Systems Scientists

"::::::::::::::::::::::::John Gall, Systematics, 1975"

"In one of my favorite books, Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail, John Gall (1977) warns against the rising tide of “systemism” — “the state of mindless belief in systems; the belief that systems can be made to function to achieve desired goals.” Gall’s point is that “the fundamental problem does not lie in any particular system but rather in systems as such.” These systems become the goal rather than the means to a goal. Adherents of these “systemisms” would argue that implementing these programs should not result in losing track of the primary goal (results rather than process). But Gall points out how this subversion becomes inevitable through two of his axioms: 1) “Systems Tend to Expand to Fill the Known Universe” and 2) “Systems Tend to Oppose Their Own Proper Functions, Especially in Connection with the Phenomenon of ‘Administrative Encirclement’ ”(Gall 1977)."

": ALL SYSTEMS ARE INFINITELY COMPLEX (The illusion of simplicity comes from focusing attention on one or a few variables.)"

": EVERYTHING IS PART OF A LARGER SYSTEM"

": THE UNIVERSE IS INFINITELY SYSTEMATIZABLE BOTH UPWARDS (LARGER SYSTEMS) AND DOWNWARDS (SMALLER SYSTEMS)"

":A system can fail in an infinite number of ways"

":In complex systems malfunction and even total nonfunction may not be detectable for a long period, if ever"

"Gall (1975) mentions numerous examples of malfunctioning systems. For example, at Cape Canaveral there is an enormous hangar that shelters the rockets being constructed. It is so large that it produces its own climate, including clouds and rain. thus, the very structure that is supposed to shelter rockets and people sprinkles them with its own rain."

":In setting up a system, tread softly. You may be disturbing another system that is actually working"

"The following four propositions, which appears to the author to be incapable of formal proof, are presented as Fundamental Postulates upon which the entire superstructure of General Systemantics... is based..."

": EVERY THING IS A SYSTEM"

"In 1978, Michael halliday wrote Language as Social Semiotic, which revolutionized the way that we think about language in context"

"The founder of systemic-functional linguistics, Michael Halliday pioneered the analysis of language in its social context. He convincingly reestablished the centrality of meaning in understanding how language functions after the domination of linguistic research by CHOMSKY's generative grammar model."

"[A register is constituted by] the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features - with particular values of the field, mode and tenor."

"[Register] is set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings."

"The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message, and the speaker has within certain limits the option of selecting any element in the clause as thematic."

"… language has evolved in the service of particular human needs … what is really significant is that this functional principle is carried over and built into the grammar, so that the internal organization of the grammar system is also functional in character."

"[The construal of context as a semiotic construct accompanies the construal of language as a metafunctionally organized system because of the realizational relationship between the two. And it is this relationship which helps to explain how language is learned:] It is this that enables, and disposes, the child to learn the lexicogrammar: since the system is organized along functional lines, it relates closely to what the child can see language doing as he observes it going on around him."

"Foregrounding, as I understand it, is prominence that is motivated"

"What makes learning possible is that the coding imposed by the mother tongue corresponds to a possible mode of perception and interpretation of the environment. A green car can be analysed experientially as carness qualified by greenness, if that is the way the system works."

"The interpersonal function [of language] is the function “to establish, maintain, and specify relations between members of societies”"

"Language... is a range of possibilities, and an open end set of options in behavior that are available to the individual in his existence as social man. The context of culture is the environment of any particular selection that is made within them... The context of culture defines the potential, the range of possibilities that are open. The actual choice among these possibilities takes place within a given context of situation."

"I see it as part of the development of the field. I would always emphasize how much I share with other linguists: I've never either felt particularly distinct or wanted to be distinct. I never saw myself as a theorist; I only became interested in theory, in the first place, because, in the theoretical approaches that I had access to, I didn't find certain areas developed enough to enable me to explore the questions that I was interested in."

"A physical system is just that: a physical system. What is systematized is matter itself, and the processes in which the system is realized are also material. But a biological system is more complex: it is both biological and physical — it is matter with the added component of life; and a social system is more complex still: it is physical, and biological, with the added component of social order, or value. … A semiotic system is still one step further in complexity: it is physical, and biological, and social —and also semiotic: what is being systematized is meaning. In evolutionary terms, it is a system of the fourth order of complexity"

"The human sciences have to assume at least an equal responsibility in establishing the foundations of knowledge."

"[... language, as an example of a semiotic system, contains all four levels of organization as follows:] First, it is transmitted physically, by sound waves traveling through the air; secondly, it is produced and received biologically, by the human brain and its associated organs of speech and hearing; thirdly it is exchanged socially, in contexts set up and defined by the social structure; and fourthly it is organized semiotically as a system of meanings"

"A child learning his [her] mother tongue is learning how to name; he [she] is building up a meaning potential in respect of a limited number of social functions. These functions [instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, and imaginative] constitute the semiotic environment of a very small child, and may be thought of as universals of human culture"

"Traditionally, grammar has always been a grammar of written language: and it has always been a product grammar" ['Product' is here used as one term of the Hjelmslevian pair process/product.] A process/product distinction is a relevant one for linguists because it corresponds to that between our experience of speech and our experience of writing: writing exists whereas speech happens."

"In the relative orientation of different social groups towards the various functions of language in given contexts and towards the different areas of meaning that may be explored within a given function"

"The text is a product in the sense that it is an output, something that can be recorded and studied, having a certain construction that can be represented in systematic terms. It is a process in the sense of a continuous process of semantic choice, a movement through the network of meaning potential, with each set of choices constituting the environment for a further set."

"Any text in spoken English is organized into what may be called 'information units'. (...) this is not determined (...) by constituent structure. Rather could it be said that the distribution of information specifies a distinct structure on a different plan. (...) Information structure is realized phonologically by 'tonality', the distribution of the text into tone groups."

"It is part of the task of linguistics to describe texts, and all texts, including those prose or verse, which fall within any definition of literature and are accessible to analysis by the existing methods of linguistics."

"Three unique and still timely aspects of Miller's text Living Systems were his citation of 173 specific ‘cross-level’ hypotheses, his unification of a vast number of phenomena from the biomedical sciences to the social sciences using a consistent taxonomy of seven hierarchical levels and 20 subsystems, and his consistent effort to make systems hypotheses more testable."

"We should not, perhaps, take it for granted that a description in terms of a formalised model, which has certain properties lacking in those derived from models of another kind, will necessarily be the best description for all of the very diverse purposes for which the descriptions of languages are needed. In assessing the value of a description, it is reasonable to ask whether it has proved useful for the purposes for which it was intended."

"In a life-long partnership with his wife Jessie, James Grier Miller contributed substantially to the development of and to the integration of disciplines through general systems theory, remaining actively engaged in these areas throughout his working life. From his early work on the human brain in the 1940s, Miller worked for over 60 years within influential circles to foster a wide range of new endeavours. In 1949, as Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago, he founded the new field of behavioural science, devoted to the theoretical integration of the biological and social sciences, through the establishment of the influential Committee on Behavioral Science. In 1955, he got funding from the State of Michigan to set up the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan; and in 1967, he became President of the University Louisville where he established a Systems Science Institute. His comprehensive integration of the sciences, in Living Systems (1978), remains core to the study of Living Systems and many other fields of research and practice within the systems community."

"Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to express the conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe". This has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness of the rest to emerge with greater clarity. An example of something that is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different kinds of meaning in language are expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as appears when linguistic structure is interpreted in functional terms."

"The grammatical system has … a functional input and a structural output; it provides the mechanism for different functions to be combined in one utterance"

"Miller’s scientific and professional activities have centered around the single theme of integrating knowledge about biological and social systems. But there have been great changes over the years. His early approach to science, under the influence of Whitehead, was a mixture of philosophy and experimentation. His current research relates modern information processing technologies to living systems. The basic research consists of quantitative studies of cross-level identities among multiple levels of systems. The applications extend from the use of artificial intelligence ‘expert systems’ to measure matter, energy, and information flows in living systems to the development of an electronic University of the world."

"My presentation of a general theory of living systems will employ two sorts of spaces in which they may exist, physical or geographical space and conceptual or abstract space... The characteristics and constraints of physical space affect the action of all concrete systems, living and nonliving... Physical space is a common space because it is the only space in which all concrete systems, living and nonliving, exist (though some may exist in other spaces simultaneously). Physical space is shared by all scientific observers, and all scientific data must be collected in it. This is equally true for natural science and behavioral science."

"The term system has a number of meanings. There are systems of numbers and of equations, systems of value and of thought, systems of law, solar systems, organic systems, management systems, command and control systems, electronic systems, even the Union Pacific Railroad system. The meanings of "system" are often confused. The most general, however, is: A system is a set of interacting units with relationships among them. The word "set" implies that the units have some common properties. These common properties are essential if the units are to interact or have relationships. The state of each unit is constrained by, conditioned by, or dependent on the state of other units. The units are coupled. Moreover, there is at least one measure of the sum of its units which is larger than the sum of that measure of its units."

"In such fundamental considerations it would be surprising if many new concepts appear, for countless good minds have worked long on these matters over many years. Indeed, new original ideas should at first be suspect, though if they withstand examination they should be welcomed. My intent is not to create a new school or art form but to discern the pattern of a mosaic which lies hidden in the cluttered, colored marble chips of today's empirical facts."

"The structure of a system is the arrangement of its subsystems and components in three-dimensional space at a given moment of time. This always changes over time. It may remain relatively fixed for a long period or it may change from moment to moment, depending upon the characteristics of the process in the system. This process halted at any given moment, as when motion is frozen by a high-speed photograph, reveals the three-dimensional spatial arrangement of the system's components as of that instant."

"# A space of frequency of trade relations among nations."

"# A space of frequency of intermarriage among ethnic groups."

"The most general form of systems theory is a set of logical or mathematical statements about all conceptual systems. A subset of this concerns all concrete systems. A subsubset concerns the very special and very important living systems, i.e., general living systems theory."

"My analysis of living systems uses concepts of thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, and systems engineering, as well as the classical concepts appropriate to each level. The purpose is to produce a description of living structure and process in terms of input and output, flows through systems, steady states, and feedbacks, which will clarify and unify the facts of life."

"# Osgood's semantic space as determined by subjects' ratings of words on the semantic differential test."

"# Sociometric space, e.g., the rating on a scale of leadership ability of each member of a group by every other member."

"# The life space of Lewin, - the environment as seen by the subject, including the field forces or valences between him and objects in the environment, which can account for his immediately subsequent behavior."

"# A space of time costs of various modes of transportation, e.g., travel taking longer on foot than by air, longer upstream than down."