Transcription
The scientific revolution is happening right now, but it is a quiet one. In this video, we will take a look at the revolution of the system theoretical perspective. You maybe heard terms like system thinking, systems philosophy, or systems theory. And in this video, I want to give you an overview of all these theories and why are they so important for our society and our science perspective right now.
Most revolutions we know hitting like a bomb. They have a name, they have a year, or specific person like Copernicus, Einstein, or Darwin. And then there are revolutions no one even announced. Not because they don't matter, but because they don't happen within a single field.
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Systems theory is the second kind. There's no manifesto, there's no headline, there's also no specific person you will name if you say systems theory. There are just thousands of researchers slowly starting to speak the same language. And this poll doesn't stay in the lab. You can feel it everywhere in the society. A wish [music] to see things as a whole again, like in systematic psychotherapy, in holistic medicine, in the growing call for interdisciplinarity, for a way of thinking that doesn't stop at the borders of disciplines. So, system thinking in general is becoming more and more popular. And maybe the same poll even shows up in the growing search for spirituality. For me, that could be a sign that more and more people are asking about the larger connections in the universe, asking for answers that the dominant scientific perspective hasn't been able to give them. And all of that can be gathered under the single headline, the systems theoretical perspective.
But what does this actually mean? Let's take a look at a simple example. Let's look at a tree. If you try to really explain a tree, you'll quickly end up at a whole list of things that aren't the tree at all. The sun delivers the energy, a fungal network beneath the roots supplies it with nutritions, without that network it can't even survive. And to reproduce, it depends on wind or animals. So, >> [music] >> the tree can't be described from itself alone. It can't be traced back to a single cause and a single effect either. The way that standard scientific perspective would. Because the world is made of infinitely [music] many causal connections woven together horizontally between things, vertically across levels from atoms to cells to trees to forest and [music] so on.
But if you want to understand why this way of thinking is so revolutionary, we first have to understand the opposite of it. >> [music] >> The way of thinking that has ruled the last few centuries. This is called reductionism. And [music] to understand reductionism, we need to go back to the 17th century. Back to a man who has essentially laid the foundation that all of modern science is built on. His name is René Descartes. Maybe you have heard his name. And [music] Descartes is splitting the world into two fundamentally different substances. The mind, [music] the res cogitans, and the matter, the res extensa. The inner world, thoughts, feeling, consciousness on one side, and then you have the outer measurable physical world on the other. So, we have two realms strictly separated, and this separation is called Cartesian dualism. [music] And from it followed an enormously practical consequence. >> [music] >> If matter is completely separate from mind, if it has no soul, no inner perspective, [music] then you can take it apart, measure it, and analyze it without having account for anything immaterial. And this is exactly what we did, following the motto, the whole is the sum of its parts. So, a little later, Isaac Newton built on Descartes and delivered the matching worldview. The universe is one gigantic clockwork, precise, predictable, mechanical. >> [music] >> If you know the laws, and Newton provided them, then in principle, you can calculate any state of the universe, past and future alike. So, this was an incredibly powerful picture, and it worked. Out of it grew the principle that dominates the science to this day, called reductionism. The core idea is simple. If you want to understand a complex system, break it down into parts, understanding the parts, and then you understand the whole. A body, break it down into organs, organs into cells, cells into molecules, molecules into atoms, and so on, until you have quarks and electrons. And if you understand quarks and electrons, you understand the universe as a whole. And this approach worked [music] better than anyone could have ever imagined. We decoded human genome, we built anonymous machines like the particle accelerator at CERN, we are raising skyscrapers into the sky. So, we can say reductionism is one of the most successful methods humanity has ever developed.
But, as we saw before, there is a problem here. The parts alone don't explain the whole. So, let's take a look at the simple example. Let's take a neuron, >> [music] >> a single brain cell. You can describe it completely. It runs on chemical reactions and the electrical signals it uses to communicate with other neurons. There's no problem at all. But, how do billions of these neurons give rise to a thought or a memory or the feeling of >> [music] >> hearing music and getting goosebumps? Maybe something like we would call consciousness. So, the parts don't explain that. Somewhere between the parts and the interplays, something arises that isn't contained in any single part. Because it's a little bit complex, let's take a look at another example. If you take a hurricane, [music] a hurricane is made out of nothing but air and water. Countless molecules on their own swirling around in disorder. Not a single one of them knows anything about a storm. And yet, [music] out of the interplay, a vast, astonishingly stable structure emerges. A vortex that holds its shape for days, travels across thousands of kilometers, and that order isn't in any single molecule at all. It only arises in the interplay between the parts. And this is called emergence. And this is the first great riddle that reductionism can solve. So, that doesn't mean that Descartes or Newton were wrong. Their approach was brilliant and remains indispensable, [music] but it does mean that they captured only one part of reality. The part that can be taken apart. But, what happens to [music] the part that disappears in the taking apart, if you know what I'm trying to say? >> [music] >> So, to the patterns, to the connections, to the relationships between the parts. Now, we understand that reductionism separated everything from everything else. So, [music] we have to bring the puzzle pieces back together. And this is exactly what system theory does. [music] It comes down to a simple but far-reaching insight. The individual scientific disciplines >> [music] >> can't be thought of independently of another. Partly because everything is connected >> [music] >> and partly because the same phenomena shows up across completely different disciplines. >> [music] >> Phenomena that really ought to be gathered on the one shared concept.
>> It is uh inculcated by our great universities who believe there's such a thing as psychology which is different from sociology and such a thing as anthropology which is different from both and that the world is made of separable items of knowledge by a series of disconnected questions in which if you were a student you could be examined. And the first point I want to get over to you is that the world is not like that at all. Or let us be more polite. The world in which I live is not like that at all. >>
To make this last point clear, we already look at the tree and its environment and saw how quickly we run into non-biological components like wind and sun that are actually part of the same system. But there's an even nicer example, the self-organization of living systems. >> [music] >> Our body does it. Our brain does it. Human society does it. And so does an ant colony. They all organize and regulate themselves. So, at the core the same thing's happening everywhere and yet a different discipline takes care of each case. Biology for the body or also for the ant colony. Neurology for the brain. Psychology for the individual. Sociology for the society. And economics for the markets. These five [music] describing at the bottom the same phenomena. And this is exactly why the system theoretical perspective is so valuable. It lifts the interdisciplinarity [music] between the science to a whole 'nother level and maybe brings the fields that have driven further and further apart in the last few centuries a little closer together.
But there's a problem if you want to understand the system theoretical approach. There are so many different people using so many different terms and theories that before anything else we have to clean these things up. So when I talk about systems theory, I mean first and foremost the system [music] theoretical perspective. Guess burning the world as one complex and connected system and turning our attention to the interactions between its parts. So this is why I would put this on the very top because it's in perspective. It's the umbrella term, the most general formulation, the view of the world as one connected system. Underneath it I would place three further terms and maybe you also have heard of them. They are called system [music] theory, system theoretical thinking and finally systems philosophy.
So if we take a look at the first one, the system theory, these are all the system science refers to hard science, the disciplines that concretely research, measure [music] it, describing it mathematically. The theories that make it up though are incredibly numerous. They sometimes contradict each other, use different words for the same phenomena or each illuminate just one aspect of the perspective. [music] The will to describe the world in system terms is there but it's still fragmented >> [music] >> and it comes from very different camps.
If you take a look at the second term, the system thinking by contrast is more of a craft for me. Systems [music] theory applied to specific concrete areas like psychology, health or even management. Or on personal level you can find many videos on system thinking on how you organize, situate and make sense of your own life.
And finally, there's a system philosophy. I would also call it holism, even though some philosophers would probably fight me on that equation. But, it is a useful category, and it helps make sense of things. It dares to go beyond the hard science. It asks about implications. What metaphysical perspectives follow from all this? What ethical ones? And what role [music] does consciousness maybe play in the universe? Thinkers like Whitehead belong here quite naturally with his process philosophy. A metaphysics built on process and relations rather than fixed substance. And in a broader sense, I would even trace back it to Hegel, who tried to systematize the fundamental mechanisms of reality itself. A whole that unfolds through contradiction and change.
I know this is all a little bit more dry stuff, but last but not least, we have to take a look into the different theories and perspectives that have grown out of the system theoretical perspective. For this reason, I've tried to gather these theories into the funnel model. This model should have been viewed critically for several reasons because it simplifies a lot, but I think it gives a good visual overview of system theoretical and holistic theories. The funnel is sorts from scientific established at the bottom all the way up to esoteric and mystical perspective at the top, which I have deliberately included here as a holistic perspective too because I believe people tried long ago to grasp the world as a complex fabric of systems and using symbolic maybe rudimentary non-scientific magical language. With the rise of the reductionist science we discussed earlier, these older holistic ways of thinking fell into oblivion. And yet, for me, they remain fascinating to this day >> [music] >> because they keep reaching back towards the fundamental questions of being.
So, let's move quickly through the funnel from the bottom At the very bottom, where the funnel hasn't opened yet, sits reductionism. You could also say atomism or classical physics. Here the world is still reduced entirely to its individual parts, like we said. Where the funnel begins to open, we find the most widely accepted scientific theories that already taken holistic systems theoretical view. They mostly mathematically acceptable and play important role in science right now. Theories like dissipative structures, which are awarded for the Nobel Prize, the chaos [music] theory used to describe like fluctuations in water or air in weather patterns or ocean currents. Also, we have the game theory, which tries to understand the interplay of actors, [music] for instance, in financial markets. And last but not least, we have the cybernetics, which laid the foundations of machines and artificial intelligence.
On a level higher, come theories that are discussed in science, but not yet fully accepted, and that nonetheless find broad resonance among many established researchers. So, at first we have the integrated information [music] theory, the IIT, which wants to understand information as the most fundamental event in the universe. Consciousness arises wherever a system integrates information to an especially higher degree. The more connected and integrated, the more conscious. Then we have the panpsychism, which suspects a striving towards consciousness in every single part of the universe, one that thought self-organization eventually leads to conscious living systems. And also, I want to name the process philosophy going back to Whitehead, which understands reality not as a collection of fixed things, but as an ongoing process of becoming.
Above that sits theories that have found broadly public resonance, [music] but aren't really scientifically accepted. They link scientific reasoning with spiritual traditions. I know this sounds a maybe like a little bit crazy, but if you look into them more closely, they still have their justification in my view, because they challenging our traditional Western picture of science and maybe [music] try to cross exactly the boundaries that can't yet be thought at universities. Like Fritjof Capra connects physics with Taoism.
>> The Cartesian-Newtonian worldview is embodied in our social institutions >> [music] >> and forms the basis of our approach to the major problems of our time. That we're using a fragmented, mechanistic, reductionistic worldview to understand and deal with the world around us. What we need is a holistic or ecological worldview which takes into account the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and activities and the world as a process rather than as a rigid structure. >>
But yet you have to handle these theories critically if you want to understand the system theoretical perspective seriously. [music] And at the very top stands the mystical and spiritual traditions themselves, which I think become interesting again the moment we read them as an early form of system theoretical perspective. Because, here's what I believe, it was [music] always the human drive to grasp the universe as one connected, self-organizing system. What I want to show is that this actually a much older, much more fundamental perspective, one we are rediscovering right now through our science and technical progress. And as I said, people from all kind of disciplines, professions, and backgrounds are realizing today that [music] we have to grasp the world from this perspective. Economy, society, health as one connected, holistic whole. But as fascinating I find this perspective that reach beyond our current picture of science on this channel I want to stay scientific. So, I will go into the history of these scientific theories, which are at the very bottom, in detail in another video on its own. But that would burst the frame of this video here.
So, last but not least, I want to close this video by underlining the ethical implications of the system theoretical perspective. Like I said, it is more than a tool for understanding the world and its complexity. You can also grasp it as a philosophical way of thinking, like I mentioned before, [music] one from which quite concrete ethical stances can be derived. First of all, it becomes clear we can't consider our environment as separate from ourselves. [music] We are part of the system and that is why we have to protect our environment. That also includes social equality. Because system works better when all of its parts are doing well, >> [music] >> like in a human body. And it becomes clear that we shouldn't presume to fully control nature. Every massive intervention can lead to a chaotic tripping point that can be no longer be calculated. Instead, we should intervene less forcefully in nature, trust in self-organization, question power structures, and live in harmony with our environment.
But, the problem is there's an opposite reading, maybe you can call it an evil reading, of the system theoretical perspective. This one is a technocratic one. It mainly extends from cybernetics and it treats humans and their environment as a machine. Whoever understanding its parts can steer it at all will. From this perspective, even totalitarian system come to seem permissible. The human as a machine part and the ruler as an engineer exercising full control over every decision. [music] I especially want to mention thinkers like Peter Thiel because they stand for this stance. He has openly doubt that freedom and democracy are even compatible. And with companies like Palantir, he helped building an entire infrastructure for data surveillance. You can also find the same technocratic vision within the World Economic Forum. A world steered by experts and data, which means a society as a system that can be optimized from top down. I would call it technofeudalism, digital surveillance, technical control of nature, they all follow this logic.
But, there's hope. This is exactly where the illuminating power of self-organization and chaos theory [music] comes back into play because they show us turning all the knobs at once and trying to control people from above leads straight into chaos. A complex system can't be steered like a machine. The system theoretical revolution is quiet, but it may change how we see the world more profoundly than any loud revolution before it. And perhaps, before we keep pushing forward the technological development with AI or other machines, we should first work on understanding the world and our [music] place in it.
Yeah, thank you for watching this video. This is my first video. If you look to the end, I'm really proud of you. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe. You can also comment on this video what I should be do better next time. I know I read the text from the screen. So, yeah, I'm slowly trying to explain system theory and I want to get better in describing this topic. So, if you have some ideas or topics you want me to talk about, please >> [music] >> write it in the comments. Have a great day. See you again. Bye.