We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
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Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#2My PhD thesis was about the extension of smooth functions. In the 1960s, ideas in this area were studied under the umbrella of ideals of smooth functions, and had applications to catastrophe theory. So I spent some time reading about this topic. If you want a reading recommendation, the book "Differentiable Germs and Catastrophes" I remember being good, as well as "Stable Mappings and their Singularities".
I bring this up because I believe that at the time catastrophe theory was seen as a "widely-applicable science of systems". Or at least some practitioners tried to sell it as such. This point of view eventually soured to the detriment of catastrophe theory, which cleared out. I don't think this was a good thing: catastrophe theory (the study of the singularities of smooth maps and their consequences to dynamical systems) is an interesting topic with many remaining open questions. But it was seen as cringe that people were, e.g., using Whitney's classification of the generic singularities of planar maps to try to say something about predator/prey dynamics or whatever. Any claim about applications of catastrophe theory was infected with this stink, and so people lost interest in it.
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#3My PhD thesis was about the extension of smooth functions. In the 1960s, ideas in this area were studied under the umbrella of ideals of smooth functions, and had applications to catastrophe theory. So I spent some time reading about this topic. If you want a reading recommendation, the book "Differentiable Germs and Catastrophes" I remember being good, as well as "Stable Mappings and their Singularities". I bring th…
Thank you for your very interesting comment and the reading recommendation.
I agree with your general sentiment that chasing "wide applicability" or trying to force a narrative that xyz theory will explain xyz might be hugely detrimental.
I agree my post and many discussions about complex systems, specifically one in an evangelic-type light might be over-optimistic.
We definitely must approach all work on such a theory with careful attempts not to overhype it. My post was an attempt to lay out some interesting possibilities.
We must remain optimistic anyway but I will be more careful in this regard going forward. Thanks again.
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#4Somewhat related, I feel like the book Thinking in Systems should be taught in high school
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#5> How does the body react to imbalances in some internally-relevant biomarkers?
How systems regulate themselves (and also perpetuate themselves) is the question behind cybernetics, and in the organisational context, management cybernetics. The problem generalises way beyond biology. The information theoretic and control implications are fascinating.
(I’m writing a book on the subject; ping me if interested)
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#6Somewhat related, I feel like the book Thinking in Systems should be taught in high school https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902
Absolutely.
Broadly, I wonder what leads to schools not adopting emerging fields as part of the formal curriculum. Interesting to note even in 2021, only 51% US k12 high schools were found to have a CS course. Does not seem like a capital problem to me. Is this just inertia or a legibility problem?
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#7I wonder if you're looking for cybernetics? The original meaning from the 1940s, not the corrupted science fiction shibboleth. Wikipedia - "The initial focus of cybernetics was on parallels between regulatory feedback processes in biological and technological systems...Wiener introduced the neologism cybernetics to denote the study of 'teleological mechanisms'."
Wikipedia suggests it lost a lot of drive in part because AI and computer science split off from it.
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#8> How does the body react to imbalances in some internally-relevant biomarkers? How systems regulate themselves (and also perpetuate themselves) is the question behind cybernetics, and in the organisational context, management cybernetics. The problem generalises way beyond biology. The information theoretic and control implications are fascinating. (I’m writing a book on the subject; ping me if interested)
Yes! I think it was a parallel study between nervous systems and electrical engineering principles by Wiener et al. that kickstarted cybernetics?
Interesting! Will ping you!
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#9To me, Christopher Alexander's work comes closest to describing "systems science". I recommend Notes on the Synthesis of Form, The Timeless Way of Building, and then skipping to the Nature of Order series.
I'm of the opinion right now that what we call "design" and "architecture" is really just the science of finding stable habitable zones in high-dimensional problem spaces.
What's cool about Alexander's work is that he makes a great case that this stuff is objective phenomena that can be studied!
I'm planning to write much more about Christopher Alexander on my own blog in the future, but meanwhile I can recommend Dorian Taylor's excellent works:
• https://the.natureof.software
I gave a talk on this subject at DDD Europe this year, so keep your eyes out for "Timeless Way of Software - Taylor Troesh" on their YouTube channel :)
Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
#10I wonder if you're looking for cybernetics? The original meaning from the 1940s, not the corrupted science fiction shibboleth. Wikipedia - "The initial focus of cybernetics was on parallels between regulatory feedback processes in biological and technological systems...Wiener introduced the neologism cybernetics to denote the study of 'teleological mechanisms'." Wikipedia suggests it lost a lot of drive in part becau…
Yes. I'm aware.
I think cybernetics has definitely drifted away from what the original scope was, also I think modern interpretations of cybernetics-ish ideas and complex system studies are slowly also incorporating social sciences and economics and so on.
Interesting to note that if you look for journals on cybernetics, most papers are closer to EE, Deep Learning and some telecommunications here and there, if that constitutes as a good metric of how much the semantic meaning has shifted from its original identity.