film on a lot of "takes"; the actorsprobably did it for free; they looked like they might be "believers").
While watching the movie I also realized that systems theory is a drug farmore insidious than S-Ror cognitive psychology. Systems theory will lure you in with its marshmallow-brainedprose, impress you with a few physics phacts, seduce you with its concern forpeople and the environment and, finally, turn you to stone with its sheervapidity. The bad news for PCT is that apparently some people are mistaking PCTfor systems theory or vice versa. It made me think that maybe we should put awarning label at the top of the intro to CSG list. The warning label could looklike this:
Warning: The control systems group has determined that frequent use of theword "self-organizing"as a description of a real phenomenon can be hazardous to your mental health.If the word "self organizing" makes any sense to you, discontinue useimmediately. If symptoms persist, join CSG-Land be sure to introduce yourself as follows: "Hi. My name is ____ and I'm asystems theorist".
Best Rick
Date: Sun Feb 20, 1994 2:36 pm PST
Subject: Re: Systems theory
[From Cliff Joslyn 940220] From Rick Marken (940219.1330)
Well. I'm not sure what to say about this. It's such a collection ofvitriolic ad hominems that it's difficult to know just how to respond. A pointby point rebuttal? It's hard to see where the specific points are. Acorresponding abusive broadside? That's not my style, and I want to elevate theconversation. So I'll try to muddle through as best I can.
Let me also quickly say that while I am highly critical of Rick's comments,I have generally found his approach to PCT a very wise one (I cite "The Natureof Behavior" often). So nothing personal, Rick.
Now on with the show.
I guess I first have some questions for Rick, namely, does your knowledgeof Systems Theory (ST) extend beyond "Mindwalk"?
If so, then please make your SPECIFIC criticisms of the likes of Bateson,von Bertallanfy, Ashby, Klir, Miller, Bunge, Checkland, Gaines, Goguen, Rosen,Mesarovic, Forrester, Boulding (in this response I dare not add Powers to thatlist, but you can bet your ass I would anywhere else!), or anyone else you careto throw up as a paragon of ST stupidity. What about Klir's new _Factes ofSystems Science_ as a point of departure? (By the way, you share my sympathyabout Maturana).
If not, then I would politely suggest that judging Systems Theory by"Mindwalk" (which I have seen) would be like judging PCT by"Neuromancer".
On a purely selfish basis, I think PCT has little to gain by attacking ST,especially in such a stupid way (the attack is stupid, Rick, not you). You riskalienating even more people than you already have with the appearance ofideological intransigence (note I said the APPEARANCE of intransigence). To mymind, the dual fields of ST and Cybernetics together form the crucial basis foreverything in PCT, and conversely PCT represents the hope for a full floweringthat ST and Cybernetics have promised for decades, but have never come close tofulfilling (would that they recognized this). You have few enough friends outthere to go looking for any more enemies.
There has been a troubled history between the PCT and Cyberneticscommunities, and very little contact between PCT and ST. This situation is tonone of their advantages. Of course ST and Cybernetics have many problems, andsome of Rick's points have basis in truth. From what I understand (I wasn'taround) the cybernetics/PCT break was helped along considerably by theCyberneticians. And it's easy to slam the vapid cliches common in the STcommunity (the whole is more than the sum of the parts, everything is connectedto everything else, yeah, yeah, yeah) and their general level of scientificdiscourse, which is far below the levels of quality that should be tolerated(and many of us ST people recognize this).
But what we need is MORE cross-contactand fertilization, a coming together and synthesis, a careful selection of ourbest work, and not these kind of (apparently) ignorant broad attacks. What areyou saying, Rick: ST is WRONG? It has NOTHING of value to say? It has notinformed PCT AT ALL? Be specific, man, and get real!
> I suddenly realized from whence came all these "hot" movements inpsychology: dynamic systems, non-linearsystems, artificial life, chaotic attractors, etc etc. They all come out of theSYSTEMS THEORY
I'm shocked! You mean to tell me that my years of railing AGAINST thepurveyors of the new "complexity-based"sciences for IGNORING ST have been COMPLETELY misguided?
> Systems theory will lure you in with its marshmallow-brainedprose, impress you with a few physics phacts, seduce you with its concern forpeople and the environment and, finally, turn you to stone with its sheervapidity.
Ad hominem. I don't defend all the bad STists out there. I suspect thesignal to noise ratio in ST is lower than, say, chemistry (but maybe not lowerthan psychology?). But for every quote you offer to support your view, I'llmatch it with a quote that is thoughtful, cogent, well-reasoned,and consistent with (if not based from) empirical observations.
> The bad news for PCT is that apparently some people are mistaking PCTfor systems theory or vice versa.
And exactly who would that be? Come on, Rick, let's get above these kindsof cheap shots.
> If symptoms persist, join CSG-Land be sure to introduce yourself as follows: "Hi. My name is ____ and I'm asystems theorist".
Hi. My name is Cliff Joslyn, and I'm a systems theorist. I am also aCybernetician, and I am TRYING to be a Powers' Control Theorist(PCTist).
Rick: I'm determined to help you crawl out of the mud and enter a REALdebate. Accept my challenge: my next posting is a definition of ST by FrancisHeylighen and myself for the upcoming Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Doesit reflect your understanding of ST? If not, why not? If so, how is itinconsistent or in conflict with PCT?
I also have a draft of a paper "Semantic Control Systems", which Bill hasseen, which draws the threads of ST, Cybernetics, Semiotics, and PCT together.If you would like I can make it publicly available.
> [Irrelevant side note:I was reminded recently of the fact that, in anold TV show --forgot which one --the good guys worked for CONTROL against the bad guys who worked for CHAOS;sounds like CSG-Lto me].
That's Get Smart.
Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large
Date: Sun Feb 20, 1994 2:37 pm PST
Subject: For Rick: Definition of Systems Theory
Heylighen, Francis and Joslyn, Cliff: (1993) ``Systems Theory'', in:Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. R. Audi, Cambridge U. Press, CambridgeMA, to appear
Systems Theory [Including Systems Analysis]: the transdisciplinary study ofthe abstract ORGANIZATION of phenomena, independent of their substance, type,or spatial or temporal scale of existence. It investigates both the principlescommon to all complex entities, and the (usually mathematical) MODELS which canbe used to describe them.
Systems theory was proposed in the 1940's by the biologist Ludwig vonBertalanfy (anthology: General Systems Theory, 1968), and furthered by RossAshby (Introduction to Cybernetics, 1956). von Bertlanffy was both reactingagainst REDUCTIONISM and attempting to revive the UNITY OF SCIENCE. Heemphasized that real systems are open to, and interact with, theirenvironments, and that they can acquire qualitatively new properties throughEMERGENCE, resulting in continual EVOLUTION. Rather than reducing an entity(e.g. the human body) to the properties of its parts or elements (e.g. organsor cells), systems theory focuses on the arrangement of and RELATIONS betweenthe parts which connect them into a whole (cf. HOLISM). This particularORGANIZATION determines a SYSTEM, which is independent of the concretesubstance of the elements (e.g. particles, cells, transistors, people, etc).Thus, the same concepts and principles of organization underlie the differentdisciplines (physics, biology, technology, sociology, etc.), providing a basisfor their unification. Systems concepts include: system-environmentBOUNDARY, INPUT, OUTPUT, PROCESS, STATE, HIERARCHY, GOAL-DIRECTEDNESS,and INFORMATION.
The developments of systems theory are diverse (Klir, Facets of SystemsScience, 1991), including conceptual foundations and philosophy (e.g. thephilosophies of Bunge, Bahm and Laszlo); mathematical modeling and INFORMATIONTHEORY (e.g. the work of Mesarovic and Klir); and practical applications.Mathematical systems theory arose from the development of isomorphies betweenthe models of electrical circuits and other systems. Applications includeengineering, computing, ecology, management, and family psychotherapy. Systemsanalysis, developed independently of systems theory, applies systems principlesto aid a decision-makerwith problems of identifying, reconstructing, optimizing, and controlling asystem (usually a socio-technicalorganization), while taking into account multiple objectives, constraints andresources. It aims to specify possible courses of action, together with theirrisks, costs and benefits. Systems theory is closely connected to CYBERNETICS,and also to SYSTEM DYNAMICS, which models changes in a NETWORK of coupledvariables (e.g. the "world dynamics" models of Jay Forrester and the Club ofRome). Related ideas are used in the emerging "sciences of COMPLEXITY",studying SELFORGANIZATION and heterogeneous networks of interacting actors, andassociated domains such as FAR-FROM-EQUILIBRIUMTHERMODYNAMICS, CHAOTIC DYNAMICS, ARTIFICIAL LIFE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE,NEURAL NETWORKS, and computer MODELING AND SIMULATION.
Date: Mon Feb 21, 1994 11:17 am PST
Subject: Hi Cliff!, absolute perception
[From Rick Marken (940221.1030)] Cliff Joslyn (940220) --
> So nothing personal, Rick.
No problem. I suppose it's impossible to avoid the perception of ad hominumwhen the ideas one finds infuriating are being created and espoused byhominids. But I try to separate (in my own mind, at least) the dancer from thedance.
> does your knowledge of Systems Theory (ST) extend beyond"Mindwalk"?
Yes and no. I have had both scholarly and non-scholarlyencounters with what I would now call "systems theorists". It's obviously not acoherent movement. The movie was interesting only because it allowed me to givea single name to a plethora of concepts that have turned up in thepsychological (and CSG-L)literature in the last decade or so.
> If so, then please make your SPECIFIC criticisms of the likes ofBateson, von Bertallanfy, Ashby, Klir, Miller, Bunge, Checkland, Gaines,Goguen, Rosen, Mesarovic, Forrester, Boulding
I am not familiar with most of them. Powers gave a nice critique of Ashbysome time ago. All I can say is that if any of these people were doing anythingrelated to understanding the nature of living systems as perceptual controlsystems we would know about their work and they (if they are currently living)would be using ours.
> On a purely selfish basis, I think PCT has little to gain by attackingST, especially in such a stupid way (the attack is stupid, Rick, notyou).
All that I was "attacking" were the silly ideas that the movie identifiedas part of "systems theory" --particularly "self-organization".As Bill Powers pointed out in the post to which I was responding, terms like"self organization" don't make any sense to people who understand both Englishand control modelling.
> You risk alienating even more people than you already have with theappearance of ideological intransigence (note I said the APPEARANCE ofintransigence).
It is no appearance. I am as intransigent as they get when it comes to PCT.I see no need to seek agreement between PCT and other approaches tounderstanding life when there is none and when the other approaches contributenothing (except possibly obscurantism) to our understanding of purposefulbehavior. I have no interest in "selling" PCT to anyone. People who have"bought" PCT have almost always bought it for the wrong reason. I know very fewpeople who actually understand and contribute to PCT. But I know that the fewpeople who do understand PCT will maintain their "loyalty" to it. The onlything that will change their (and my) commitment to PCT is some extraordinarydiscovery that reveals some fundamental assumption of the model to be false. Ialso know plenty of people who like PCT but don't really understand it. Theseare the people who are likely to be "driven away" by my intransigence. If thisis enough to drive people away from PCT (or to keep them from joining in) thenI say "hooray"; I have done my job. I don't give a fat rat's ass whether peoplelike Glasser, Carver and Scheier, Hyland, etc etc stay interested in PCT. Idon't want to work with people who deal with PCT as a religion. I don't minddriving away people who are in PCT because it "sounds good" or because it seemsto support one or another of their existing prejudices. I'm really not tryingto drive people away but if that occurs as a side effect of my efforts topresent an accurate representation of PCT that --again--HOORAY!
Bill and Mary Powers STRONGLY disagree with me about this, I think. Andthey might write in and _ad_ my _hominum_. That's fine with me. They cancriticize me all they like --and I will feel hurt and despondent at being revealed as an intransigent meany --but their intransigent niceness will NOT drive me from PCT. I didn't get intoPCT because Bill Powers is one of the sweetest people in the world or becauseMary is one of the wisest and kindest. I got into it because it happens to betrue that the behavior of living organisms is the control of perception. I alsobelieve (personally) that understanding PCT --in detail --can make things a LOT better for individuals and their social life. But I thinkthings will get better only if we get the science right. Political compromisedoesn't work in PCT.
> You have few enough friends out there to go looking for any moreenemies.
I am looking for fellow understanders. Friends I can do without (in termsof PCT). If you want to see what happens to non-understanding"friends" of PCT, read any book by W. Glasser, a past "friend" of PCT. I willpost my review of his most recent book later today.
We listen when people really have something to contribute. Just becausepeople THINK they have something to contribute, however, doesn't mean that theydo. We didn't jump on feedforward because it's not "doctrinal PCT". We jumpedon it because 1) there was no evidence for it's existence and 2) it made nocontribution to the model. It would have been nicer and more politicallycorrect to get all excited about feedforward. We could also probably get a lotmore "fans" if we showed how PCT supported or was supported by informationtheory, self -organizing systems, fuzzy logic systems or whatever. I'm just not interested inpolitically correct PCT --sorry.
> There has been a troubled history between the PCT and Cyberneticscommunities, and very little contact between PCT and ST.
The "trouble" was only that cyberneticists were not interested in PCTscience AT ALL. We brought our wares to the conferences and we were ignoredand, in one case I recall, scoffed at. It seemed like PCT should have been ofenormous interest to cyberneticians --in fact, we thought PCT WAS cybernetics --but I guess it wasn't "deep" enough.
> This situation is to none of their advantages.
PCT is not a political position. Even though we don't have the people(possibly ten in the world understand it) we have the data and the workingmodels. If that's nothing (and apparently that IS next to nothing to somepeople who want DEEP understanding) then there is nothing we can do about it.Whether there are ever ANY people around who understand PCT or not, livingorganisms will ALWAYS be perceptual control systems. That fact will live beyondmy "political incorrectness".
> But what we need is MORE cross-contactand fertilization, a coming together and synthesis, a careful selection of ourbest work, and not these kind of (apparently) ignorant broad attacks.
This is a political approach to understanding living systems. In fact, whatwe need is more research (testing for controlled variables) and more modelling.We will get nowhere by trying to find verbal compromises with those who like touse words like "self organizing".
> What are you saying, Rick: ST is WRONG? It has NOTHING of value tosay?
ST qua ST may be great. But it ain't PCT.
> It has not informed PCT AT ALL?
That's really irrelevant. ST may have "informed" some aspects of PCT: BillPowers may have gotten some "inspiration" from Ashby or some other STer but whocares now. PCT is PCT --a model of purposeful behavior as the control of perception. I don't think STis "informing" PCT at all unless their are STers out there doing PCT researchand modelling that I don't know about. Have Sters been testing for controlledvariables?
> Be specific, man, and get real!
All I know is PCT. Why don't you give ME a specific example of acontribution of systems theory to PCT. I hope it's better than the informationtheory contribution to PCT.
> Hi. My name is Cliff Joslyn, and I'm a systems theorist. I am also aCybernetician, and I am TRYING to be a Powers' Control Theorist(PCTist).
Hi Cliff!!
> Rick: I'm determined to help you crawl out of the mud and enter a REALdebate.
I like it here in the mud; I think of it as clay.
> Accept my challenge: my next posting is a definition of ST by FrancisHeylighen and myself for the upcoming Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Doesit reflect your understanding of ST? If not, why not? If so, how is itinconsistent or in conflict with PCT?
I can find several statements that seem to conflict with PCT (or not,depending on how you read them). For example:
> Systems Theory [Including Systems Analysis]: the transdisciplinarystudy of the abstract ORGANIZATION of phenomena,
I would say that PCT is about the abstract organization that EXPLAINS aparticular phenomenon --purposeful behavior.
The rest of the posting is pretty historical and neither conflicts with norsupports PCT. But some of the terms you mention can, indeed, conflict with PCT,depending on how one imagines that they "contribute" to PCT.
> That's Get Smart
Right!! Thanks.
Best Rick
Date: Mon Feb 21, 1994 11:25 am PST
Subject: Systems Theory
[From Bill Powers (940221.0930 MST)] Cliff Joslyn (940220)
I think Rick Marken deserved your protest. Systems Theory is a broad term,covering a lot of things both good and bad. It's also a discipline thatincludes all levels of quality, from the superficial dilettante to theresponsible and careful thinker. To judge systems theory by its worstproponents would be like judging PCT by certain personality theorists who claimto represent it in print.
You and Martin Taylor are examples of systems theorists who like to flextheir muscles at the higher levels of abstraction. While I would not hesitateto take issue with either of you about misuses of abstraction (and plan to doso), I have great respect for both of you as intelligent and creative thinkerswho understand PCT and have done a service to us all in making it intelligibleto others in other fields.
Best to all, Bill P.
Date: Tue Feb 22, 1994 7:55 am PST
Subject: Resend
[From Rick Marken (940221.1800)]
Bill Powers (940221.0930 MST)-- >Cliff Joslyn (940220) --
> I think Rick Marken deserved your protest.
Thank you. And I think I EARNED it, too.
Best Rick
Date: Mon Feb 21, 1994 10:24 pm PST
Subject: Correction
[From Rick Marken (940221.1930)]
Oops. The "Chaos, Self-organizationand Psychology" article is in the January 1994 (not 1974) issue of AmericanPsychologist. My main beef with "self-organization"as described in that paper can be simply stated as follows:
Self -organization is a PHENOMENON that is being passed off as a MODEL.
It's kind of a mathematically sophisticated version of a dormitiveprinciple. Self-organizingphenomena are fun to look at but they have nothing in particular to do withpurposeful behavior --and they are not an EXPLANATION of anything. As Homer Simpson would say: "Self-organization?It's just a bunch of stuff that happens".
Good evening Rick
Date: Mon Feb 21, 1994 10:27 pm PST
From Cliff Joslyn (940221.2100)
>Rick Marken (940221.1030)
Rick: I'm prepared to drop this anytime. I think I've made my points. Butas long as you put warm meat in front of me, I'll probably run with it. Asusual, if we bore people we can take it off-list.Since you've admitted not knowing much about ST, the only other thing I wouldreally like from you is some appropriate modification or retraction of youfirst post.
>> does your knowledge of Systems Theory (ST) extend beyond"Mindwalk"?
> Yes and no. I have had both scholarly and non-scholarlyencounters with what I would now call "systems theorists".
Can you be specific? It may help me interpret you better.
> It's obviously not a coherent movement.
Depends on what you mean by coherent. From the outside, I can see that itmay not appear to be. But from the inside, I know that it is, and I am workingto help "construct" whatever coherence is actually there. I'm sorry that you'vehad some bad experiences, and I can understand how that's happened.
> The movie was interesting only because it allowed me to give a singlename to a plethora of concepts that have turned up in the psychological (and CSG-L)literature in the last decade or so.
Well then, please be careful. Words mean something. Misguided people havegiven lots of inappropriate names to things over the years. I dare say thatsome have even used "Control Theory" to mean something slightly different fromwhat you think it is. I once published a paper which relied heavily on controlconcepts, and was accused of being a Stalinist.
> I am not familiar with most of them.
Then I would suggest you look at Klir's _Facets_ before posting such thingsagain. It's an excellent survey and summary.
> Powers gave a nice critique of Ashby some time ago.
I think you're making my point. To the extent that I recall that exchangeexactly (Bill, please correct me), then one side of the argument said that Billwas flat out wrong, and the other side (I think this is where I came down) saidthat Bill was correcting and extending one result of Ashby (it had something todo with the necessity of delays in feedback loops, right?). Assuming thelatter, then by correcting Ashby's ST, Bill was ALSO doing ST. I believe thatAshby and Powers are two of the greatest systems theorists/cyberneticians (I donot distinguish) that have ever lived. Does the fact that Einstein moved beyondNewton make Newton vapid, or wrong, or irrelevant, or trivial, or any lessgreat than he actually was?
> All I can say is that if any of these people were doing anythingrelated to understanding the nature of living systems as perceptual controlsystems we would know about their work and they (if they are currently living)would be using ours.
Well, I have been highly critical of modern ST people for ignoring PCT, andwill continue to try to bridge that gap. But that's a problem for us ST peopleto handle, and I won't try to defend them.
The other side of your claim is that ST has nothing to offer PCT. Nowbelieve me, I am NOT trying to start a "relevance of ST to PCT" debate. But IWILL make the following claim, which is much weaker than Martin's with respectto IT and PCT.
ST can be regarded not as an actual theory or model, but rather as auniversal modeling LANGUAGE, related to but distinct from mathematics, in whichmodels are constructed and represented. But when ST IS viewed as an actual bodyof theory, then in my view the relation between ST and PCT is something likethat between physics and organic chemistry. ST is the "base". It is VERY broadand general. But PCT deals with a very SPECIFIC kind of system, namely controlsystems, and is thus a PART of ST. In one sense it is a small part of ST,because the vast majority of all systems are NOT control systems (being "incontrol" is a VERY special property). But in another sense PCT is a very LARGEpart of ST, because all the really INTERESTING systems (for example, livingsystems) ARE control systems.
Bluntly put, PCT is where the "action" is. Because of this, from theperspective of PCT, ST may appear quite boring and irrelevant, and I am notclaiming that you should "pay attention" to it in order to do good PCT(remember, YOU started this fight). But nevertheless, and for what it's worth,I assert that PCT people, and Bill Powers in particular, are in fact doing ST(as I understand it). Furthermore, when I discuss biosemiotics, living systemstheory, or social systems theory, I am very conscious of the link to PCT. So Iwould say that if there are any ST people who are "doing anything related tounderstanding the nature of living systems" then they are by definition doingPCT, EVEN IF THEY DON'T KNOW IT or acknowledge it as they should.
> We could also probably get a lot more "fans" if we showed how PCTsupported or was supported by information theory, self -organizing systems, fuzzy logic systems or whatever.
Now here I agree with you. These are all systems theoretic concepts, butthere is no a priori reason to presume that they will be relevant to this veryspecial class of control systems. In fact, I have been engaged in (and couldeasily start up again) very serious arguments about the relevance of classicalself-organization(e.g. far from equilibrium thermodynamic development) for living systems (Imyself am undecided). Since I believe that the class of living and controlsystems are equivalent, this is effectively the same argument. In other words,there are many systems theorists who should also agree with you once theyunderstand the link between PCT and biology.
> It seemed like PCT should have been of enormous interest tocyberneticians --in fact, we thought PCT WAS cybernetics --but I guess it wasn't "deep" enough.
You have my complete agreement here as well: PCT IS Cybernetics! And, Ihold that Cybernetics is ST! Sooooooo, transitively we go...
Powers is the CLEAR successor to Ashby. No question. But you'd be surprisedhow many modern cyberneticians are either ignorant of or have no use for Ashby,either. It is very sad.
> terms like "self organization" don't make any sense to people whounderstand both English and control modelling.
As a Systems Theorist, I have been highly critical of many uses of the term"self-organization".I agree that it has become highly metaphorical, even mystical. But in no waydoes this invalidate ST as a whole. ST is MUCH more than just "self-organization".
>> You risk alienating even more people than you already have withthe appearance of ideological intransigence (note I said the APPEARANCE ofintransigence).
> I have no interest in "selling" PCT to anyone. PCT is not a politicalposition. [etc.]
I may have made an error in stressing this admittedly purely politicalpoint too much. I have no standing to tell PCT people how to run their affairs(except to the extent that I consider myself one, which is only partially: I aman advocate, not a practitioner). And I am not second guessing your approach,or asking you to apologize for PCT or your noble, loyal, devotion to it. I'monly questioning your hostility to ST.
> I don't want to work with people who deal with PCT as areligion.
OK, then why attack ST with a religious zeal? You bring an ideological, andnot a scientific, temperament, rooted in emotion, and not on a reasonedunderstanding of ST.
But hey, that's OK. It's not my style, and to each his/her own. I give youthe PCT blessing: may your actions always satisfy your desires. But in thiscase, whatever your approach, you're just wrong.
>>You have few enough friends out there to go looking for anymore
enemies.
> I am looking for fellow understanders. Friends I can do without (interms of PCT).
Well, how do you take ME, then? I think I am a fellow understander. But I'mbeginning to think much less of your overall sense of perspective onintellectual matters. By attacking things you appear to know little about, yourisk alienating us fellow understanders (allies, even) who are not ONLY in thePCT community, but ALSO participate in a wider intellectual life. These areperhaps the most important people to PCT, your link to the outsideworld.
> I'm really not trying to drive people away but if that occurs as aside effect of my efforts to present an accurate representation of PCT that --again--HOORAY!
So you see, you are NOT just indifferent to the alienation of yourcolleagues: you actually find it POSITIVE! Look again, Rick, carefully at yourown words:
> Systems theory will lure you in with its marshmallow-brainedprose, impress you with a few physics phacts, seduce you with its concern forpeople and the environment and, finally, turn you to stone with its sheervapidity.
What place does this kind of thing have in scientific discussion? Even ifyou're right, and ST has no value to anyone, what is gained by this kind ofdiatribe? I think you need a vacation. ;->
>> But what we need is MORE cross-contactand fertilization, a coming together and synthesis, a careful selection of ourbest work, and not these kind of (apparently) ignorant broad attacks.
> This is a political approach to understanding living systems.
No it's not. It's the broad-mindedapproach to understanding systems OF ALL KINDS, and their relations. Forexample, I'm sure that PCT people are interested in the relationships betweencontrol and non-controlsystems, such as organisms and their PHYSICAL environments and food sources,and, accepting Bill's view that societies are not control systems, individualsand their societies.
Now I admit I have an interest in generalization. And I find no fault withyour apparent interest ONLY in the control activities of single systems, orsmall collections of control systems, and NOTHING ELSE. But what purpose isserved by lashing out at others who are not so limited?
> In fact, what we need is more research (testing for controlledvariables) and more modelling.
False dichotomy: could it POSSIBLY be that you need BOTH testing andmodeling AND outreach? NAYHH...
> We will get nowhere by trying to find verbal compromises with thosewho like to use words like "self organizing".
Who said "compromise"? I said synthesis and selection. You have theattitude and language of a warrior-zealot:take no prisoners!
> ST qua ST may be great. But it ain't PCT.
Who said it was? These mythical villains you still haven'tidentified?
> All that I was "attacking" were the silly ideas that the movieidentified as part of "systems theory" --particularly "self-organization".
I'm sorry, Rick, you were not JUST attacking "Mindwalk", but rather ST as awhole. Otherwise I wouldn't have reacted like that, since I agree with youabout self-organization,and about the movie. I said
> Joslyn: If not, then I would politely suggest that judging SystemsTheory by "Mindwalk" (which I have seen) would be like judging PCT by"Neuromancer".
allowing for the possibility that you are ignorant of ST, and erroneouslytook the movie to represent it accurately.
> All I know is PCT.
Thank you. Now just keep quiet about things you don't understand.
So: you're not interested in reading Klir's _Facets_ or criticizing anysystems theorist specifically, or naming names of "some people [who] aremistaking PCT for systems theory or vice versa"; and you accept Heylighen andmy definition of ST, and you accept that it is neither vapid, trivial, silly,drug-like,seductive, insidious, or marshmallow-brained.
Then are we done now?
Cliff Joslyn,
Date: Tue Feb 22, 1994 12:04 pm PST
Subject: ST
[From Bill Powers (940222.0830)] Cliff Joslyn (940221.2100)
Watch out with those exaggerated compliments. That can work like theOlympics announcer saying that Dan Jansen is especially good at going aroundcurves.
As to the ST argument with Rick: you, in yourself, are a sufficientrefutation of his remarks. Well said.
Best to all, Bill P.
Date: Tue Feb 22, 1994 2:10 pm PST
Subject: systems theory
[From Rick Marken (940222.1200)] Cliff Joslyn (940221.2100) --
> ST is the "base". It is VERY broad and general. But PCT deals with avery SPECIFIC kind of system, namely control systems, and is thus a PART ofST.
PCT deals with a very ubiquitous PHENOMENON --CONTROL. PCT EXPLAINS this phenomenon as the result of the operation ofhierarchically organized control systems.
> I would say that if there are any ST people who are "doing anythingrelated to understanding the nature of living systems" then they are bydefinition doing PCT, EVEN IF THEY DON'T KNOW IT or acknowledge it as theyshould.
How could this be? Can you give me an example of an ST person who is "doingPCT, EVEN IF THEY DON'T KNOW IT or acknowledge it"?
> OK, then why attack ST with a religious zeal?
I am sorry if you think I am attacking ST. I am simply not convinced thatthe ST concepts you have mentioned (like self organization) have anything to dowith PCT. As I said, ST per se may be GREAT. I just don't see how some of theconcepts that fall under the rubric of ST help us understand phenomenon ofcontrol.
> By attacking things you appear to know little about, you riskalienating us fellow understanders (allies, even) who are not ONLY in the PCTcommunity, but ALSO participate in a wider intellectual life. These are perhapsthe most important people to PCT, your link to the outside world.
I'm not attacking; I'm just questioning the value (to PCT) of some of theconcepts that fall under the rubric of ST.
> So: you're not interested in reading Klir's _Facets_ or criticizingany systems theorist specifically, or naming names of "some people [who] aremistaking PCT for systems theory or vice versa";
I would like to see one clear description of how some aspect of "systemstheory" contributes to PCT.
> Then are we done now?
We're probably just getting started.
Oded Maler (940222) --
> I'm amused as usual by the thread on system theory. If St. Paul was ofRick's type, there were no Christians today.
Right. Nobody would get out of circumcision if I were running theconversion process. I suppose you could say that I'm the moile of PCT (those ofyou don't know what a moile is, it's --well, never mind, you don't want to know --trust me).
Best, Rick (offended ex-PCTer)Marken
Date: Wed Feb 23, 1994 1:45 pm PST
Subject: Systems theory and PCT
[From Rick Marken (940223.1030)]
It seems that I did have a close encounter of the "systems theory" kindonce before. I just noticed a file in my e-mailfolder labelled "systems theory". It turns out that it is a reply to a postfrom my sister-in-lawwho wrote to me in about May, 1983 as follows:
> I'm reading a little about "system theory" as a new paradigm inscience (Fritjof Capra) and he mentions that it has roots in cybernetics, as inboth von Neuman (like systems are i/o hierarchies) and Norbert Wiener (likesystems are self-organizingand self-maintaining). Where does control theory fit in here?
I completely forgot about this post from Rikki (my sis in law). For whatit's worth, here is my reply to her. I would appreciate hearing what CliffJoslyn has to say about it (I am interested in Klir's _Facets_, by the wayCliff, but I'd appreciate a summary if possible).
-------------
Hi sis-a-la;
I think of a "system" as a collection of components. The components aretypically functions that transform input variables into output variables. Thevariables can be scalers or vectors; in the systems I care about, the inputvariables are typically scalars or vectors and the output variables are alwaysscalars. So, in the simplest case, a system component is a function --y = f(x) which is a function that transforms an input variable (x) into theoutput variable (y) (by the way, in the discussion below all variables areassumed to vary over time).
What makes a system "interesting" is how the components are hookedtogether; certain hook-upsresult in system behavior that is quite different than the behavior of thecomponents. This is what happens in a control system. The components of acontrol system are "causal" functions --the variations in the value of the output variable (y) depend deterministicallyon variations in the value of the input (x). But the behavior of a controlsystem is NOT causal; it is "purposeful". The output does NOT depend on theinput; rather, the input is "controlled"; it is kept at a value specified bythe system itself and maintained at this value in the face ofdisturbances.
The purposeful behavior of a control system results from the fact that thecomponents of the system are hooked up in a negative feedback relationship. Anegative feedback control system is most easily demonstrated (by me --because I am a math dunce) using linear (rather than arbitrary) functions. Twofunctional components define a negative feedback control system:
(1) o = k1 (p*-p)
(2) p = k2 o + k3 d
This is a "system" of equations; but the equations could represent real"physical" components in real physical systems (as they do in real controlsystems --like thermostats and people). The first equation represents an "output device"like a variable intensity heater. o is the output variable --the actual time variations in heat from the heater; p is an electrical variablecalled the "perceptual signal" and p* is a reference signal (the signal that --it turns out --specifies the desired value of p; it is the signal that results when you "set"the thermostat). Equation 1 says that the output of the output device isproportional (by a factor k1) to a signal that represents the differencebetween the reference and perceptual signals. Equation 1 is just aninput/output function --input (p*-p)is converted into output (o). The conversion factor is k1.
The second equation also represents a physical device --in this case a "sensor device" like the thermocouple that converts heat energyinto an electrical signal. The input to this device is the heat near thesensor; this heat depends on the output of the heater (o) AND externaldisturbances (d), such as outdoor air temperature, people in the room, etc. Sothe input to the sensor is net heat near the sensor which is the sum of heaterand disturbance generated heat. The coefficients (k2 and k3) represent physicalfactors that determine the extent to which output and disturbance variablescontribute to heat near the sensor. The sensor converts the heat input (k2o +k3d) into an electrical signal --the perceptual signal, p, which can be considered a continuous measure of theheat near the sensor. So equation 2 is also an input/output function --input (k2o + k3d) is converted into output (p).
Now we can solve equations 1 & 2 simultaneously to learn somethingabout the behavior of the system as a whole. First, let's solve for the outputvariable, o. The result is:
o = k1/(1+k1k2) p* -k1k3/(1+k1k2) d
This can be simplified by letting k2 and k3 (the physical constants) belarge relative to k1 and about the same size (this is generally true in realsystems) . Then we get
o = k1p* -d
So the first thing we learn about a control system is that the output (o)of the system does NOT depend on the input (p) --the output depends on the reference signal, p* and disturbances THAT ARE NOTEVEN SENSED. If the reference signal,p*, is a constant, then variations in theoutput of the system depend completely on unsensed disturbances. Note that thedisturbances, d, are mixed with the system's own outputs, o, to determine theactual input (eq. 2). So surprising finding number one about a control systemis that its output depends PRECISELY on a variable (d) that the system does noteven sense. Simple math --heavy result. Weiner and the cyberneticists, even with all their fancy math,never picked up on this enormous fact. Psychologists don't WANT to pick up onit because doing so would mean that they would realize that they have beenstudying an illusion. The basis of experimental methodology in psychology isthe assumption that what people do depends on what happens to them; that is, itis assumed that
(3) o = k1 p
A basic analysis of a control system shows that, if people are controlsystems, then equation (3) does not hold. This is why control theory (the realthing) is not real popular in scientific psychology circles.
Now let's solve for the other variable that the system can influence; theperception. If we go through the same exercise (and make the same assumptions)we will find:
p = p*
So, in a control system, the perceptual input variable is determined by thereference signal, p*, NOT by distal stimuli in the environment. This issurprising because psychologists think of perception (input) as an INDEPENDENTVARIABLE; something that causes behavioral outputs (see equation 3) . But in anegative feedback control system, perception is the DEPENDENT VARIABLE; thesystem always acts in order to keep its input perceptual variable matching thereference signal SET BY THE SYSTEM ITSELF. Of course, in artificial controlsystems like the thermostat, the reference signal is actually set "fromoutside" --but once that signal is set the system operates autonomously; that is, it doeswhatever is necessary (what is necessary depends on disturbances) to keep itsinput matching the reference signal. In living control systems, the dials thatset the references are not accessible from "outside"; the reference signals forthe system's inputs are "set" by other "systems" in the organism itself. Soliving organisms are VERY autonomous, meaning that they cannot be "controlled"from outside at all. They cannot be controlled from outside because no one butthe system itself has access to the reference signals (p*) that are theultimate determiner of what the system "does" --meaning, what inputs it controls and at what level they are controlled.
So a simple analysis (to do it right you would have to include dynamics butthe algebraic results are correct under the assumption that the system isdynamically stable) shows that a system composed of cause-effectcomponents arranged in a negative feedback organization is NOT a cause-effectSYSTEM; it is a purposeful system. (By the way, the "negative" in "negativefeedback" refers to the net sign of the multipliers to the variables thattravel around the loop from input to output; the "feedback" refers to that factthat the output of the system is one of the influences on the variable thatcauses that output). The purpose of the system is p* --the desired input perception. The system achieves its purpose (continuously) inthe face of undetectable and unpredictable disturbances through the operationof the negative feedback loop.
This was a VERY elementary introduction to perceptual control systemtheory. The next step is to expand the system concept to form a system ofcontrol systems --such an organization makes it possible for control systems to be the source ofreference signals for other control systems. Again, the behavior of this"system of systems" is "more than the sum of its parts". But the behavior isstill purposeful. Once you start to look at this system of systems, however,you can start to understand the main problem confronted by any control systemin a system of control systems --CONFLICT.
But we can deal with conflict in our next episode --if you're still awake.
By the way, I'm not sure how this all fits into Fritjof Capra's stuff. Mycompletely uninformed opinion is that he is like some of the psychologists Iknow --jumping right into very abstract, complex stuff in a search of some deeprevelations. My intuition is that depth comes out of simplicity. Ifpsychologists had been willing to look at the simple facts of how people areconnected to their perceptions, they would have discovered years agothat
o = -k d and p = p*
and psychology could have become what it should be --the study of autonomous, purposeful system (APSs) --like you and that cutest of all APSs --Lauren!
I love ya! your bro-in-law
-----------
Best Rick
Date: Wed Feb 23, 1994 12:20 pm PST
Subject: Feedback and the Perception of Grades
[From Richard Thurman (940223.1315)] Rick Marken (940218.0845)
Well... before you scamper back to your clay-likemud to seethe at being scolded by all the ST'ers ... before you have time toofficially renounce all ties with the religious left of PCT ... Before St. Paulrecognizes one of his kindred and decides to invite you (instead of one of hismoile friends) over for dinner ... I've still got a question aboutfeedback.
> This misconception occurs because in the phrase "provide feedback" theword "feedback" is being used as a synonym for "perception"; a " grade", forexample, is often called "feedback" but it is really a perception. In PCT werecognize that perception is _always there_. It is not "provided" by output orby the environment --it is a VARIABLE whose state is influenced by system outputs and environmentalvariables.
The "grade" example reminded me of the severe public chastisement the TomHancock received when he posted some information about his 'feedback' studieslast July. Well --I thought it was severe anyhow. I was on vacation and did not feel likeresponding at the time --too much fishing going on to get real serious. He was finally able to resolvethings by calling the 'feedback' a piece of 'post response information' orsomething like that. This seemed pretty contrived considering we all knew whathe was talking about. In instruction and in learning --teachers, coaches, and lovers 'provide feedback' to us by telling us how we aredoing.
Isn't this type of 'feedback' the same Gary C. and Bill P. were talkingabout last August when they wrote of coaching speed skaters. As I remember,they said speed skaters must achieve a very awkward body profile in order toskate fast. They must crouch lower and more forward than is comfortable (orsane). I believe Bill said that coaching this from a PCT perspective wouldinclude yelling "Lower" to the skater until he or she achieved the perfectposition. Then the skater would gradually create and hone a perceptual controlsystem that would replace the coach's 'feedback.' (If this is not what you saidGary & Bill --or if it is not what you meant --my apologies. It is what I thought you were saying.)
Isn't this the way teaching and learning works? It seems to me thatstudents are not necessarily controlling for learning a particular subject, norare they controlling for learning how to do a particular task. Rather, manystudents are actually controlling for the perception of a grade, or forperceiving the coach yelling "That's It!" In this manner the teacher, or coachis part of the feedback function.
Is this coherent? How am I doing? I need some feedback (oops--input)!
Richard Thurman
Date: Wed Feb 23, 1994 5:25 pm PST
Subject: self-organizingsystems, feedback
[From Rick Marken (940223.1500)] Richard Thurman (940223.1315)--
> In instruction and in learning --teachers, coaches, and lovers 'provide feedback' to us by telling us how we aredoing.
> Isn't this type of 'feedback' the same Gary C. and Bill P. weretalking about last August when they wrote of coaching speed skaters.
Well, yes. The teacher is doing some "providing" all right --but it's not really feedback that's being provided --just a perception. In the case of coaching speed skaters, it's a perceptionthat the skater is willing to take as a surrogate for another perception heapparently can't have (of the "lowness" of his body). The skater is trying tocontrol for having the coach stop saying "lower". The catch is just part of thefeedback loop between the skater's outputs (body position) and the words heard("lower" or not). The coach may feel like he's "providing" feedback but he isreally just providing a perception that the skater is free to control (or notcontrol) for as needed (for other, higher level reasons).
> Rather, many students are actually controlling for the perception of agrade, or for perceiving the coach yelling "That's It!" In this manner theteacher, or coach is part of the feedback function.
Yes. The coach is part of the feedback loop. The student can control theperceptual variables in that loop (or not) as needed.
> Is this coherent? How am I doing?
Yes. Fine.
> I need some feedback (oops--input)!
Sorry, I can only provide perceptions (or, more appropriately, disturbances --see, Bill Leach, I listen).
Best Rick
Date: Wed Feb 23, 1994 8:27 pm PST
Subject: Re: Feedback and the Perception of Grades
<[Bill Leach 940223.18:51)] >[Richard Thurman (940223.1315)]
Richard, I'm going to risk a comment here as this is the one area of PCTthat I think that I understand.
Feedback is a very abused term. It is pressed into service to explain (oras part of an explanation) for many things.
In a sense there really is nothing wrong with your example use of the term.However, in the purest engineering sense of the term, feedback is a portion ofthe output that is fed back to the input. There are many ways in which thismight be accomplished and indeed there are various reasons why it is done incontrol systems.
Recognize here though, that the system itself is supplying the feedback toitself. This is not an "externally" generated signal. Thus, a "sampling of theoutput" is fed back to the input.
I believe that the term really came into vogue with electronic amplifiers.Popularly, the term became familiar when "acoustic feedback" occurred in apublic address system. Almost everyone calls this "feedback" rather thanacoustic feedback (even those of us that "know better").
I don't personally believe that the term "feedback" has any place in PCTunless there is an actual situation where it is determined that a portion ofthe output signal is returned to the input to enhance control.
From a "Systems Theory" standpoint (as I understand Systems Theory, whichis not a lot), the term "feedback" could probably be used as in your examplesand be considered to be a correct usage.
-bill
Date: Thu Feb 24, 1994 7:36 am PST
Subject: (From Mary): Bertalanffy;
[from Mary Powers 940223] Gary Cziko (940215)
After a long discussion with Bill about closing the environmental part ofthe loop through another person, I think I agree with you. It is possible touse other people to amplify our outputs and alter the environment into thestate we desire (tidy room, no pizza crusts), and therefore what they do for usis feedback.
The only problem with this concept is that it is easily confused with thesame externally similar process in machines which are not control systems -you push a button or step on the gas and the machine obeys your command. Thisquickly leads to the kind of confusion that was evident in Ozmo's belief thathe was affecting the reference signals directly in his platoon.
I got carried away by a dislike of the idea that other people give orwithhold feedback. If someone gives or withholds information, does what youwant or doesn't, you are getting feedback either way -either the environment is cooperating with you or it is creating a disturbance.It is not in the power of another to turn feedback off or on -the loop is always closed (unless perceptions are blocked).
Also, in my experience, people who blather about giving and gettingfeedback tend to be the same ones who think positive feedback is good andnegative feedback is bad.
Bill Leach (940215)
I think you misread Gary. Nothing wrong with how he used the terms positiveand negative feedback. If his daughter refuses to clean her room when he asks,and in fact makes it messier, it increases his error -positive feedback -and, being a negative feedback system, he counters the greater error with moreeffort.
What's going on here is not the popular notion that positive feedback isgood and negative feedback is bad. It's the positive feedback that occurs whentwo different control systems are trying to control the same variable (themessiness of a room) at two different values.
Cliff Joslyn (940220)
I really liked your post of 2/22 in so far as it expresses your thinking onST, CT, and cybernetics (and your high opinion of Bill!).
But in your 2/20 post you asked Rick for specific criticisms of a number ofsystems theorists, and I'm rising to that bait.
In Robots, Men and Minds, von Bertalanffy describes a cybernetic, orcontrol system, this way:
The minimum elements of a cybernetic system are a "receptor" accepting"stimuli" from outside as input; from this a message is led to a "center",which in some way reacts to the message, and, as a rule, amplifies the signalsreceived; the center, in its turn, transmits the message to an "effector",which eventually reacts to the stimulus with a "response" as output. Theoutput, however, is monitored back, by a "feedback" loop, to the receptor,which senses the preliminary response and steers the subsequent action of thesystem so that eventually the desired result, a "target value" (Sollwert), isobtained. In this way, the system is self-regulating.
This is pretty confused. Is the "center" the comparator? If so, where isthe reference signal? Apparently in the receptor, doing the steering. Where isthe result desired? And so on. Von B goes on to say
...the cybernetic model is the familiar S-R(or S-O-R)scheme, with the feedback loop added to make the system self-regulating.
And he makes that statement, not just in this popularization, but in anumber of more scholarly places, quite dismissively. He then goes on to saythat cybernetics systems are "closed" and therefore the cybernetic model failsto provide for an essential characteristic of living systems -growth, development, and differentiation. And following that, are not self-organizing,i.e. cannot evolve from a less to a more differentiated state, "can onlyincrease in their entropy content and decrease in information content" and soon and so forth, winding up by saying that while it provides insight intoregulatory, goal-seekingand teleological behavior (it's hard to see how), it falls short of "providinga new 'natural philosophy'". He then quotes Bronowski, who said
Cybernetics remains in the best sense a fundamental idea as well as apopular one, but it has turned out to be less embracing, and, in an odd way,less interesting than we had hoped 20 years ago when it was firstconceived.
This of course was the end of cybernetics' -or control theory's -brief run as "trendy", and why PCTers are considered by some to be ratherquaintly old hat. I think von B. was essentially clueless about control theoryand extremely influential in promoting his view of its unimportance. And thatthis is why even cybernetics has resisted the idea that it is about controltheory.
Mary P.
Date: Thu Feb 24, 1994 8:39 am PST
Subject: Feedback is Neutral
[from Gary Cziko 940223.1540 GMT, in Champaign, Illinois, home ofspeedskater Bonnie Blair, five-timeOlympic gold-medalwinner. I don't know Bonnie, but I do know her older brother Chuck who didn'tmake it to Lillehammer and who's been a bit excited over the last week orso.]
Mary Powers 940223 on feedback:
> I got carried away by a dislike of the idea that other people give orwithhold feedback. If someone gives or withholds information, does what youwant or doesn't, you are getting feedback either way -either the environment is cooperating with you or it is creating a disturbance.It is not in the power of another to turn feedback off or on -the loop is always closed (unless perceptions are blocked).
Right, but a teacher or coach can supply or withhold certain types offeedback. In fact, a large part of the teacher or coach's job is to figure outwhat type of feedback will be most useful for the student or athlete. But fromthe perspective of the teacher/coach, he or she is, of course, just controllinghis or her own perceptions with output that provides feedback for thestudent/athlete.
> Also, in my experience, people who blather about giving and gettingfeedback tend to be the same ones who think positive feedback is good andnegative feedback is bad.
Seeing your comments here made me realize that the terms negative feedbackand positive feedback should probably be banned altogether. Feedback is simplythe effect of action on one's perception. There is nothing positive or negativeabout it, is there? Of course we can have a positive or negative feedback LOOP,which tells us whether the control system is controlling its perception ordriving it farther away from the reference signal. But the feedback itself isneither positive or negative.
A father tells his son not to spend so much time playing basketball andspend more time studying. The more he scolds his soon for playing hoops, themore his soon plays (controlling for being independent of father). This is apositive feedback LOOP (from the perspective of the father).
Then the father realizes that his son may be good enough to win abasketball scholarship. But he surmises that if he tells his son of his plans,the son might not be so keen to play basketball anymore (doesn't want to go tocollege). So the father wisely keeps scolding the son (good old reversepsychology, like in the Fantastiks) and the son keeps playing more and more.Same action by the father. Same feedback from the soon. But the father's newreference level (have son play lots of basketball) now make it a negativefeedback LOOP (again, from the perspective of the father).
So it seems that it makes no sense to talk of positive or negativefeedback, but rather only of negative or positive feedback LOOPS.--Gary
Date: Thu Feb 24, 1994 9:45 am PST
Subject: von B., who's on first
[From Rick Marken (940224.0830)] Mary Powers (940223)
> I think von B. was essentially clueless about control theory andextremely influential in promoting his view of its unimportance. And that thisis why even cybernetics has resisted the idea that it is about controltheory.
Thanks Mary.
Best Rick
Date: Thu Feb 24, 1994 12:56 pm PST
Subject: Systems Theory and PCT, von Bertalanffy
[From Cliff Joslyn (940224.1400)] >Rick Marken (940222.1200)
I apologize in advance for the pedantry of the following. It's just the wayI think. Mary: I reply to you at the end of this.
First I need to review the logical structure of my argument with Rick,because I think you are introducing some non sequitur tangential points, whichis fine as long as we don't lose track of the main line. I do not want us tobegin talking past each other.
As I see it, you began with your first post on 2/19/94 saying:
> I know this now because I have seen the enemy (of PCT) and it is NOT S-Rbehaviorism. It is "systems theory". While watching the movie I also realizedthat systems theory is a drug far more insidious than S-Ror cognitive psychology.
along with the other quote I presented last time about marshmallow-headsetc.
Now you say:
> I am sorry if you think I am attacking ST.
Well, then you must be sorry that I can understand English. Rick, if thisis not an attack on ST, what the hell is it?
So my first interest is to defend ST as a discipline. Rick introduces thenon sequitur as:
> I am simply not convinced that the ST concepts you have mentioned(like self organization) have anything to do with PCT.
because I was not then claiming that ST concepts had anything to do withPCT (I do believe they do, however, and will take up the side-argumentbelow).
Since then you went on to say that you don't really know anything about ST.And now you also say
> ST per se may be GREAT.
Therefore I presume that you have in fact conceded my primary point and arenow ONLY concerned with the side argument:
> I'm just questioning the value (to PCT) of some of the concepts thatfall under the rubric of ST.
So before going on, I would like you to acknowledge the followingpoints:
*) You admit that ST in its own right may be a legitimate field, and thatit is neither vapid, trivial, silly, drug-like,seductive, insidious, or marshmallow-brained.
*) Because you (unlike Mary Powers) have given no specific criticisms of STpeople, or any names of "some people [who] are mistaking PCT for systems theoryor vice versa", therefore you have yet to make any progress demonstrating theclaim that ST has no relevance for PCT.
*) Rather than demonstrating anything on your own, you are merelychallenging me to demonstrate that ST IS relevant for PCT, despite the factthat I did not originally claim that it is.
If you fail to address these, then I will presume that silence isacceptance.
Now I will accept your challenge (the side argument). As I said before, Iam making a WEAK claim for the relevance of ST for PCT. Unlike the previousargument about information theory, I am NOT claiming that one need study ST inorder to do good PCT, that there are crucial results of ST that would correctparts of PCT, that PCT can be constructed solely from ST, etc.
That's because the relationship between ST and PCT is not that of twocompeting disciplines trying to explain the same phenomenon. There is not an"ST" view of human behavior which is somehow at odds with the "PCT"view.
Rather, I'm saying that PCT is a PART of ST, and that when you do PCT youNECESSARILY do ST. That's because PCT, like all parts of ST and ST in general,is not concerned with the specific physical nature of the control system, butrather the abstract organization of the control system, and the relationsbetween its components. As Heylighen and I said in our definition, ST is
> the transdisciplinary study of the abstract ORGANIZATION of phenomena,in-dependent of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal scale ofexistence.
PCT is thus a KIND of ST, because it is concerned with the abstractfunctional relationships not of ANY phenomena or organization, but of CONTROLphenomena in particular and the kinds of organization which result in and fromcontrol. Thus you use ST implicitly all the time, as is revealed in your utterdependence of some of the core concepts of ST: input, output, state,transition, boundary, component, environment, selection, etc. ST is concernedwith these concepts in general; PCT with their specification in terms offeedback control.
They've recently renamed the old SGSR (Soc. for General Sys. Research) tothe ISSS (Int. Soc. for the Systems Sciences). Notice the plural form. PCT is ASystems Science.
Therefore the following is clarified:
>> ST is the "base". It is VERY broad and general. But PCT deals witha very SPECIFIC kind of system, namely control systems, and is thus a PART ofST.
> PCT deals with a very ubiquitous PHENOMENON --CONTROL. PCT EXPLAINS this phenomenon as the result of the operation ofhierarchically organized control systems.
OK, that's fine, I can clarify my position.
Let's distinguish between
(A) the phenomenon of control and
(B) the particular negative feedback loop architecture that PCTadvocates.
You claim that PCT is concerned with (A), whereas I claim that (B) is ahighly specialized type of general system. We all agree that (B) EXPLAINS (A)to a great extent. The question is, to what extent does (A) DETERMINE(B):
1. Does (A) ENTAIL (B): must control be achieved by classical feedback? Isfeedback necessary for control?
2. Similarly, does (B) entail (A): must a correctly constructed feedbacksystem result in control? Is control necessary for feedback?
If you can demonstrate that 1 is true (this is my presumption, andsomething that I have tried to do in an fore-mentionedpaper), then you have shown a very interesting result of SYSTEMS THEORY:namely, that a particular real-worldphenomenon requires a particular system architecture, independent of the typeof components.
I presume that 2 is also true, but it seems less important, just theprescription for how to achieve control.
If BOTH are true then you have correctly defined PCT with respect to ST,namely that it concerns systems OF ANY TYPE which demonstrate control phenomenaand, equivalently, have correctly constructed negative feedback loops.
>> I would say that if there are any ST people who are "doinganything related to understanding the nature of living systems" then they areby definition doing PCT, EVEN IF THEY DON'T KNOW IT or acknowledge it as theyshould.
> How could this be?
Easily. The idea is that (1) an ST person considers the operation of livingsystems; (2) (s)he considers that feedback may be important; (3) (s)he thenuses feedback to describe some interesting result. Bingo.
Also, it depends on if you take the term "living system" to STRICTLY mean asingle organism or merely a system which INCLUDES an organism. For example, isan economy a living system or not? If so (I think this is cleaner), then forexample any economist, whether an ST economist or not, who presumes thatindividuals have desires (like the desire for food) and make economic decisionsbased on satisfying those desires (like purchasing food) is ACTUALLY doingPCT.
> Can you give me an example of an ST person who is "doing PCT, EVEN IFTHEY DON'T KNOW IT or acknowledge it"?
I'm an ST person doing PCT, but I know it. And most of the ST people I dealwith are at least aware of PCT (usually because I've told them), and many agreewith it, even if they don't use it explicitly. So I might have to give in toyou here. But that's not really important anyway.
Now I would like to address your comments to your sister in law. I look atthem as a relatively lucid account of PCT from an ST perspective, and highlyconsistent with everything I've been saying. For example
> I think of a "system" as a collection of components. The componentsare typically functions that transform input variables into outputvariables.
This is one of the standard views of "system" (there are others), and isalready somewhat specialized. You then go on to consider yet morespecializations, in particular models which consist of systems of algebraicequations. There are other ways to describe systems (Petri nets, picking anexample at random). And of course there are ways to translate algebraicequations to Petri nets and vice versa. THIS is the domain of ST: theisomorphisms between type-independentdescriptions of systems in different modalities.
> What makes a system "interesting" is how the components are hookedtogether;
Exactly. Systems which are hooked up with negative feedback are reallyinteresting. Other kinds of hooking up are perhaps less interesting. But thestudy of systems of all kinds, NO MATTER HOW THEY'RE HOOKED UP, is ALSO veryinteresting (at least to me!), and THAT'S what ST is about.
So it's not surprising that ST doesn't fascinate you. Too much of it isconcerned with things that don't interest you, like all those systems out therewhich aren't control systems. That's OK. Is there room in this world for all ofus?
> certain hook-upsresult in system behavior that is quite different than the behavior of thecomponents.
The vast majority of hook-upsresult in system behavior that is quite different from component behavior. Infact, you have to work really hard to get the component behaviors to promote upcleanly and exactly to the system level.
> My completely uninformed opinion is that he is like some of thepsychologists I know --jumping right into very abstract, complex stuff in a search of some deeprevelations. My intuition is that depth comes out of simplicity.
This is well put, and indeed a common problem with ST people, andapparently with Capra as well. Nevertheless, the sins of many ST peopleshouldn't condemn the discipline as a whole.
>[from Mary Powers 940223]
> This is pretty confused. Is the "center" the comparator?
Apparently.
> If so, where is the reference signal? Apparently in the receptor,doing the steering.
He describes a "target value", which I would presume to be fed to the"center". It could be anywhere, von B. doesn't say.
> He then goes on to say that cybernetics systems are "closed" andtherefore the cybernetic model fails to provide for an essential characteristicof living systems -growth, development, and differentiation.
There is a very interesting dynamic in ST about the relative weight peopleplace on openness vs. closure. Ashby stressed closure and stability, correctlyrecognizing that ALL forms of stability arise from kinds of closures, fromsimple chemical reactions to social processes. Closures define boundaries,allowing systems to achieve autonomy and recognition.
But of course TOO MUCH closure results in thermodynamic isolation andcollapse to equilibrium. This is what von B was reacting against, and thereigning scientific ideology based on the equilibrium thermodynamics of trulyclosed systems. This was reflected all through the sciences of his day, fromorganismal and population biology to economics. One of his great contributionswas to introduce and stress the concepts and results of open systems wellbefore Prigogine.
But von B. IS wrong to suggest that all forms of closure are "bad" or old-fashioned.In particular, he is wrong to suggest that feedback systems are closed! First,there are many WAYS to be closed, and systems can be open in some ways andclosed in others. Clearly feedback control systems are wide open to energyflows, and through reference levels and disturbances are also open toinformational flows (previous arguments about information theorynotwithstanding).
The truth is that ALL viable systems are a BALANCE between a degree ofinternal closure and environmental interaction and openness. It's the specificnature of the closure and the interaction that makes different kinds of systemsdistinct and interesting. For example, control systems have two inputs,disturbance and RL. Because of its structure, the CV is protected from theactivity of the disturbance (the PURPOSE of the control system is to resist thedisturbance). So the input is not CAUSALLY connected to the CV. So when, andonly when, the RL is constant, then the CS is CLOSED causally, while it retainsits openness in all other ways.
> I think von B. was essentially clueless about control theory andextremely influential in promoting his view of its unimportance.
And Rick:
> Weiner and the cyberneticists, even with all their fancy math, neverpicked up on this enormous fact.
> In Robots, Men and Minds, von Bertalanffy describes a cybernetic, orcontrol system, this way:
When did von B. write that? Didn't he die before BCP was published?
Something that does impress me about this group sometimes is in just howmuch scorn you hold your TEACHERS! Aren't we SUPPOSED to move beyond ourpredecessors, to expand on and correct them? Are we shocked that they weren'talways or completely correct? Should we embark on a kind of scientific"cultural revolution", always deconstructing our past? Don't we also stand onthe shoulders of giants?
Cliff Joslyn
Date: Thu Feb 24, 1994 1:21 pm PST
Subject: Systems science, you say?
From Tom Bourbon [940223.0825]
A few days ago, Rick Marken [specific references are not available to me inthis text editor] stirred up a hive of killer bees. He described his reactionsto a movie about "systems science," and he went further (than I would havedone) to extend his reactions beyond the movie to systems science in general.The bees attacked [again, I don't have access to the posts right now --you bees know who you are], stinging Rick with accusations that he was notfamiliar with real systems science, only with the movie. Then they stung himwith claims that systems science, in general, and cybernetic science, inparticular, (1) are foundational to PCT and (2) "inform" PCT. And the beesstung Rick mightily about the neck and ears with lists of systems scientistswhose work he should have read, but had not. The list included systemsscientists and cyberneticists whose work some participants on csg-lbelieve informs, inspires and animates PCT.
Like Rick, I question some recent claims and assertions on csg-labout the historical and scientific importance to PCT of general systemsscience and cybernetic science, as I know and understand those fields. Rickacknowledged that he was not familiar with many names on the required long listof systems scientists, but I am. If anyone is counting heads, include me amongthose who say PCT originated independently of systems science and cyberneticsand that neither of those two fields has yet "informed" PCT. If you want toknow why I say that, read on; if not, hit "zap."
In 1977-78,systems scientists taught me how to do modeling and simulation. I attended aNational Science Foundation Chautaqua-likeShort Course on modeling and simulation. (I had read Powers's book and Sciencearticle in 1973 and was eager to begin modeling control systems.) The coursewas taught by Bill Davisson and John Uhran, both from Notre Dame, where one wasan engineer, the other an economist. They had developed a Fortran-basedcontinuous system interpreter called NDTRAN, for Notre Dame Translator. NDTRANwas designed as a smaller, cheaper interpreter than the more widely-knownDYNAMO, developed at MIT and used by systems scientists like Jay Forrester andDonella and Jay Meadows, and participants in the "Club of Rome."
In 1981 and 1982, two of my thesis students and I presented our resultsfrom using NDTRAN to run control system theory (CST --the previous name for PCT) models in NDTRAN. We presented at a meeting of theSystems, Man and Cybernetics Society of the IEEE and at a meeting of theSociety for General Systems Research. The IEEE people were not impressed withCST --they saw it as warmed over cybernetics (which it was not) and they were moreinterested in optimization and models of optimal control. The SGSR people werenot impressed --CST was merely cybernetics, which they all seemed to believe was a verylimited, mechanistic, and somewhat odd part of general systems theory. SGSRpeople were interested in complexity, Prigogine (order out of chaos),stochastic models, systems dynamic modeling of political and economic phenomenaon a grand scale, and ending war.
I joined SGSR and remained a member until 1988. I received the complete setof _General Systems: Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research_,dating back to Volume 1, in 1956. I read or skimmed much of what was in theyearbooks and recall seeing only one that reprinted an article on CST/PCT;Volume 5, in 1960, contained reprints of the original articles by Powers, Clarkand McFarland. That's all. However, from 1982 through 1988, I recall seeing twoarticles on CST in _Behavioral Science_, the journal published by SGSR; one wasa mangling of CST by villains unnamed (but often mentioned on csg-l)and one was by Rick Marken (The nature of behavior). Powers did have an articlethere in 1971. That makes two good ones and one bad one, during 17 years;perhaps there were others I missed.
Between the yearbooks, the journal, and a publication called _SystemsResearch_ (from the International Federation for Systems Science, sent to allmembers of SGSR), the SGSR provided me a well-roundedexposure to systems research and modeling. During those seven or eight years, Isaw absolutely nothing that would pass as a standard or common "language,"whether for talking about "general systems," or for modeling them. The scenewas one of many people, using many different methods and diverse models ofwidely varying degrees of rigor. Not one of them studied or modeled thephenomenon of control as we all know and love it. Perhaps things have changedsince then.
From 1982 through 1984, I attended meetings of the American Society forCybernetics. (Rick was also there in 1983-4.)A few of us attended the two Gordon Research Conference on cybernetics,organized by the ASC. Through all of that time, most of the cyberneticists (Iseem to recall they did not like to be called cyberneticians) were unimpressedwith PCT --many said it was aesthetically unpleasant --ugly, is what they called it --machine -likeand out of touch with life. They were more interested in Maturana and Varela(autopoiesis), deconstructionism, poetry and ending war.
I joined ASC and remained a member until 1988.
I have seen, heard, read and in a few cases spoken or corresponded with,many of the people on the lists that were flung at Rick. In some instances theywere speaking at lectures named in honor of others (departed) on those lists. Ido not slight their intelligence, which is often much greater than mine, nor doI question their motivations. I do challenge a claim that their work inspiredor informed Bill Powers and his early collaborators, or some of us whosecollaborations are more recent. That claim is false. Further, I never sawanything to unambiguously support a claim that PCTers "do general systemsscience" whether they know it or not. Furthermore, without hesitation, I neversaw evidence that general systems scientists or cyberneticists were "doingPCT." Other than the papers by Powers and Marken, and the proceedings by mystudents and me, I never saw a functional PCT model (CST model) in theirliterature or their presentations; instead I saw one nonfunctional "model"after another, and many broadly descriptive general systems models. That's justthe way it was. Perhaps things have changed since then.
As to whether their work provides *them* a deeper, aesthetically morepleasing perspective on PCT, that is for them and their adherents to decide.The possibility neither concerns nor excites me. I am content to wallow here inthe shallow mud and play with ugly PCT models.
Until later, Tom
Date: Thu Feb 24, 1994 7:32 pm PST
Subject: Re: (From Mary): Bertalanffy;
<[Bill Leach 940224.20:50 EST(EDT)] >[Mary Powers 940223]
Mary;
I'm sure that you are right. I do have a problem with the term feedbackbecause of my involvement with control systems and electronics. When I see theterm applied to people, it is almost always not used properly (though I was notas aware as I am now as to WHAT was wrong with the usage).
I, for one, will probably try to avoid all use of the term in PCT exceptwhen such usage almost can not be misconstrued.
-bill
Date: Fri Feb 25, 1994 12:50 pm PST
Subject: systems,
[From Rick Marken (940225.0900)] Cliff Joslyn (940224.1400) --
It looks like you are more interested in a legal deposition than asubstantive discussion of models. Tom and Mary's descriptions of "systemsscience" capture in eloquent detail my own impression of the field. If"system's theorists" want to do PCT then they are free to do it. If we findanything of in systems science that helps us study or model purposive behave,then we will feel free to use it.
You said:
> if there are any ST people who are "doing anything related tounderstanding the nature of living systems" then they are by definition doingPCT, EVEN IF THEY DON'T KNOW IT or acknowledge it as they should.
I asked:
> How could this be?
You reply:
> Easily. The idea is that (1) an ST person considers the operation ofliving systems; (2) (s)he considers that feedback may be important; (3) (s)hethen uses feedback to describe some interesting result. Bingo.
I don't know what to say, Cliff. You've been on this net for a long time.You must know that there are many psychologists who are interested in "theoperation of living systems" and think "feedback may be important" and use"feedback to describe some interesting result". But, bingo, they are not evenclose to doing PCT. These psychologists don't understand control, don't buildworking models, don't test for controlled variables, don't study individual'sbut, instead, use feedback to describe average results over many subjects, takeinput-output relationships at face value --in other words, they are not doing PCT at all. People are NOT "doing PCT" justbecause they use words like "feedback", "living systems" and "control theory"is an enormous misapprehension. The fact that you believe that they ARE doingPCT --after this much time on the net -- is a testament to the power of perceptual control (and more than a taddepressing).
Best, Rick
Date: Fri Feb 25, 1994 1:51 pm PST
Subject: Underpinnings of PCT; ST and PCT
[From Bill Powers (940224.2030 MST)] Cliff Joslyn (940224.1400)
Regarding the underpinnings of PCT:
There was no one in cybernetics/systems theory after Ashby's book in 1953(Design for a Brain) from whom I learned anything about control theory and itsrole in behavior. Wiener's book of 1948, which I read in 1952 thanks to KirkSattley, got me started: the concept of feedback control, and the particularrelations to behavior that he laid out, clicked in my mind as the obvioussuccessor to all the psychological models I had ever heard of, including theone in which I then believed. Ashby's book gave me an organized view of how onewould start applying these principles on a grander scale --it was as much his organization as his ideas that turned me on.
But Ashby lost me when he starting treating behavior as if it came inlittle either-orpackages --I felt he had abandoned the main trail and was going off in unproductivedirections. I especially felt, later, that his drive for the utmost generalitywas premature and based on only a sketchy understanding of controlsystems.
My main mentors were the control engineers themselves, and especially thepioneers of analogue computing and simulation: Philbrick, Korn and Korn, andSoroka, who not only provided the machinery and systematized the art ofanalogue computing, but developed penetrating insights into the principles ofnegative feedback. I never met any of my mentors, in or out of cybernetics: Ijust read their books and manuals. Wiener and Ashby inspired me to go back tothe sources of the ideas that they had adopted. When I did, I gradually came torealize that neither of them had learned very much about control systems. -------------------------------------You question the primacy of control theory as used in PCT:
> (B) the particular negative feedback loop architecture that PCTadvocates.
Unlike many other approaches, PCT does not assume an architecture and thenlook for phenomena which fit it. It starts with the simple fact that organismscan produce regular and disturbance-resistantoutcomes despite the fact that their motor outputs have highly variable effectson the local environment. As far as we know, this can be explained only if theorganism is able to represent the outcome inside itself, compare the currentstate of the outcome with an internally-defineintended state, and convert the difference into an amount and direction ofaction that will keep the difference small. That is the basic architecture ofPCT, and the only one of which I have heard that can actually explain what weobserve.
> ... you have shown a very interesting result of SYSTEMS THEORY:namely, that a particular real-worldphenomenon requires a particular system architecture, independent of the typeof components.
But isn't this a platitude? It would be more surprising if a real-worldphenomenon required NO particular system architecture. The phenomenon is simplyan expression of the architecture; a different architecture would result indifferent phenomena. It has been the case for over 300 years that when weobserve a phenomenon, we try to relate it to the properties of the objectsinvolved in it. If a general theory is to prove useful or interesting, at somepoint it must tell us something we didn't already know.
My beef with general systems theory is that while it purports to apply toALL systems, so far it has had to wait for others to explain particular systemsin detail before it can claim to have known the result all along.
> If BOTH (propositions mentioned) are true then you have correctlydefined PCT with respect to ST, namely that it concerns systems OF ANY TYPEwhich demonstrate control phenomena and, equivalently, have correctlyconstructed negative feedback loops.
We have shown that a negative feedback system with a specific architecturewill reproduce the phenomenon we call control (as opposed to what some otherscall control). Neither we nor any other person knows whether some other kind ofsystem could not equally well explain the same phenomenon. We may not now knowwhat such a system might be, but simply to assume that no other idea will everbe discovered is unwarranted; we have simply come up with one positive instanceof a type of system that will create the observed phenomenon. To claim on thisbasis that PCT is the ultimate general theory of control is not legitimate andI do not make that claim. Any theory depends on the factual truth of itspostulates. This is the Achilles' heel of all claims about "general" theories.You can show that a general theory is consistent with its premises, buttheorizing will not show whether those premises are related to the real worldor whether some other set of premises would not serve just as well and will notturn up tomorrow.
In discussing how ST people could be doing PCT "without knowing it," yousay
> The idea is that (1) an ST person considers the operation of livingsystems; (2) (s)he considers that feedback may be important; (3) (s)he thenuses feedback to describe some interesting result. Bingo.
How many of these people, in considering the operation of living systems,have considered the phenomena with which PCT is concerned? How many, inconsidering that feedback may be important, have correctly analyzed the way inwhich it is important, and the consequences that it creates? How many, in usingfeedback to describe some interesting result, have used it correctly, and withrespect to a result that actually occurs as opposed to one that is onlyimagined? "Bingo" requires that you have markers on all five numbers, and Ihave seen no evidence of that outside PCT.
> Also, it depends on if you take the term "living system" to STRICTLYmean a single organism or merely a system which INCLUDES an organism.
From your own writings, I glean that there is very little agreement in STon what constitutes a "system" or how a living system differs from other sorts.If you can freely apply a basic term to vastly different situations, you maycreate the illusion of generality but what you actually achieve is vagueness. Idon't really care what you call "a system." The term is hopelessly compromisedby careless usage and lack of definition. What I care about is explainingbehavior.
> For example, is an economy a living system or not?
If we agree on an answer, what will we know that we don't know now? We cancreate categories at the drop of a hat, with any membership we please. Sure, ifyou want to include organisms and interactions among organisms in the samecategory, an economy is a living system. If you don't, it isn't. Whatdifference does it make?
> If so (I think this is cleaner), then for example any economist,whether an ST economist or not, who presumes that individuals have desires(like the desire for food) and make economic decisions based on satisfyingthose desires (like purchasing food) is ACTUALLY doing PCT.
No, that's too much! PCT is about what it is to have a desire, about therelationship of desires to actions and their consequences. It's about howmaking a decision or having a desire gets turned into just those actions whichwill have effects in the real world that result in an outcome that matches thedecision or satisfies the desire, even if the action required differs from oneinstance to another. An economist who says only what you describe hasn't a clueabout how any of these obvious phenomena come into being: he's simplydescribing the phenomena that need an explanation.
The conclusions you can draw from PCT match what anyone can observe undernatural conditions. That says it is a good theory. It should surprise nobodythat an economist who uses common sense will see that desires relate to whatpeople purchase. That's commonplace, it's not an insight and it's not a theory.It's just a description of something ordinary in ordinary terms. That is whereyou would START if you wanted to apply PCT. You don't need PCT to conclude thatpeople desire things and act to satisfy the desires. What you need PCT for isto explain how they can possibly do that. Can this economist of whom you speakexplain how it is that when a person decides to purchase Grape-Nuts,the result is a long train of motor actions that carries the person from onestore to another until the Grape-Nutsare in fact selected, carried to the checkout counter, and paid for? Of coursenot. The economist has no idea how a decision or a desire gets fulfilled,because the economist doesn't know anything about PCT. I know of only oneeconomist who does know anything about it.
> ... the study of systems of all kinds, NO MATTER HOW THEY'RE HOOKEDUP, is ALSO very interesting (at least to me!), and THAT'S what ST isabout.
I dispute whether ST is about systems of ALL kinds, and whether it hasdeduced the properties of ALL systems NO MATTER HOW THEY ARE HOOKED UP. It isabout a certain range of systems that fall within the definitions of systemwith which ST begins. It is unlikely, furthermore, that ST will have deducedeverything there is to say even about systems within that range, becauseessentially no time is spent exploring the properties of specific examples ofsystems, and looking for unexpected behaviors in natural examples of thosesystems (when the systems are physically realizable). Or put it this way: ingeneral statements about systems, how come I can so often think ofcounterexamples?
Everyone is entitled to be interested in whatever seems interesting.Conflict arises, however, when there is competition to see whose ideaanticipates whose idea. A common strategy, in and out of science, is for peopleto go up a level of abstraction, trying to make true statements that anticipatetrue statements that others might make at a lower level. You say, "It's goingto rain tomorrow." I say "There is a chance of rain tomorrow," thereby seizingthe opportunity to prove me wrong and you right if it doesn't rain tomorrow.And the third guy, looking for another step up, says "Of course it could snowas well," thus showing that he has a more general understanding of thesituation than either of us. In this game of who is rightest, the temptation isstrong to rely on more and more remote abstractions with less and less chanceof being contradicted by the facts.
But in my book, it's the guy who says "It's going to rain tomorrow" whowins in the end. Even if this guy is wrong, he is going to be less wrong thenext time, and finally he will be right most of the time. The guy at the toplevel of abstraction will see to it that he is right all of the time, but thatwill be only because he has covered his ass in all possible ways. There are noprizes for predicting that tomorrow there will be weather, even if that shouldprove to be true.
Best, Bill P.
Date: Fri Feb 25, 1994 2:19 pm PST
Subject: Bertalanffy; deconstruction (from Mary)
[from Mary Powers 940224] Cliff Josslyn:
Von Bertalanffy wrote Robots, Men and Minds in '67 and died in '72. I'd sayhe had ample opportunity to learn about control theory, if he was keeping upwith the literature in his own field, in General Systems: Yearbook of theSociety for General Systems Research, vol V, 1960. A General Feedback Theory ofHuman Behavior, part I and part II, by W.T. Powers, R.K. Clark, and R.L.McFarland, pp.63-83.
I don't get this remark:
> ...in just how much scorn you hold your own TEACHERS!...Don't we alsostand on the shoulders of giants?
Von Bertalanffy was no teacher to this group. How do you stand on theshoulders of someone who's walking all over you? Once more, this time from the1983 biography, Uncommon Sense, by Mark Davidson, quoting von B:
[Von Bertalanffy said] that the feedback model (like the homeostasis model) was really "the stimulus-responsemodel of behavior with the addition of a feedback loop."
> Should we embark on a kind of scientific "cultural revolution", alwaysdeconstructing our past?
No, this is not a cultural revolution. But some of us believe that it is ascientific revolution. That means that most of what people think they know,especially in psychology, has to be rethought in a new framework. Most of thedata has to be taken again because individuals were clumped into groups andmassaged with statistics. If this be deconstruction, that's what we bedoing.
Mary P.
Date: Sat Feb 26, 1994 1:05 am PST
Subject: Re: Underpinnings of PCT; ST and PCT
<[Bill Leach 940225.21:08)] >[Bill Powers (940224.2030 MST)]
Bill, the impression that I have and you are reinforcing is that whilethere may be people in "Systems Theory" that are rigorous, for the most partthere is a lot of noise and patting each other on the back... little of whichis related in any way to objective reality.
Keep it up, I think that I might be learning a thing or two about SystemsTheory too.
-bill
Date: Sat Mar 05, 1994 8:59 pm PST
Subject: Systems Theory and PCT (long)
[Cliff Joslyn (940305, all day long!)]
Sorry for the delay. As I said, I've just put my dissertation in the mailto my committee. Couldn't think of anything else there for a few days. Wish meluck! Anyone want to talk about possibilistic information theory or qualitativemodeling? ;->
This dialog, although invigorating, is also a bit wearing. I might not beable to continue it indefinitely, and I take no joy in fighting with some ofyou people. I'll try to discipline myself to write less and say more. I have atendency to pick nits and argue every point, which gets tedious. But I don'tlike it when people ignore MY comments. And I HATE to lose an argument. ;->
In order to avoid some repetition in the replies, first I lay out somepoints in labeled paragraphs, clarifying my position, so we're all punching atthe same targets. Then there are specific replies to Tom, Bill, Rick, and Maryas appropriate, referring to those paragraphs.
Also, let me recommend the liberal use of the ;->mark to help our civility all around.
===========================
[A] I'm still a bit amazed how defensive "you people" are. You act likeI've attacked PCT, which I never did. Remember, I didn't ask for this argument,and I'm well aware that the whole thing is tangential to the core of PCT andthe reason for CSG-L.I was merely defending MY profession against a scurrilous, ignorant, and(because he claims ST doesn't even have anything to do with PCT) completelygratuitous attack (Rick has yet to admit any of this, by the way). I had nointention of championing ST with respect to PCT, or claiming any kind ofprimacy for ST over PCT. But it seems y'all were EXPECTING me to, and mydefense sprung an ambush.
[B] I'll stop trying to be so legalistic. It's my natural inclination, butRick, you REALLY piss me off. Your style is very annoying to me. Your pointsmay very well be correct, and I have complemented your work. But this isn't the"jar loose your old ideas" GOOD kind of annoyance, not just challenging myideas. I may join others who think that your style detracts from your abilityto communicate with and convince others. That's too bad. I hope I don't go tosuch "legalistic" excesses with other people, but maybe I do. And no, I'm sureyou're not an asshole. Just a bit of a hothead.
[C] I'll stop trying to defend my "Bingo" remark that anyone who usesfeedback and does good science is "doing PCT". Any victory I'd have here wouldbe purely semantic, concerning the meaning of "doing". I don't really careabout this, and looking back on it, I'm not even sure what I meant. I agreewith y'all's basic idea: ALL the scientific communities, including ST,psychology, etc., have completely ignored PCT. OK? (Unlike some other peoplearound here, I admit when I'm wrong, and don't just ignore legitimatechallenges.)
[D] I am trained as a systems theorist, one of the few who really has been.And I am quite an unusual ST person, not least of all in being a PCT adherent.Perhaps that's because I HAVE been so trained. Also, I hold ST and Cybernetics(ST/Cyb) to be two aspects of ONE discipline, like electricity and magnetism(this is a whole other argument, but one I think I could win pretty handily).Not that you people care anyway (all you care about is PCT), I'm just trying tomake it clear.
[E] I agree that the current state of ST/Cyb is generally moribund, and,with exceptions, has been declining steadily since the late 1960's. The ISSS inparticular is so weak right now that they've given over things mostly to the"global managers" and spiritualists. There are VERY few people doing goodST/Cyb right now. As bad as you people think you have it, we're worse ofsubstantively. All we have left is really the inheritance of our oldinstitutions: a few journals, a few professors, a few societies.
[F] I regard PCT as one of those few places where good ST/Cyb is stillbeing done. In my 940224, I specified how PCT is a part of ST (e.g. concernedwith organization, not substance). In many ways, but not completely, PCTrepresents a rare legitimate continuation of the entire ST/Cyb approach. When Iread BCP I had to rework all my ideas about biosemiotics in order to includethe Powers model. But all it did was strengthen my ST, and allowed me to betterconnect to and critique others'.
[G] My position should not bother any of you. I have never claimed that SThas any important consequences for PCT (at least in their current states ofdevelopment), but rather the other way around: PCT has PROFOUND consequencesfor ST (that's because PCT is a KIND OF ST, and a successful one). But that's aproblem for my (ST) community: we have to pay attention to you. There's no needfor y'all to care about ST.
[H] I do NOT defend ANY of my colleagues for either their low quality work,or for ignoring PCT. I have been highly critical of them myself, and willcontinue to try to educate them not only about PCT, but the continuing value ofthe entire so-called"first order cybernetics" approach, of which PCT is a part.
[I] Since PCT is a part of ST/Cyb, ST/Cyb necessarily is concerned withmore than just control systems. In particular, it is concerned with systems,like purely physical systems, which are in no way control systems; and withsystems, like economies, societies, and ecologies, which are MIXTURES ofcontrol and non-controlsystems.
[J] I think that it is manifestly evident that the early (pre-1970's)ST/Cyb movement is the "intellectual heritage" (whatever that means) of PCT.Any history of ST/Cyb in this century would have to include the Powers' schoolas a prominent chapter. More on that below.
[K] The deeply unfortunate political split between ST proper and Cyb isreflected in a similar split between those who place prominence on non-controlvs. control, and (relatively) closed vs. (relatively) open, systemsrespectively. As I suggested in my previous remark to Mary, Cyb is concernedmore with closed control systems. The intellectual climate within ST is biasedagainst closure, and towards openness, despite their mutual necessity andubiquity; and they ignore control almost completely. REAL systems, likeorganisms and communities of organisms, are a mixture of the two.
[L] Mary and Rick are correct if they think that the open systems approachof ST proper is exemplified by the von Bertalanffy-Prigogineemphasis on thermodynamic self-organization.And I agree with Rick that you can't explain ANYTHING interesting with JUSTchaos, self-organization,and far-fromequilibrium thermodynamics.
[M] That's because these phenomena, while fascinating in and of themselves,don't get close to the phenomenon of LIFE, which is where the entire bundle ofissues relating to feedback, control, purpose, and semantics converge. This isthe BIOSEMIOTIC view which I propound, in which I try to link ST with semioticsand PCT.
[N] And that's not to say that self-organizationetc. is not IMPORTANT for PCT in general (I'm not CLAIMING that it IS, I'mSUGGESTING that it MIGHT BE). As some have remarked, I suspect you can't GROW(as opposed to CONSTRUCT) a control system without far-fromequilibrium thermodynamics. Cyb (and PCT) is concerned with the OPERATION ofcontrol systems. ST proper is more concerned with their EVOLUTION: how does thehierarchy emerge? How did the lowest level evolve from non-control?My colleagues and I are currently working with Bill (very slowly!) to clarifyideas about the origins of control systems. Let's see if ST can help there,perhaps, or help with the interaction between organisms and their physicalenvironment, or organisms with each other. I'm not making any claims, merelyexploring possibilities.
==================================
>From Tom Bourbon [940223.0825]
> A few days ago, Rick Marken [specific references are not available tome in this text editor] stirred up a hive of killer bees.
Buzz! But hey, what about honey bees? We're all friends here, I trust.Also, I should note that I usually agree with your comments.
> Then they stung him with claims that systems science, in general, andcybernetic science, in particular, (1) are foundational to PCT and (2) "inform"PCT. informs, inspires and animates PCT.
I'll be happy to argue about the semantics of "foundation" and "inform"with you any day, but first things first: I don't think I said this. My 940220reply contains the string "inform" exactly once, where I asked "what are yousaying, Rick: ST has not informed PCT AT ALL?" I didn't define informationhere. "inspir" and "animat" appeared 0 times. What I really think is [J], andsee below.
> lists of systems scientists whose work he should have read, but hadnot.
We need more :->marks, Tom. I didn't say he "should have" read them already. In order to queryhis knowledge of ST, I asked him to comment on the work of ANY of THE mostprominent ST people. He could not. Anticipating this, I advised him of a(relatively) short, well-written,cogent summary of the field by my teacher, and suggested a discussion based onthat. I don't see that we could have an intelligent conversation about STwithout at least that common level of understanding, and I cannot imagine amore civil suggestion.
> include me among those who say PCT originated independently of systemsscience and cybernetics and that neither of those two fields has yet "informed"PCT.
I think Bill's post (940224.2030 MST) has set the historical recordstraight. See more below.
> In 1977-78,systems scientists taught me how to do modeling and simulation. the SGSRprovided me a well-roundedexposure to systems research and modeling.
Well then I'm glad that we did contribute something after all.
> The IEEE people were not impressed with CST --they saw it as warmed over cybernetics (which it was not) and they were moreinterested in optimization and models of optimal control.
I am disappointed, but not surprised. I am not impressed with the IEEE SMCpeople that much either. They're ST's electrical engineering descendants, and abit too fascinated by things like standard approaches to robots, reactorcontrol rooms, and missiles. These legitimately complex systems don't reallyNEED to act like people to do a good job. These people are intellectuallyclosed.
> The SGSR people were not impressed --CST was merely cybernetics, which they all seemed to believe was a verylimited, mechanistic, and somewhat odd part of general systems theory.
Again, I can't defend these people. I've had the same experience, and havebeen similarly shocked. I simply DO NOT understand the perspective of the STperson who rejects cybernetics. Their substantive equivalence is as evident tome as anything I know, and has inspired me since I've been working.
> SGSR people were interested in complexity, Prigogine (order out ofchaos), stochastic models, systems dynamic modeling of political and economicphenomena on a grand scale, and ending war.
Well put, and very true. See my [K], [L], [M].
> I joined SGSR and remained a member until 1988. That makes two goodones and one bad one, during 17 years; perhaps there were others Imissed.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand why you participated in the SGSR and readall that material for so long? Did you find ANYTHING of value in all thatinvestment of reading? Or perhaps you do more than just PCT (could it be? :->).
> During those seven or eight years, I saw absolutely nothing that wouldpass as a standard or common "language," whether for talking about "generalsystems," or for modeling them.
Well here I do disagree. The Systems Methodologies track, led by my teacherGeorge Klir, was very prominent in the SGSR in the early 1980's. You must haveseen their material. I regard them at that time as ST's "last gasp". It was astandard, but unfortunately not common enough, language. But it wasMATHEMATICAL, and the "global therapists" couldn't cope. That's the problem:doing GOOD ST really requires formidable formal skills. That school was one ofthe foundations of ST, and flourished for a while (Mesarovic, Odum, Zadeh,Klir, a few others). This is now being passed on to computer people (Wymore,Pichler, Oren), and I hope to drag myself along with them. They can barely getthemselves to one decent conference a year. It's very sad.
> Not one of them studied or modeled the phenomenon of control as we allknow and love it. Perhaps things have changed since then.
You're correct here as well. See [K].
> A few of us attended the two Gordon Research Conference oncybernetics, organized by the ASC.
Hey, cool! Who besides Bill and Mary were at the 1990 Gordon conference inTilton? That's where I met them. I don't think that was an ASC proper event,but there were plenty of ASC people there.
[[ HISTORICAL ASIDE
I was already a training systems theorist when the News of Powers ;->reached me slowly, through different channels. One was _Continuing theConversation_, which we know as the abortive ASC bulletin. The articles praisedHim like a God ;->,and I looked at it quickly, said "Hey, good old Ashby/Weiner cybernetics!",then thought, "Hmm, why don't I know anybody who's doing that NOW?"
Then a friend described Bill's style as "he just keeps repeating the samething, and he won't listen to anyone else". I met many luminaries, includingOur Leaders, and the 1990 Gordon Conference. Rather than yet another untalentedhalf-schizophrenicST religious nut, I saw an able demonstration of a remarkable hypothesis thatnobody could respond to, let alone refute. Even then I argued with Bill that heshould care to know about chaos (does anyone out there know about thepossibility of chaotic activity in a (nonlinear) control system?).
Then I read BCP. It still has my bookmarks in it. I've only felt that wayabout a few books: von B., Ashby, Ken Sayre, Bateson, and Val Turchin. A realsense of wonder. I've never looked back.
END ASIDE ]]
> many said it was aesthetically unpleasant --ugly, is what they called it --machine -likeand out of touch with life. They were more interested in Maturana and Varela(autopoiesis), deconstructionism, poetry and ending war.
More agreement. Modern Cyberneticians are generally mystics, absorbed in so-called"Second Order Cybernetics" drivel and radical constructivism (I think I knowmost of the ones who aren't). For example, it's very sad reading "ObservingSystems" and watching the transition from the Early to the Late vonFoerster.
What do people think of the von Glasersfeld brand of constructivism?
> I joined ASC and remained a member until 1988.
Apparently I've just missed you in person. My first ASC conference was 1989in Virginia Beach. A thoroughly frustrating experience.
> I do challenge a claim that their work inspired or informed BillPowers and his early collaborators, or some of us whose collaborations are morerecent. That claim is false.
I don't THINK I was claiming that literally. And again, Bill has clarifiedhis view. See [A], [G], and [J].
> Further, I never saw anything to unambiguously support a claim thatPCTers "do general systems science" whether they know it or not.
No, I don't mean that PCTers are doing GENERAL systems science. Rather,they are doing CONTROL systems science, which is a specialized KIND OF systemsscience (see [F], and below). It's a specification. Does a chemist do physics?Does a biologist?
> I never saw evidence that general systems scientists or cyberneticistswere "doing PCT."
See [C].
=================================
>[From Bill Powers (940224.2030 MST)]
> it was as much his organization as his ideas that turned me on.
So you'd put _Introduction to Cybernetics_ as your point of departure withAshby?
> I especially felt, later, that his drive for the utmost generality waspremature and based on only a sketchy understanding of control systems. When Idid, I gradually came to realize that neither of them had learned very muchabout control systems.
Interesting: premature. You're probably right. Perhaps he would have gonein your direction if he had been less theoretically, and more practically (thatis, scientifically) inclined. That does appear to be a curse of the ST/Cybcrowd (myself probably included).
> Unlike many other approaches, PCT does not assume an architecture andthen look for phenomena which fit it. It starts with the simple fact thatorganisms can produce regular and disturbance-resistant outcomes despite the fact that their motor outputs have highlyvariable effects on the local environment. As far as we know, this can beexplained only if the organism is able to represent the outcome inside itself,compare the current state of the outcome with an internally-defineintended state, and convert the difference into an amount and direction ofaction that will keep the difference small.
These utterly simple statements are SO deep, it's hard to really unpackthem. The following is completely from within MY perspective.
For me, what makes a field a part of ST broadly is the fact that itsresults are independent of the particular type of phenomenon underconsideration (rocks, organisms, economies, stars, atoms).
Some (many) of the Systems Sciences (for example, Neural Networks) startwith a specific, but type-independent,engineering architecture, and then explore the phenomena which result. Theyusually try like hell to make them match what they expect to see.
PCT involves both (A) a type-independentphenomenon (control) and (B) a type-independentorganization or architecture (feedback), and is thus a part of ST. You say "asfar as we know, (A) requires (B)".
> But isn't this a platitude?
Certainly not.
> To claim on this basis that PCT is the ultimate general theory ofcontrol is not legitimate and I do not make that claim.
In the paper of mine which you've read, I make an (admittedly theoretical)argument that (A) requires (B). I'm not sure if this is the same thing asclaiming that PCT is the "ultimate theory of control".
At worst, (A) ->(B) is a falsifiable, scientific hypothesis, corroborable and disprovable byobserved evidence. In other words, find a control system. Break it open. Is itnegative feedback? If so, that's observational evidence for (A) ->(B). This is no different in principle from massing electrons or any other kindof scientific evidence gathering.
> You can show that a general theory is consistent with its premises,but theorizing will not show whether those premises are related to the realworld or whether some other set of premises would not serve just as well andwill not turn up tomorrow.
The problem of using induction from observed evidence to support empiricalhypotheses, that is the scientific problem of how much and what kind ofevidence is necessary in order to accept the hypothesis, is new to neither PCTnor ST. Nor is it different for hypotheses about (more) general systems thanfor any other kind of system. However, the more general the claim, the moregeneral the measurable quantity against which it must be corroborated.
> It would be more surprising if a real-worldphenomenon required NO particular system architecture.
I don't understand. In ST, we think of this as the function-structureargument. In general, for each kind of activity or phenomenon (that isfunction, like control), there are multiple possible architectures (structures,like feedback systems) which can manifest it. The converse is generally nottrue: each structure acts in a certain way. Think of all the different ways tolight a room, or build an adder. The idea that a particular function (control)REQUIRES a particular structure (two input, no output, single state, singleloop, negative feedback) is non-trivial,and should certainly be interesting (to ST people).
> My beef with general systems theory is that while it purports to applyto ALL systems, so far it has had to wait for others to explain particularsystems in detail before it can claim to have known the result allalong.
> If you can freely apply a basic term to vastly different situations,you may create the illusion of generality but what you actually achieve isvagueness.
Let me explain a little REAL ST (as opposed to all that self-organizationeverything-is-connected-to-everything-elseCapra-esqueMindwalk crap).
It is well known in ST that as the generality of claims increases, so doestheir accuracy and applicability, but also so does their TRIVIALITY. Increasedgenerality REQUIRES increased vagueness, and this can be a GOOD THING,depending on the level you want to work at. As in mathematics, you need to makethe structure as loose as possible, but rich enough to have interestingresults. Sometimes working at a slightly more abstract or qualitative level isvital.
So any ST person who ALWAYS works at the MOST general level ends up justarguing about the meaning of "system". Now there's a kind of value in that, butit's philosophical, not scientific. The ideas that ALWAYS apply to ALL systemsare necessarily the most trivial: everything has an inside and an outside;everything exists in space-time,etc. Big deal.
The way that ST people actually work is by quickly moving from the MOSTgeneral kinds of systems to consider more specific kinds: systems with input,or output; memoryless or systems with memory; crisp or fuzzy systems, statesystems; deterministic or non-deterministicsystems; linear or nonlinear; hierarchical systems; looped or loopless systems;control systems, feedback systems, etc. etc. etc.
It seems to me that PCT is at an intermediate level of specification, whichis where you really want to be to do good, cogent ST. On the one hand, it'sconcerned with a single type of phenomenon/structure. On the other, it'sconcerned with that WHEREVER it exists.
> Sure, if you want to include organisms and interactions amongorganisms in the same category, an economy is a living system. If you don't, itisn't. What difference does it make?
That was part of the semantic argument which I've dropped [C].
> I dispute whether ST is about systems of ALL kinds,
Well, that's a matter of definition: ST just IS about systems of ALL kinds,however it is that you then go on to define "system".
> and whether it has deduced the properties of ALL systems NO MATTER HOWTHEY ARE HOOKED UP.
Nobody's claiming that. That would be like saying that physics has deducedthe properties of all physical objects everywhere for all time. It's somewhattrue, but silly.
> It is about a certain range of systems that fall within thedefinitions of system with which ST begins.
How could it be otherwise? It's a tautology: ST is concerned with systemsof all types. What's a system? A system is X. Then ST is concerned with X ofall types. What are you really trying to say?
> Or put it this way: in general statements about systems, how come Ican so often think of counterexamples?
I'm not sure what you mean. Can you give an example?
> Conflict arises, however, when there is competition to see whose ideaanticipates whose idea.
As I've said, ST qua ST is not a competing theory to PCT. ST qua ST has NOtheory of animal behavior, and makes NO predictions about animal behavior.Rather, I believe that PCT is in fact that PART OF ST which IS a good theory ofanimal behavior, and part of a good theory of life in general.
> A common strategy, in and out of science, is for people to go up alevel of abstraction,
While many ST people do proceed by abstraction, and there is value in that,ST proper actually goes in both directions. Not only can we notice isomorphiesbetween systems of different types, and then try to come up with a common type-independenttheory, but we can also start with general mathematical definitions, make themprogressively more complex and specialized, and then make predictions about anyreal system which can be modeled as a system of that type. As I've said,feedback control systems are of intermediate complexity.
================================
>[From Rick Marken (940225.0900)]
You replied to NOTHING except my "bingo" comment, from which I've retreated[C].
Simply ignoring the argument is actually quite rude. If what I've saiddoesn't merit a reply, then say so.
So far, the only thing I (well, really ST as a field) have received fromyou in this thread is a string of insults.
=====================
>[from Mary Powers 940224]
I'm not sure what to say, Mary. It is certainly not my place to argue thehistory with you. I'm just a kid, and you both were there. It just strikes methat denial of the intellectual heritage of PCT in cybernetics and systemstheory is very sad and short sighted.
Sigh. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had suffered your slings and arrows,if I had been spurned for decades as you have, if I was a practitioner ratherthan a theoretician. I really hope that one day my community will give yoursyour full due. Because it really is the whole ST movement, more than justpsychology, that PCT so critically addresses. The problem of control is perhapsthe original systems problem, and not only a PSYCHOLOGY problem. The REALproblem for PCT begins WELL BEFORE the evolution of neurons. EVERY organism isa control system, maintaining its internal metabolic state far fromequilibrium.
I guess until that happens, y'all will have some justification in resistingmy (apparently bizarre) claiming of PCT by ST. But when you come from my side,it's as plain as the nose on my face.
I wish I knew more about the history of science. I read a book review ofthe biography of one of the early English chemists and head of the RoyalSociety (I WISH I could remember his name, Butler?), a teacher of Maxwell. Hediscovered many of the elements, and was instrumental in early electrochemicaland electromagnetic theory. Maxwell went on to surpass him, of course, and he'spassed out of history. Butler (if that's who it was) was wrong about a lot ofthings, and severely limited by his time, but laid the foundation for all theothers. I think about Ashby and Powers that way.
Or maybe it's like this: let's say that homeopathy, chiropractic, orperhaps acupuncture really is a new, highly scientific, revolutionary form ofmedicine, which is spurned by the traditional medicine community. Does it makesense for them to completely disavow medicine IN GENERAL, to claim that they'renot a part of medicine AT ALL, even though medicine fights or ignoresthem?
O------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large
Date: Sun Mar 06, 1994 8:05 am PST
Subject: Systems theory, tigers, etc. (from Mary)
[Mary Powers 940306] Cliff Joslyn:
I thought your post was terrific. I really have no problem with your stanceas a systems theorist -that's what you are, and that's what you do, and your interest in and supportof PCT is great. I do wonder, however, whether your colleagues aren't going toview you as some kind of aberrant freak for being interested in PCT -just as Tom's former psych. department colleagues viewed him. You may well bethe only ST person in the world who sees any value in PCT, and I hope itdoesn't get too lonely, being interested in old-fashioned,ugly first-ordercybernetics.;-)
I didn't care for your medicine analogy, vis-a-visPCT's intellectual heritage. It's more like this: what did l9th century medicalresearchers like Pasteur and Koch and Lister owe to an intellectual heritagethat was convinced that disease resulted from an imbalance in the fourhumors?
I think Ashby, Wiener, etc. had hold of a really interesting fuzzy rope -but never moved up it far enough to see that it was attached to the rear end ofa tiger.
PCTers are like Calvin -they are having a wonderful time with this big tiger, which the rest of theworld thinks is a stuffed toy.
Mary P.
Date: Sun Mar 06, 1994 12:39 pm PST
Subject: So many posts, so little time
[From Rick Marken (940306.1230)]
Boy, when it rains it pours on ol' CSG-L.I hope I can cover most of the very interesting threads that havedeveloped.
CHUCK TUCKER (940304.12:04) --
> Don't believe a word that Rick says about himself; he is a very poorjudge of character especially his own.
Thanks Chuck; hearing that I'm wrong never sounded so nice! If I can getthrough this avalanche of mail I will finish up your HyperCard experiment thisweekend.
Cliff Joslyn (940305, all day long!) --
> I'm still a bit amazed how defensive "you people" are.
We are defending the integrity of the PCT "message".
> Remember, I didn't ask for this argument,
Neither did I? I just typed some words which turned out to be a majordisturbance to some system concepts. C'est la vie.
> I was merely defending MY profession against a scurrilous, ignorant,and (because he claims ST doesn't even have anything to do with PCT) completelygratuitous attack (Rick has yet to admit any of this, by the way).
I admit that I made a scurrilous, ignorant, and gratuitous attack on ST. Ijust can't admit that I did it intentionally. But if you perceived it asscurrilous, ignorant, and gratuitous then it was (for you).
> Rick, you REALLY piss me off. Your style is very annoying tome.
You're not the only one who finds it annoying, don't worry. But, again, I'mnot trying to be annoying (it just comes naturally ;->).I didn't say "I'm an asshole" for nothing.
I agree with Mary Powers (940306) about the rest of your post. Your heart'sin the right place, Cliff. Keep up the good work. Don't mind me. I'm justseeing to the integrity of the PCT ideas. When I get these ideas wrong, BillPowers will chime in and correct me. Thus far, it's been a LONG spell betweenchimes --though I'm sure he agrees with your evaluation of my style.
Best to all Rick
Date: Sun Mar 06, 1994 4:35 pm PST
Subject: Re: Systems Theory and PCT (long)
<[Bill Leach 940306.10:43] >[Cliff Joslyn (940305, all daylong!)]
Originally I was going to send this private. I will add that in my opinion,for whatever it is worth, Cliff Joslyn appears to be exactly the sort of STperson that I am NOT talking about in this posting. Indeed if he were typicalof ST then PCT people would be foolish NOT to associate closely with ST.
Cliff;
As a "newbe" here I don't really want to get into the middle of the ST-PCTdebate. Also, I clearly do not have the "credentials" to provide support oneither side. OTOH, my "outsiders'" view may be "untainted" by personalinvolvement on either side. I definitely do have a bias however. I have alwaysconsidered the "soft sciences" to be "less" than science but recognize thatsome individuals within those fields are often true to scientific principles. A"scientist" that is unwilling to submit his work to "acid test" of reality isno scientist.
My own impression of ST is that it generally has less substance than even"the laying on of hands". Naturally this opinion is based largely upon themedia popularization of Climate Models, Ozone Models, Population Models and thelike.
PCT is to me, a breath of fresh air. Imagine! People that actually believethat a model's first and primary responsibility faithfulness to reality!...dealing with people that believe that when they "learn" something new (andin particular, something unexpected), it is necessary to verify this phenomenonwith objective reality rather than with the theory for the model! >>Whata novel concept?!<< Why, you would almost think that some of these folkshad been physicists or engineers or something similar where when theory andpredication fail to match measurable reality you have to rework your theory. :-)
What I see here is evidence of real science being conducted. Evidence ofpeople dedicated more to the principles of how to search for truth than to anyparticular results.
If Rick's knowledge of ST as a field of research is as weak as mine (and Ithink that it probably is) then I can readily understand his vehementobjections to relating PCT to ST. I would probably be considerably more violentthan he has been.
From a "layman's" perspective, ST IS the "Ozone Hole Model" (or at leastsuch models are the premier representatives of the field). When one viewsactions of the spokesmen for such "research" and sees such things as thefraudulent (and I think criminally negligent) NASA "Warning" of a couple ofyears ago (based upon the "Ozone model"), it is quite easy to see why someoneinterested in science might want to distance themselves. I personally am notsure that I would even want to admit to being of the same biological species asthe people of such a field.
Generating apocalyptic scenarios (and therefore revenue) using modelingtechniques that ARE KNOWN to be inaccurate and incomplete is disgusting. Thatthe associated "scientific community" fails to have the moral fortitude toostracize the perpetrators places the entire field outside that set ofactivities that can be called science.
I say that in full recognition that there are undoubtedly dedicated STpeople that have not forsaken truth and objectivity but I strongly caution themto be very careful and to look closely at the organization that funds theirresearch. It appears that the number of scientists that have been willing tosacrifice their "position" in support of truth when a conflict existed isdisturbingly small.
I could easily go on with my "tirade" against ST by adding my assertionthat "they" have not only "sold out science" but humanity itself. The magnitudeof the crimes by the Systems Theorists (though not exclusively only them ofcourse) will probably never be known. I am quite certain that little effort isrequired to show that not only billions of dollars of real wealth has been lostbut millions of lives have been and will continue to be lost as a direct resultof "charlatan science". We really do not even have a scale from measuring anintangible such as suffering that results from such actions.
If you also count the effects of creating a populous that is now suspiciousof science and in general is actually beginning to BELIEVE THAT SCIENCE ISLITTLE MORE THAN A MATTER OF OPINION, then the damage truly is incalculable.That many of the Systems Theorists actually believe that "the cause of 'savingthe world'" is more important than truth is only an excuse for them asindividuals. As far as ANY and ALL other scientists are concerned such behaviorremoves ALL credibility that person may have had IN SCIENCE.
A hundred years or more from now I can just see the science historianswriting about how real science was almost destroyed because of people withvirtually no ethics and morality that became the leading figures of theirrespective fields by being "Politically Correct" rather than honest.
It nearly impossible for me to express the magnitude of rage that I feelabout such behavior.
Me... For me, I'll take a Rick Marken any day. He may not be as "gentle" asBill but he has convinced me that he is dedicated to objective science (alittle redundancy there, but unfortunately necessary). [and I am not trying toclaim that I believe that you think of him otherwise]
After having said all of this though, it should be easy to conclude that Ibelieve:
1. That PCT is a real science.
2. In general ST is NOT and should be.
3. But when ST is what it should be then it is not unreasonable to concludethat PCT is a "branch" (or subset) of ST.
Unfortunately, I far as I can tell, ST has a hell of a long way to go inremoving the "snake oil salesman" stigma. Until ST can become "respectable"with rational people instead of "popular" with politician, PCT would be welladvised to maintain its distance.
-bill
Date: Wed Mar 09, 1994 9:37 am PST
Subject: Subject: Systems Theory and PCT (long)
From tom Bourbon [940308.0920] >[Cliff Joslyn (940305, all daylong!)]
Wow! When you say long, you mean *long*, don't you Cliff?! .
> This dialog, although invigorating, is also a bit wearing.
Wearing? And Dan thinks the thread he started on "facts" has grown"tedious." Don't you guys realize PCT modelers are high-gainand VERY negative feedback control systems? We don't know when to letgo.
> In order to avoid some repetition in the replies, first I lay out somepoints in labeled paragraphs, clarifying my position, so we're all punching atthe same targets. Then there are specific replies to Tom, Bill, Rick, and Maryas appropriate, referring to those paragraphs.
A good strategy, especially in a long post directed at a swarm of PCThornets.
On the whole, I was pleased to see that you shared many of my ownimpressions of past interactions with systems theorists andcyberneticists.
> [E] I agree that the current state of ST/Cyb is generally moribund,and, with exceptions, has been declining steadily since the late 1960's. TheISSS in particular is so weak right now that they've given over things mostlyto the "global managers" and spiritualists. There are VERY few people doinggood ST/Cyb right now. As bad as you people think you have it, we're worse ofsubstantively. All we have left is really the inheritance of our oldinstitutions: a few journals, a few professors, a few societies.
Institutions? Journals? Professors? Where can we get some ofthose?!
> [H] I do NOT defend ANY of my colleagues for either their low qualitywork, or for ignoring PCT. I have been highly critical of them myself, and willcontinue to try to educate them not only about PCT, but the continuing value ofthe entire so-called"first order cybernetics" approach, of which PCT is a part.
*You* see PCT as part of first-ordercybernetics. That's fine. On this side, I'm not doing FOC. I'm doing PCT, withnothing borrowed from, or deliberately aimed at, people who do FOC, or anyother order of cybernetics, or Systems Theory. This is not out of spite ormalice. I'm simply doing something else.
> [J] I think that it is manifestly evident that the early (pre-1970's)ST/Cyb movement is the "intellectual heritage" (whatever that means) of PCT.Any history of ST/Cyb in this century would have to include the Powers' schoolas a prominent chapter. More on that below.
"Whatever that means" turns out to be a very important consideration.Frankly, I see *no direct way* in which the pre-1970'sST/Cyb movement is the intellectual heritage (forebear) of PCT. As for PCTbeing a chapter in ST/Cyb, that book and chapter must be written by someoneelse; we aren't even thinking about that linkage. Sorry; that's just the way itis, with absolutely no offense intended.
==================================
>>From Tom Bourbon [940223.0825]
>> A few days ago, Rick Marken [specific references are not availableto me in this text editor] stirred up a hive of killer bees.
> Buzz! But hey, what about honey bees? We're all friends here, Itrust.
Hey, killer bees make honey, too. And you weren't the only person to planta stinger in Rick back then.
>> In 1977-78,systems scientists taught me how to do modeling and simulation.
>> the SGSR provided me a well-roundedexposure to systems research and modeling.
> Well then I'm glad that we did contribute something after all.
Wait a minute! :-)Those two sentences carry very different meanings. The NDTRAN modelers got mestarted, and I appreciate that fact. But I didn't really get under way until Istarted trying to learn how Bill Powers did his programming and modeling. Andthe sentence fragment about the exposure through SGSR was part of my remarksabout the fact that ST modeling and research seemed completely unrelated towhat we do in PCT. By the way, out of curiosity, the other day I went andlooked at six recent issues of _Behavioral Science_, the old SGSR journal. Fromwhat I saw, nothing has changed so far as the huge differences between researchand modeling in PCT and in ST.
>> I joined SGSR and remained a member until 1988. That makes twogood ones and one bad one, during 17 years; perhaps there were others Imissed.
> I'm sorry, but I don't understand why you participated in the SGSR andread all that material for so long? Did you find ANYTHING of value in all thatinvestment of reading? Or perhaps you do more than just PCT (could it be? :-).
I just like punishment, that's all. Actually, I kept hoping to seesomething --anything --that would convince me there was merit in ST and that there might be someavenue for "building bridges" with them --an activity at which PCTers seem not to excel. ;->
>> During those seven or eight years, I saw absolutely nothing thatwould pass as a standard or common "language," whether for talking about"general systems," or for modeling them.
> Well here I do disagree. The Systems Methodologies track, led by myteacher George Klir, was very prominent in the SGSR in the early 1980's. Youmust have seen their material. I regard them at that time as ST's "last gasp".It was a standard, but unfortunately not common enough, language.
You disagreed with me, then made my case. By "standard or common language"I meant one shared by ST people. There was no such animal, as you say here. Isaw Klir's work. As you say, it was not widely used or accepted. Instead, therewere many seemingly unrelated methods and languages. Remember, I was a relativeoutsider, looking in. The view from my location probably was very differentfrom the one you encountered and constructed (do you see, Dan?) as a student ofone of the "names" on the inside.
> But it was MATHEMATICAL, and the "global therapists" couldn't cope.That's the problem: doing GOOD ST really requires formidable formal skills.That school was one of the foundations of ST, and flourished for a while(Mesarovic, Odum, Zadeh, Klir, a few others). This is now being passed on tocomputer people (Wymore, Pichler, Oren), and I hope to drag myself along withthem. They can barely get themselves to one decent conference a year. It's verysad.
I wish I had made my point as well as you did here.
>> A few of us attended the two Gordon Research Conference oncybernetics, organized by the ASC.
> Hey, cool! Who besides Bill and Mary were at the 1990 Gordonconference in Tilton? That's where I met them. I don't think that was an ASCproper event, but there were plenty of ASC people there.
Different meeting. The first Gordon Conference on cybernetics was atWolfboro, NH; the second was at Oxnard, CA.
I'm not commenting on all of your points. As I said before, I'm pleased tosee that your remarks confirm so many of my impressions and ideas about theST/Cybernetics movements way back then.
=====================
>[from Mary Powers 940224]
Cliff:
> I'm not sure what to say, Mary. It is certainly not my place to arguethe history with you. I'm just a kid, and you both were there. It just strikesme that denial of the intellectual heritage of PCT in cybernetics and systemstheory is very sad and short sighted.
How can it be short sighted, Cliff? The heritage isn't there to deny. Thesituation is a lot like that when you look back at the "ingenious devices"described in the ancient Arabic text that contained a compilation of manyclever and ingenious control devices, some dating back to ancient Greece. Thedevices demonstrate that a technology of control emerged once, long ago, but italso vanished long ago and did not influence the emergence of ST, orcybernetics, or PCT. It's nice, sometimes, to look at all of the interestingplaces and times where people either "got it," or came close to getting it, onthe idea of control. But not all of the times and places can be strung togetheron the same path of descent; some are off on deadends and alternative branches.Temporal priority or contemporanaeity does not necessarily imply a common lineof descent.
> Sigh. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had suffered your slings andarrows, if I had been spurned for decades as you have, if I was a practitionerrather than a theoretician. I really hope that one day my community will giveyours your full due. Because it really is the whole ST movement, more than justpsychology, that PCT so critically addresses. The problem of control is perhapsthe original systems problem, and not only a PSYCHOLOGY problem. The REALproblem for PCT begins WELL BEFORE the evolution of neurons. EVERY organism isa control system, maintaining its internal metabolic state far fromequilibrium.
A nice idea, that, and well put.
> I guess until that happens, y'all will have some justification inresisting my (apparently bizarre) claiming of PCT by ST. But when you come frommy side, it's as plain as the nose on my face.
It's obvious your nose is different from the noses of most otherST/Cybernetics people! :*)) <--CJ
> I wish I knew more about the history of science. I read a book reviewof the biography of one of the early English chemists and head of the RoyalSociety (I WISH I could remember his name, Butler?), a teacher of Maxwell. Hediscovered many of the elements, and was instrumental in early electrochemicaland electromagnetic theory. Maxwell went on to surpass him, of course, and he'spassed out of history. Butler (if that's who it was) was wrong about a lot ofthings, and severely limited by his time, but laid the foundation for all theothers. I think about Ashby and Powers that way.
Not a very good analogy, I'm afraid. Butler taught Maxwell and Maxwellknowingly "built on" and surpassed the work of Butler. Not so, in the case ofAshby and Powers. You already have a Powers comment on this point.
I've enjoyed the historical jaunt along with you. Back to work.
Later, Tom
Date: Tue Mar 15, 1994 11:58 pm PST
Subject: Finally, a reply on Systems Theory and PCT (winding down?)
[Cliff Joslyn, 940315]
Here are replies to the posts from last week on ST and PCT from Mary, Rick,Bill Leach, and Tom. More apologies for the long delay. No good excuse thistime. Hopefully we're drawing this to a close.
>[Mary Powers 940306]
> I thought your post was terrific.
Thank you! I feel better already. No toes stepped on too heavily, Ihope.
> I do wonder, however, whether your colleagues aren't going to view youas some kind of aberrant freak for being interested in PCT
Our numbers would make it hard to pick me out of the crowd. ST is famousfor courting the lunatic fringe. It's great for inclusion, new ideas, and "frame-challenging",but bad for rigor and the signal-noiseratio. This has been noted by many, including Tom. In fact, within ST/Cyb,proponents of traditional entity-relation,state-machinebased ST (what I described earlier as the Mesarovic/Klir approach) and first-ordercybernetics (causal loop modeling) are viewed as archaic relics. If you can'tspin Maturanesque dripping prose, you're passe.
> You may well be the only ST person in the world who sees any value inPCT
I KNOW that's not true, if only because I've convinced some of mycolleagues of PCT's value. However, this is still just a few of us.
> what did l9th century medical researchers like Pasteur and Koch andLister owe to an intellectual heritage that was convinced that disease resultedfrom an imbalance in the four humors?
Well, PCT may be to PSYCHOLOGY as chemistry is to alchemy, but do youreally want to claim that of ST?
> PCTers are like Calvin -they are having a wonderful time with this big tiger, which the rest of theworld thinks is a stuffed toy.
Well put. Good luck. Don't get bit.
>[From Rick Marken (940306.1230)]
> But if you perceived it as scurrilous, ignorant, and gratuitous thenit was (for you).
Hmm, I sense a radical constructivist. Do you admit no objective meaning of"ignorant" (I'll give you "scurrilous")?
> Your heart's in the right place, Cliff. Keep up the good work.
Thank you. It's been, well, exciting.
><[Bill Leach 940306.10:43 EST(EDT)]
> A "scientist" that is unwilling to submit his work to "acid test" ofreality is no scientist.
Generally I agree. I'll just remind you, however, that ST has many"aspects", and one is the search for a universal modeling language. To thatextent, it is similar to mathematics, and then is, as Bill Powers oncesuggested, merely an internally consistent theory. If we called "mathematics"by "mathematics theory" or "mathematics science", would the same issues beraised for it? Correspondingly, we could call ST by "systematics" (alreadytaken), "systemology" (which a colleague of mine is using), or"systemics".
But, to some extent ST does aspire to be an empirical science, and thenyour criticism holds.
> My own impression of ST is that it generally has less substance thaneven "the laying on of hands". Naturally this opinion is based largely uponthe media popularization of Climate Models, Ozone Models, Population Models andthe like.
Now this is a bit involved. You probably know the following completely, butI'm not sure.
First, I am a systems theorist, and not a meteorologist, climatologist, orpopulation biologist. ST is concerned with models IN GENERAL, for example,dynamical models based on sets of interacting differential or differenceequations (these are the kind you refer to). But these modelers you cite areessentially doing APPLIED ST. So just as the mathematician is not responsiblefor a bad bridge design, so ST cannot be held responsible for bad modeling. Inparticular, every model is highly incomplete, with many sources of error,including bad structure, bad transfer functions, bad input data, highimprecision, high inaccuracy, and low tractability.
It is the responsibility of the specialist modeler to fess up to thesedomain-specificfacts, and deal with them as honestly as physical scientists do withuncertainty and error of experimental results, or pollsters with poll marginsof error. I have no comment on whether any particular modelers (e.g. NASAclimatologists) have or have not adhered to these standards.
That being said, scientific corroboration of models of complex systems isinherently different from traditional scientific reasoning. This is because thepillar of the scientific method, repeatability, does not generally hold withthem. We cannot run the US economy back to 1932 and consider what would havehappened without the New Deal; or try cutting CO2 emissions and seeing if itreally would help. With such systems, models are the ONLY source of predictivepower we can have, however uncertain and inaccurate they may be.
Finally on this point, risk analysis is dependent on the DUAL factors oflikelihood and cost. One should give as much credence to a high likelihood(highly certain), low cost outcome (it will rain tomorrow) as a low likelihood(highly uncertain), high cost outcome (global warming will floodManhattan).
> I could easily go on with my "tirade" against ST by adding myassertion that "they" have not only "sold out science" but humanityitself.
Well, then I guess your knowledge of ST is indeed as weak as Rick's. Mygosh, we're now not only a Threat to PCT but also an Enemy of thePeople.
> That many of the Systems Theorists actually believe that "the cause of'saving the world'" is more important than truth is only an excuse for them asindividuals. people with virtually no ethics and morality that became theleading figures of their respective fields by being "Politically Correct"rather than honest.
And exactly who would these people be, now?
> I'll take a Rick Marken any day.
Take my Rick Marken. . .please! ;->
> he has convinced me that he is dedicated to objective science
Have I of myself, as well?
> Until ST can become "respectable" with rational people instead of"popular" with politician, PCT would be well advised to maintain itsdistance.
Hey, someone phone my agent! ST is popular with politicians! And after allthese years I thought the term "unintended consequences" had barely penetratedpolitical language. . .
Honestly, Bill, your perception of what ST is is so far removed from my ownthat I find it difficult to respond. I would be VERY interesting to hear fromyou a concise description of exactly what you perceive ST to be.
>From tom Bourbon [940308.0920] via Rick Marken (Second try)
>> As bad as you people think you have it, we're worse ofsubstantively. All we have left is really the inheritance of our oldinstitutions: a few journals, a few professors, a few societies.
> Institutions? Journals? Professors? Where can we get some ofthose?!
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. The key word is "substantively". In other words,you have better "substance" (you're doing better work), while we continue tolive off the institutional capital acquired in the "golden age" of ST (1940-1970).
> *You* see PCT as part of first-ordercybernetics. That's fine. On this side, I'm not doing FOC. I'm doingPCT,
That's because you've got a GOOD MODEL. Remember, ST/Cyb is concerned withmodels of ALL KINDS. But once you get a good model to describe a particularphenomenon, then of course you settle on it, and mine it for all it's worth.You no longer have need for OTHER KINDS of models, and thus for ST/Cyb ingeneral. You're no longer doing the theory of systems in general, you're doingthe theory of CONTROL SYSTEMS in particular. You only venture back "up" intothe world of FOC when you call your basic architecture into question, or try toexplain it to people or relate it to OTHER kinds of systems. Thus my suggestionthat the real interface between ST and PCT is with the interaction of controland non-controlsystems, e.g. populations and organisms in their environments.
I wish I had a good analogy. I think Martin compared PCT to Fouriertransforms. Is someone dedicated to exploring the world of Fourier transformsstill doing mathematics?
> Frankly, I see *no direct way* in which the pre-1970'sST/Cyb movement is the intellectual heritage (forebear) of PCT.
Well, I guess we'll just disagree. I've explained this about as well as Ican. But see below.
> As for PCT being a chapter in ST/Cyb, that book and chapter must bewritten by someone else; we aren't even thinking about that linkage.
Certainly the book as a whole would be written by ST people. But if Iactually INVITED a paper for PUBLICATION (now think carefully!) in such a book,would you really turn me down? Nahh, PCT people ENJOY not being published! ;->
> at six recent issues of _Behavioral Science_, the old SGSRjournal.
The SGSR (now ISSS) has for a long time been unhappy with _BehavioralScience_ as their flagship journal. De facto that is now _Systems Research_.However, it will likely not please you either, if you could even get your handson a copy.
> You disagreed with me, then made my case. By "standard or commonlanguage" I meant one shared by ST people. There was no such animal, as yousay here.
More lack of clarity on my part. The Klirian language is standard in thesense that it is universal, i.e. can by applied to model anything (I'm notsaying it SUCCEEDED, but that it made progress). It is not standard in thesense that it is an "accepted" standard. It is standard like Esperanto, notEnglish; like Ada, not MS-DOS(yikes, I HATE ADA!). And of course, it is regrettably not common in anysense.
> The view from my location probably was very different from the one youencountered and constructed (do you see, Dan?) as a student of one of the"names" on the inside.
I actually quit my job and moved hundreds of miles to study with KlirBECAUSE I appreciated the language. But the point is taken.
> Different meeting. The first Gordon Conference on cybernetics was atWolfboro, NH; the second was at Oxnard, CA.
OK. BILL: who else was at Tilton?
> Temporal priority or contemporanaeity does not necessarily imply acommon line of descent.
All right, let's argue the semantics of "heritage". To my mind, this doesnot require lineal descent. First, I have argued, and Bill Leach agreed, thatin its SUBSTANCE PCT is a KIND of ST, as I've defined ST.
But even historically, there has clearly been SOME relation between PCT andST/Cyb (especially it's Cybernetic component) over the years. Mostly, PCT hasevolved to SOME extent in the general CONTEXT of ST/Cyb. The participation ofPCT people in ST/Cyb newsletters and conferences, if even to only rejectST/Cyb, is at least evidence of this. As noted, this relationship has notnecessarily been cooperative or even tolerant, let alone reciprocal, butnevertheless PRESENT. HAD I NOT BEEN A CYBERNETICIAN, I WOULD NEVER HAVE HEARDOF PCT OR MET THE POWERS! OK?
> It's obvious your nose is different from the noses of most otherST/Cybernetics people! :*)) <--CJ
Hmm. :ST))
Cliff Joslyn
Date: Wed Mar 16, 1994 7:41 am PST
Subject: Re: Finally, a reply on Systems Theory and PCT (windingdown?)
<[Bill Leach 940316.09:25 EST(EDT)] >[Cliff Joslyn, 940315]
> ... So just as the mathematician is not responsible for a bad bridgedesign, so ST cannot be held responsible for bad modeling. In particular, everymodel is highly incomplete, with ...
I will accept this in part. ST is not responsible for errors in applicationexcept that ST scientists should speak out against obvious misapplication andshould present a united front against their own that abuse the principles of STand science in general.
More to the point... we are not here talking about something so minor as abridge. We are talking about a particular field of science that is being usedas the justification for fundamental alterations of human society. Alterationsthat will involve trillions of dollars and billions of lives.
The problem is not "at the feet" of ST people exclusively by an means. Thereal problem is that as far as the interaction with the general public, sciencehas sold itself out. It seems that research dollars and fame have become muchmore important than truth itself.
My perception of Rick and others here is that while not necessarily high onthe diplomacy scale, they are VERY high on the integrity scale. I can notimagine Rick selling out PCT for either fame or money.
> It is the responsibility of the specialist modeler to fess up to...
Again, yes this is true but how many times have the members of afundamental science tried to correct errors in the application of "their"knowledge? My perception from my own study of the history of science is thatsuch effort has always been common. The "pure science" individual that totallyignores all applied science is rare not common.
> ...inherently different from traditional scientific reasoning. This isbecause the pillar of the scientific method, repeatability, does not generallyhold with them. We cannot run the US economy back to 1932 and consider whatwould have happened without the New Deal; or try cutting CO2 emissions and...
You are begging the issue with this one. Yes, as far as we know, you cannot rerun the economy from 1932. This only means that a particular method ofvalidation is not available not that there is NO rigorous validation possible.In my mind a "true Systems Theorist" would not consider a model reliable untilvalidated and even then would want to recognize the limits of the model'spredictive power.
> Risk analysis
Your statement on this is, in my opinion, quite correct. However, it istypically used in a highly misleading fashion. "I mean, like after all, thereis a finite probability that the SUN will stop fusioning tomorrow at noon. Wemust act NOW! Never mind that we don't know what is going on. Never mind thatwe have NO theories for either the problem or the 'solutions'... but onlyhypothesis that do NOT stand close examination."
> And exactly who would these people be, now?
I know that several of the names have appeared here in the postings ofothers but I would have to do a bit of research myself to find them (your namewas not in the group :-)).
>> he has convinced me that he is dedicated to objectivescience
> Have I of myself, as well?
No, not yet, but you show promise (besides, you obviously have earned therespect of at least several others here).
> Honestly, Bill, your perception of what ST is is so far removed frommy own that I find it difficult to respond. I would be VERY interesting to hearfrom you a concise description of exactly what you perceive ST to be.
Actually, I think it would be more interesting to hear what you consider STto be... more useful too.
-bill
Date: Fri Mar 25, 1994 9:37 pm PST
Subject: To Bill Leach on dynamic modeling
[Cliff Joslyn 940325] >[Bill Leach 940322.18:35 EST(EDT)]
> Ok, then you tell me... Where in the HELL are these insane "models"coming from that continually predict the end of civilization about once a weekon the evening news? How about Jay Forrester, Dennis and Donna Meadows? (allfrom MIT, from an easy source).
OK, now we're getting somewhere. Jay Forrester is in fact a systemstheorist, and in fact forms a link from the dynamic modeling crowd to ST. Iwould point to George Richardson (_Feedback Thought_, U Penn, 1991) as hisintellectual descendant, although he's more of a micro-modeler.
I regret that I am not deeply knowledgeable about Forrester's specific work(e.g. _Industrial Dynamics_, _World Dynamics_), other than knowing generallyabout dynamic modeling methods and his DYNAMO language. While I believe thathis work has been influential on others, I do not believe that it has been soin his capacity as a general systems theorist, but rather for his specificmethods. He is not a current active modeler (is he even alive?).
I'm a bit more familiar with the Meadows' work. I don't believe that theydraw from ST specifically, except to the extent mentioned above that they buildon Forrester's work. My understanding is that _Limits to Growth_, from 1972, istruly apocalyptic, and also rather crude. It was highly influential,undoubtedly beyond its true significance, just because it was novel.
It should be noted that truly GLOBAL models like the Meadows', linkinghuman and non-humanmacro-ecologywith economics, are quite rare. This is partly because validation abilitydecreases with generality. So they have little competition that would naturallyserve a self-correctingfeedback function in a scientific community.
However, their work also fostered a huge, mostly POLITICAL, backlash, muchof which was also undeserved. Their current book _Beyond the Limits_ is anattempt to improve their model and also answer their critics. I heard theminterviewed on the radio, and they seemed to have a fine scientific attitude.The controversy surrounding them remains highly politicized.
> Cliff, I doubt very much that I would really want to argue with youabout the value of ST as I suspect that you practice the field.
Indeed. I try to. Well, at least I CLAIM to. To the extent I can get PAIDto do it. You know, kind of like control theory. ;->
> Since you seem quite at home here then I must assume that you hold theprinciples of modeling real systems as put forth most eloquently by BillPowers as supreme.
I hold the Powers' model of the architecture of living (but not all REAL)systems as a central, but not the sole, part of my intellectual world view,based as it is on systems theory and cybernetics.
> Research into other aspects of modeling do not bother me. It is onlywhen someone CLAIMS to have valid predictions about a physical process using amodel that is CLAIMED to be a physical process model but that by demonstrationhas PROVEN that it is NOT such a model, that makes my blood boil!
Well yes, that would be a problem. Do you have an example?
Cliff Joslyn
Date: Sat Mar 26, 1994 3:49 pm PST
Subject: Re: To Bill Leach on dynamic modeling
<[Bill Leach 940326.13:22 EST(EDT)] >[Cliff Joslyn 940325]
Cliff;
Thanks for the excellent response message. I suppose that it is probablyoften that a scientist finds that once he (or she) has "said something" to themedia, that it is all but impossible to correct misinterpretation. The isunfortunately yet another "attitude" expressed by many members of thescientific community and that is the idea that a "little stretching" of thetruth is "an overall good" if it results in (additional) funding.
Add to that the conduct of people like Dr. Sagan, Dr. Lovis, Dr. Schneiderand others that flatly admit that "not revealing doubts", "stretching thetruth" and outright "activism" or legitimate concerns of science. Mix that inwith a bit of media hype and you have a situation where rational people beginto wonder about the entire "scientific community"... wonder if their integrityis no greater than that of typical politician!
> I hold the Powers' model of the architecture of living (but not allREAL) systems as a central, but not the sole, part of my intellectual worldview, based as it is on systems theory and cybernetics.
Maybe it is I that is overly simplistic but just what is wrong with Bill'sstandards for ANY 'real world' model?
I don't see his view as being a problem with using other modelingtechniques as long as one recognizes that when models disagree with reality,you can claim neither "reality being wrong" (and yes there are those that do),nor that the model is necessarily "telling" you anything useful short of "youdon't know what is going on."
I don't have a problem with statistical models BTW, but INSIST that onerecognize that such models potentially suffer from serious deficiencies when itcomes to prediction. That does not mean that they are not useful nor evenreliable. It does mean however, that their very usefulness and reliability canbe the very "source" of misunderstanding about actual processes.
>> Models
> Well yes, that would be a problem. Do you have an example?
The very climate models that we have been talking about for starters. Theso called "Atmospheric Ozone" models for another.
-bill
Date: Wed Mar 30, 1994 7:21 pm PST
Subject: Re: To Bill Leach on dynamic modeling
> Thanks for the excellent response message.
You're welcome. But flattering me can be dangerous. I already think toohighly of myself. ;->
> Maybe it is I that is overly simplistic but just what is wrong withBill's standards for ANY 'real world' model?
I'm not sure I have any problem w/Bill's "standards". All I meant was thatthere are some things in the world that are not control systems. To study thesethings you need to use something other than the Power's negative feedbackcontrol system model.
> I don't see his view as being a problem with using other modelingtechniques as long as one recognizes that when models disagree with reality,you can claim neither "reality being wrong" (and yes there are those that do),nor that the model is necessarily "telling" you anything useful short of "youdon't know what is going on."
Yes, IF you have COMPLETE confidence in your measurement methods. That'sone of the hallmarks of PCT and constructivism in general: you can only controlwhat you can perceive. The rest is not unique to Bill, it's just Epistemology101.
> I don't have a problem with statistical models BTW, but INSIST thatone recognize that such models potentially suffer from serious deficiencieswhen it comes to prediction.
Statistical models produce statistical predictions. 'Nuff said.
Cliff Joslyn
Date: Thu Feb 23, 1995 8:22 pm PST
Subject: Discomforts (from Mary)
[from Mary Powers 9502.23]
I've been feeling uncomfortable about a few things that have recentlyappeared on the net. Maybe it would be best to simply ignore them, but silencehere usually indicates acceptance.
4. Marc Abrams (950223):
What is the "new paradigm" that the people on the Learning OrganizationList support?
It seems to me that if a new world view is developing, the least itrequires is that where the expertise of the various proponents intersects,there should be some agreement. Powers drew inspiration from Ashby and Weiner,but disagrees with them in a number of fundamental ways. Von Bertalanffy didn'thave a clue about how a control system works. Varela has been dismissive andcondescending about PCT, and Maturana pretty reluctant to see any connectionbetween his work and Powers'.
There's a big difference between talking about a world view -excuse me, worldview -and developing a model that aims to explain how one goes about having aworldview, whether of a clockwork world, or a self-organizing-systemworld, or a god-created world, or any other kind that comes to mind. This is why the group ofpeople interested in control theory didn't cut much ice at cybernetics meetings -we were so technical and material, and they were so full of the warmphilosophical fuzzies ("you're talking about control? Eeuuww, eecchhh!). ...Whywe packed up and went off on our own to continue being (ta-daaa!)The Control Systems Group.
Mary P.