Systems and Individuals

‘System’ is a key philosophical concept, which in the 18th century became indissolubly linked with the philosophical problem of individuation. Individuation is the problem of determining how individuals are individualized, taking on discrete identities. Why did the concept of system become linked with the problem of individuation? Individuation presumes that there are individuals. That is, contrary to some monism of substance, if we accept that there are individuals, then we challenge the notion of the whole. Of course, questions of parts and wholes, the one and the many, are as ancient as philosophical thinking itself. Yet the problem of individuation flourished in the philosophical literature only with the demise of religion, or, the idea that one substance maintained a relationship of primacy, generally causal, with respect to all others. As soon as credence was given to the notion that individuals have viable being, in themselves, the conventional notion of system, as a whole or unity of nature, was undermined. Thus, system philosophy is not about the unity or wholeness of the world. Rather, it endorses the view that the world is composed of gaps, fissures, and relations among parts without any ultimate coherence. Systems philosophy is an attempt to grasp a world of multiplicity, and even the etymology of the term system suggests that a system is a unity *of* differences. That said, system philosophy does endorse the idea that multiplicity and difference, a world of individuals, may nonetheless be thought, or conceptualized, in some consistent way. When the idea that the concept of system no longer describes the whole, or the set of all sets, rises to prominence, what comes into being is a set of conceptual tools developed matching in complexity with a world without some holistic finality.
The problem of individuation itself used to describe a world where individuals were basic, indivisible substances, or atoms. In such a world, relations among individuals matter less than cataloging the basic atoms of being, and little attention is paid to the processes undergone by individuals. Such processes can only be accidents of substance, not the essence of individuals. However, research in systems in the 19th and 20th century, as well as the undermining of the world of classical thermodynamics towards a vision of dynamic systems at far-from-equilibrium conditions without final ends or stases, showed the limits of understanding individuals as basic substances. One might think of the importance of the theory of ‘elective affinities’ among chemical substances, an invention of 19th century chemistry, which placed primacy not in individual substances, but in the relations between substances. Iron (Fe) is defined less by the number of protons it carries than by the fact that it undergoes very different changes in its properties in the presence of atmospheric oxygen (rust) versus in the cells of living organisms (nutrient). Thus, studying chemical substances became a question of stoichiometrical relationships in dynamic interactions and processes. The reductionistic study of individual atoms gave way to the study of relations and processes in dynamic interactions. If an individual (an atom, a tree, a society) were to reveal the secrets of its identity and its behavior, it must be related systemically to other individuals. A systemic conception of individuality meant understanding individuals as results and processes generated in dynamic interactions. In this way, the traditional concept of individuality was shown to reflect an already-individuated effect of systemic being, and that examining the systemic relations and processes that generate individuality granted a richer conception of individuality.
Thinking systemically called traditional scientific concepts of linear causality, determinism, and reductionism into question, replacing them with notions of circular causality, self-organization, indeterminacy, and the unpredictable emergence of order from disorder. Thinking systemically meant working toward developing a unified theory and methodological approach to investigate not just the classical simplicities of the mechanistically structured material world, but also the complexities of biological, cognitive, and even social systems. Thus was set into motion a new, post-Newtonian scientific paradigm for research.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, studying systems, whether in science or philosophy, goes hand in hand with addressing problems specific to:
1. The self-organization of complex systems and
2. Their self-regulation through operations such as feedback
3. The passage between the differing levels of integration of a system;
4. The modalities of openness and closure of a system (system boundaries);
5. The question of teleology and finality;
6. The concept of code or information.
Systems, on the parameters listed above, presuppose the following assumptions
1) individuals are results of systems;
2) systems articulate relations and processes;
3) an individual is the generated result of systemic relations and processes;
4) following 1-3, if we want to explain how individuals are individualized (take on particular identities), we must first think of individuals as systems.

Systems: science vs philosophy #2

Here's what New Morning had to say;

Philosophers understand systems in ways similar to scientists. However, whereas scientists tend to use systemic analyses, philosophers question the significance of such analyses. As well, philosophers inquire into the *concept* of systems. That is, philosophers tend to care less about this or that system and more about the generic being of a system. What are systems, uberhaupt?-- This is a philosopher's question. In the above description of systems from Jackson's post there is an implicit understanding of the nature and function of systems. A philosopher would concern himself with what is left implicit in Jackson's understanding of system and ask if there were any *presuppositions* about the nature and function of systems. These presuppositions might obscure a larger understanding of systems. A philosopher might wonder if *all* systems operate in relation to external boundaries, or if only a certain species of systems do, such as autopoietic systems, or dynamical systems which constantly receive inputs of energy or matter in order to maintain themselves. Might then the scientists too specific understanding of systems obscure his research of systems that do not function by drawing a boundary from an environment, such as self-referential systems or the system of all systems?

But it is indeed the case that the dominant, and also current, scientific understanding of systems is one where systems are defined against external boundaries. Apart from grand theories of the universe that define the whole of the world systemically, or the curious and quirky Gaia hypothesis, it seems the case that we live in a world defined by systems that operate due to their capacity to distinguish themselves from their environments through the use of boundaries, such as plant and animal cells, brains, languages, the economy, etc.

I think ecosystem science is moving toward the direction of examining implicit assumptions of systems study. But we haven't found it not too necessary because evidence can convince a lot of people in science. I think ecosystem scientists feel less of a need to examine them because we can test the functions of a system without knowing what are all the implicit assumptions or the general principles governing all other systems. And, unlike philosophers, scientists are interested in the contents of a system than the system itself.

Systems: science vs philosophy

I think the word "system" means differently to scientists and philosophers, but I fear scientists are missing out on some good stuff without understanding the difference. So here, I describe the scientist's use of the word "system". How is it different?

Scientists use the word to put a boundary on nature. Forest system or catchment system (in ecosystem science) elects a boarder to segregate what's inside of it for easier understanding. Forests from grasslands for example. Or one catchment from another in different parts of a continent. It reduces the variables involved and makes it easier to conceptualize and experiment. Inter system comparisons can help too. It highlights common processes that might explain bigger system like the terrestrial system. It can also explain why the systems differ. But the underlying aim of the systems science is to reveal main influences to an outcome. Why does the tropics have more trees than the deserts? Mainly because of more water favors a type of photosynthesis that waste water but makes more carbon molecules.

There certainly limits to this way of thinking. Just because an area has more water doesn't always mean it will have trees. Traditional (eco)system science describes steady or equilibrium states well but not dynamic and uncertain conditions. So the ecosystem scientists are starting to use probabilities (Bayesian statistics) to describe systems and more so to predict it's behavior. In a way, this tries to simulate the complexities of a system rather than simplify it. The question "what would happen to plants in an area if CO2 increased?" can be better understood using Bayesian method. But I'm not quite sure if this is truly "understanding".

Now, how is this different from philosopher's understanding of a system?

We still have quite a bit to learn from the German Idealists about systems, and system-building, about the nature and limits of systemic thought. Perhaps the greatest lesson of the German Idealists is that 'system philosophy,' also commonly referred to as 'systems thinking,' systemics, or 'systems theory' (to be distinguished from the sociological systems theory of thinkers such as Niklas Luhmann), etc., encourages both good scepticism toward already-received knowledge, challenging thought's tendency to get locked up in intractable aporias or the doxa of everyday opinion and offers the type of synthesis of the special disciplines that unites our knowledge so that it might be coordinated and applied for a diversity of practical purposes. System philosophy ought to be distinguished from the system sciences, however, because system philosophy maintains a critical stance toward the results of scientific research. Where system sciences collect knowledge, system philosophy asks about the _significance_ of this knowledge.
Systems philosophy in the 20th and 21st centuries has been partially obscured by the dominance of systems sciences and their 'theoretical' practices. Klir (1965):

The concept of system is one of the most widely used concepts in science, particularly in recent times. It is encountered in nearly all the fundamental fields of science, e.g., in physics, chemistry, mathematics, logic, cybernetics, economy, linguistics, biology, psychology and also in the majority of engineering branches. We are concerned with a very general concept.

System sciences grew out of a larger ‘unity of science movement of 1920s-40s.’ Systems philosophy in the 20th century was able to benefit from this movement, rejuvenating itself by consulting the theoretical efforts of the so-called ‘General Systems Theory' (Bertalanffy, Laszlo), and the researches of the cybernetics and information theory movements. General Systems Theory (GTS) called traditional scientific concepts of linear causality, determinism, and reductionism into question and replaced or supplemented them with notions of circular causality, self-organization, indeterminacy, and the unpredictable emergence of order from disorder. GST worked toward developing a unified theory and methodological approach to investigate not just the classical simplicities of the mechanistically structured material world, but also the complexities of biological, cognitive, and even social systems. Systems philosophy at the current juncture is informed both by the past (the insights of German Idealists, etc.) as well as by continued research in the sciences (and of course the 'system sciences' whose research is specifically guided by the concept of system).

What is a system? Little attention has been paid to the historical development of the concept of system in order to understand what is meant by the term. Yet work outside of philosophy-- work in experimental embryology, evolutionary developmental biology, developmental psychology, sociological theory, the physical and chemical sciences, etc.-- has converged on a conception of system which first found decisive focus in the German Idealist philosophical tradition. To be sure, the widespread, even casual, use of the term in the 20th and 21st centuries owes a conceptual debt to the German Idealists. Systems were an obsession of the German Idealists (Kant, Fichte, Reinhold, Bardili, Schelling, Hegel). The notion of a fully-formed, perfected system established the epistemological, and even ontological, ideal for philosophical speculation and scientific knowledge ('Wissenschaft') in the latter part of the 18th century and continuing on well into the latter part of the
19the century. For the German Idealists, systems were a question of a particular brand of philosophical inquiry known as speculation. Speculation involved the rigorous tracing back of any philosophical or scientific explanation of phenomena to an absolute foundation (of certainty and coherence) such that the phenomena could be fully justified as irrefutable knowledge. Not high-flown discourses on the nature and proofs of God's existence, but mathematical theorems, stoichiometrical relationships, accounts of the evolutionary genesis of animal forms, all of these species of knowledge stood or fell within a form of speculative, systemic justification. It was the pursuit of the systematic philosophers of the German Idealist tradition to gather a diversity of empirical knowledge and to synthesize it in one master-system, under one philosophical principle holding for all knowledge, in logic, nature, and the human sciences (the sciences of the human 'spirit'). This type of philosophy, system philosophy, reached a peak, but also a strange dead end, in Hegel’s great “scientific” elaboration of system in his magisterial _Science of Logic_ (with editions pubslihed between the years of 1812 and 1832).