System theories

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System theories

• Lily Diaz, Mauri Kaipainen
• Media Laboratory,
• University of Art and Design Helsinki

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Outline

• Etymology
• Classic ideas of systems
• Modern system theories
• Bridges to human sciences
• Bridges to design

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1. Background
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System

• systema (gr.), combination, entity
• Aristotle an entity is more than the sum of its
  parts
• Later a system organized in a particular manner

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Complex systems

• multiple interacting components
• recurrent feedback, systems having impact on
  their own behavior
• nonlinear behavior
• non-determinism

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Classical idea of a system

• Descartes as the central figure
• looking for indivisible basic elements to which a
  system can be reduced, as parts of a clock
  mechanism
• Problem of complexity The problem of reducing
  to elements
• living organism machines (!)
• relations of elements mechanically defined
• rigid causality, determinism
• dominating until 19th century

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2. Background for system theories

• Revolutionary ideas breaking the Cartesian
  determinism

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Evolution theory

• Darwin
• A non-linear theory of how the species evolve and
  develop

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Dialectic method

• Hegel, Marx, Engels
• Explaining evolution, development and
  regularities in nature, society, and philosophy
• with dipoles, contrasts, dichotomies, mutual
  interactions - dialect

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3. Modern system theories

• Heylighen the transdisciplinary study of the
  abstract organization of phenomena, independent
  of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal
  scale of existence. It investigates both the
  principles common to all complex entities, and
  the (usually mathematical) models which can be
  used to describe them.

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Dynamic systems theory

• J.C. Maxwell
• System behavior described as stationary
• state vectors
• state space
• state variables
• Change between system states described as
• differential equations

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General systems theory - cybernetics

• von Bertalanffy (1973), or. statistical methods
  of thermodynamics
• systems are open to their environments,
• interact with their environments,
• can acquire qualitatively new properties through
  emergence
• continual evolution not identical repetition of
  states

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Cybernetics

• kybernetes (Gr.), gubernator (Lat.) steersman

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Cybernetics, Wiener (1948)

• science of communication and control of the
  animal and the machine
• world as one big feedback system
• machine that changes its responses based on
  feedback is a machine that learns
• media and cybermedia (learning and self-steering
  media)

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Cybernetics, Ashby (1956)

• homeostat
• law of requisite variety The larger the variety
  of actions available to a control system, the
  larger the variety of perturbations it is able to
  compensate.
• principle of self-organization "every isolated,
  determinant dynamic system obeying unchanging
  laws will develop organisms that are adapted to
  their environments."

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4. Neocybernetics

• Focus from communication and control to
  interaction

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Autopoiesis

• includes the observer as a participant in and
  part of the observed system
• systems create and re-create their own boundaries
  (autopoiesis, Maturana Varela 1980)

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Perceptual cycle

• Neisser (1967, 1976)
• Schema
• directs
• Exploration
• samples
• Object
• modifies schemas

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Dynamic Patterns

• Kelso 1995
• How chaotic, non- linear dynamics of
  heterogeneous neural structures may self organize
  
• in order to develop patterns of behavior

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Mind as motion

• Port 1995

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Bibliography

• Course bibliography, see course site