Introduction to the systemic one

Founders

1. The general theory of the systems (Bertalanffy)

Biologist of formation, scientist to the varied interests, Ludwig von Bertalanffy is interested early in the design of the organization like open system. He takes part in the emergence of a theory “ holist ” of the life and nature. Its approach of biology will be at the base of its general theory of the systems. Within this framework, the scientist is brought to explore various fields of application of his theory - Psychologie, Sociologie or Histoire - as as much of levels of organization .

The systemic paradigm considers in an indissociable way the elements of the evolutionary processes (articulated in general on non-linear elements in the majority of the complex systems). The “ general theory of the systems ” constitutes primarily a Modèle which can illustrate itself in various branches of the knowledge (example: theory of the evolution).

One can distinguish three levels from analysis:

the science of the systems , consisting at the same time of a study of the particular systems in various sciences and a general theory of the systems like whole of principles applying to all the systems. The essential idea here is that the identification and analyzes elements are not enough to include/understand a totality (like an organization or a company); their relations still should be studied. Bertalanffy attempted to clarify the correspondences and the Isomorphisme S of the systems in general: it is all the object of a general theory of the systems.

the technology of the systems , relating to at the same time the properties of the material S and the principles of software development of the S. the engineering problems, in particular in the organization and the management of the total social phenomena (ecological pollution, reforms education, monetary and economic regulations, international relations), constitute problems including a great number of Variable S in interrelationship. “Total” theories like the Cybernetic theory , the information theory, the decision and game theory, the theory of the circuits and the queues, etc, are illustrations. Such theories “are not closed”, specific, but on the contrary interdisciplinary.

the philosophy of the systems , promoting the new systemic paradigm, beside the analytical paradigm and mechanist of traditional science. The systemic one constitutes, according to the proper terms of Bertalanffy, “a new philosophy of the nature”, opposed to the blind laws of the mechanism, with the profit of a vision of the “world like a large organization”. Such a philosophy must for example carefully distinguish real systems (a galaxy, a dog, a cell), which exist independently of the observer, conceptual systems (logical theories, mathematics), which is constructions symbolic systems, and abstract systems (experimental theories), as particular subclass of the conceptual systems which correspond to reality. To note, following work on the psychology of the form and the cultural determinisms, that the difference between real systems and conceptual systems is far from being distinct. This ontology of the systems thus opens on an epistemology, reflective on the statute to be it knowing, the report/ratio observant/observed, the limits of the reductionnism, etc the ultimate horizon is then to include/understand the culture as a system of values in which the human evolution is enchased.

2. Structuralism

The central concept is the structure - studied at the same time in linguistics, anthropology and psychology:

In Linguistic : Ferdinand de Saussure takes as a starting point the economic analysis and introduces the conceptual meaning/meant couple. Its work is resumed by Danish Louis Hjelmslev and Russian Jakobson: Hjelmslev presents the language like the double implication of two independent structures, expression and contents. Lastly, Noam Chomsky, researcher with the Massachusetts Institute off Technology, releases a generative grammar, together of universal linguistic rules, with the base of any possible language. It opens the way with cognitive sciences.

In Anthropology : Claude Lévi-Strauss poses the primacy of the intellectual structures on social development and adopts a synchronic point of view, studying the companies known as primitive in the light of the released structures, thus reducing the role of the history. He seeks the invariants able to explain social balance.

In Psychology : it is Gestalttheorie of the German school (work on the Psychologie of the form in the field of perceptions); then Jean Piaget, which is interested in the development of the intelligence in the child. The intelligence is described, through a series of developmental stages, like the capacity to permanently build structures, which are established by Autorégulation.

3. Cybernetics

Of the Greek kubernêtikê that Plato used to indicate the piloting of a ship, the Cybernétique became, in a derived direction, art to control the men (Andre-Marie Ampère, Essai on the philosophy of sciences or analytical Exposure of a natural classification of all human knowledge 1834).

Modern cybernetics indicates since the work Cybernetics: however Animal Control and Communication in and the Machine of the mathematician Norbert Wiener appeared in 1948, the general science of the regulation and the communications in the natural and artificial systems.

The task of the cybernetician consists:

to recognize the structure and the state interns machine or animal;
to describe the relations which it maintains with its environment;
to envisage its behavior and its evolution in time.

To represent the operation of a machine or an animal, several concepts prove to be useful:

the Affecteur S (or sensors), being used to perceive the modifications of the environment;
Effector S, means of action on the environment;
the block box, structural element, whose inner working is ignored and who is considered only under the aspect of his entries and his exits;
loops of Feedback S (or feedback ): one notes a loop of Rétroaction when the output variable of a block box reacts on the size of entry, according to a process of looping. In this last case, there is not only any more business with a simple relation of cause and effect, but with a non-linear causality, more complex, where the effect retroacts on the cause. There exist two kinds of feedback : the positive feedback (amplifier) and the negative feedback (compensator).

Cybernetics made it possible to make emerge the scientific bases of a rigorous analysis of the concepts of Organization and order.

4. The information theory

The information theory schematizes the communication as follows: any information is a message sent by a transmitter to a receiver according to a given code. Shannon chooses, to theorize information, to disregard significance messages. It is a point of view of theorist, but also of the engineer: the contents of the message do not affect in oneself the means of transporting it. Only hopes a quantity of information to be transmitted, measurable according to the theory of Shannon (and which does not correspond so that we hear in the language running by " quantity of information"). The objective of Shannon, engineer to the telephone company (BEAUTIFUL), was most effectively to use possible the transmission channels.

The information theory of Claude Shannon gathers the mathematical laws concerning the transfer of signals in material channels equipped with a signal-to-noise report/ratio. This theory is applicable to the transmission of the artificial signals as well as to the Linguistique or the Nervous system. The problem of its vernacular application to the languages S is that it is done with the detriment of the direction and the cultural context.

It also leads to Paradoxes: Médor is a dog contains less bits of information to the technical direction that Médor is a quadruped , and however conveys much more of semantic information, since all the dogs are quadrupeds.

Concept of system

1. History

The modern concept of System date of the years 1940. It is due to the contribution at least of five characters: in addition to Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, from which we come to speak, it is also necessary to evoke:

Mc Culloch : at the origin neuropsychiatrist, it extends his research to the Mathématiques and the Ingénierie. Pioneer of the modern theory of the Automat S, it is the first to compare operation in network of the components of a machine with that of the neurons in the brain. He engages of important work on the Artificial intelligence and founds a new science, the Bionique.

J.W. Forrester: electronics engineer, it widens starting from 1960 the field of application of the new system theory to industrial dynamics, then works out a “general dynamic systems ”.

Herbert A. Simon: Price Turing (1975) and " Nobel Prize of économie" (1978), Herbert Simon developed a vision of the organization, cognition and engineering largely inspired of the theory of systems. Refusing the Dichotomy between pure science and science applied, its work is located at the interface of the Informatique, of the economy, the Psychologie and the Biologie. It was among the first theorists of the limited Rationalité economic agents and administrative. Tracking “the ordered form hidden in the apparent disorder”, Simon postulated that the distinction between artificial and natural is not operative on the level of the modes of data processing by complex systems (brain or computer), whose organization is ensured by formal rules of adaptation to their environment. In 1956, Herbert A. Simon realized with Allen Newell what is generally regarded as the first computing system of Artificial intelligence ( Logic theorist , for the RAND Corporation ).

The new approach of the systems develops with the the United States to answer various problems: development of instruments of guidance of the missiles, modeling of the human brain and the behavior, strategy of the large companies, design and realization of the first large computers…

2. Four fundamental concepts

Four concepts are fundamental to include/understand what is a system:

A. the interaction (or the interrelationship) returns to the idea of a non-linear causality. This concept is essential to include/understand the coévolution and symbiosis in biology. A particular form of interaction is the Rétroaction (or feedback ) whose study is in the center of work of the Cybernétique.

B. totality (or globality) . If a system is initially a whole of elements, it is not reduced to it. According to the devoted formula, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Bertalanffy watch, against the opinion of Russell which rejects the concept of organization, " that one cannot obtain the behavior of the whole like summons those of the parts and doit to take account of the relations between the various secondary systems and the systems which them " coiffent" to include/understand the behavior of the parts ". This idea lights by the phenomenon of emergence: at the total level, properties nondeductible from the elementary properties appear, which one can explain by an effect of threshold.

C. the organization is the central concept to include/understand what is a system. The organization is the fitting of a totality according to the distribution of its elements in hierarchical levels. According to its degree of organization, a totality will not have the same properties. One thus arrives at this idea that the properties of a totality depend less nature and number of elements which they contain that relations which are established between them. One can give two examples.

1 the Isomère S are chemical compounds of the same formula and of the same mass, but having different structural fittings and, so of the different properties.
the 2 Cerveau X human have all about the same number of Neuron S, but what will decide various aptitudes, it is the nature and the number of relations between them in such or such surface. One can say that, while organizing oneself, a totality structure (a structure is thus an organized totality).

the Organization is also a process by which matter, energy and information are assembled and formed a totality, or a structure. Certain totalities develop a form of autonomy; they organize interior: one speaks then about car-organization.

There exist two kinds of organization: the organization in modules, subsystems (which returns also to the organization in Réseau X) and the organization in hierarchical levels. The organization in subsystems proceeds by systems integration already existing, while the organization in hierarchical levels produces new properties, to each additional level. Concept of organization finds thus that of emergence, insofar as it is the degree of organization of a totality which makes pass from an hierarchical level to another, and makes emerge new properties. The emergence is the creation of a higher hierarchical level.

In a general way, one thus realizes that the concept of organization recovers a structural aspect (how totality is built) and a functional aspect (what the structure enables him to do). One can represent a structure by a Organigramme, the function by a Programme.

D. complexity. the Complexité of a system is due at least to three factors:

the high degree of organization;
the uncertainty of its environment;
the difficulty, if not impossibility of identifying all the elements and of including/understanding all the relations concerned. From where the idea that the laws making it possible to describe a system cannot be purely deterministic, or, at least, that its total behavior allows only one reduced predictivity.

3. Description of a system

Under its structural aspect , a system includes/understands four components :

components : one can evaluate the number and nature of it (even if it is only roughly). These elements are more or less homogeneous (ex automobile: power unit, frame, cockpit, connection on the ground, body). In a business enterprise, the elements are heterogeneous (capital, buildings, personnel,…),
a limit (or border) which separates totality from the elements of its environment : this limit is always more or less permeable and constitutes an interface with the external medium. It is for example, the membrane of a cell, the skin of the body, the body of a car. The limit of a system can be fuzzier, or particularly moving, like in the case of a social group,
of the networks of relations : the elements are indeed interrelated. We saw that, more the interrelationships are numerous, more the degree of organization is high and larger is complexity. The relations can be of all kinds. The two principal types of relations are: transport and communications. In fact, these two types can be reduced to only one, since to communicate is to transport information, and transport is used to communicate (to make circulate) materials, energy or information.
of stocks (or tanks) where the materials, energy or information are stored constituting the resources of the systems which must be transmitted or taken delivery of.

Under its functional aspect :

of flows of materials, energy or information, which borrows the networks of relations and forwards by stocks. They function by inputs/outputs (or inputs/outputs) with the environment,
of the decision-making centres which organize the networks of relations, i.e. coordinate flows and manage stocks,
loops of feedback which are used to inform, at the entry of flows, on their exit, in order to make it possible the decision-making centres more quickly to know the general state of the system,
of the adjustments carried out by the decision-making centres according to the loops of feedback and deadlines for reply (corresponding to the time which puts “rising” information to be treated and at additional time that information puts “downward” to transform itself into actions).

There exist two kinds of systems: the open systems and the closed systems . As their name indicates it, the open systems have more exchanges with their environment, the closed systems enjoy a greater autonomy (car-organization). Obviously, this distinction is not distinct: no system is completely closed on itself, nor completely permeable. This distinction was introduced by the Thermodynamique in the middle of the XIXe century: a system closed exchange only of energy with its environment, contrary to an opened system, which exchanges energy, matter and information. The concept of open system widened considerably with work on the alive one of Canon about 1930 and Bertalanffy in the years 1940. The concept of closed system is in fact theoretical only one concept, since any system is more or less open.

4. Conservation of the systems: constant state and homeostasis

The function first of a system is its proper conservation . A system must remain in a constant state, directed towards an optimum. However, one of the characteristics of the systems which “function” is that they all are in a state of imbalance Thermodynamique, insofar as they do not cease exchanging energy with their environment. They are thus found obliged to be even maintained in a constant state, characterized by a relative stability to the center of which exist the imbalances caused by flows of entries and exits. The mechanical image to include/understand this internal dynamics of the system is that of the bicycle which must advance to be in a dynamic state of balance.

A system being found in a state of balance while having exhausted all the possible exchanges with its environment reached the stage of “thermal death” (to take again the expression of Boltzmann). The physical law showing that all the closed systems finish early or late this way calls the Entropie (known as also 2nd thermodynamic principle ).

The conservation of a constant state is also a need for the cybernetic systems (which they are organic or artificial): their self-regulation depends on the negative loops of feedback, which have a function of control and stabilization around a median value.

One finds a process particular in the alive systems: the Homeostasis . Homeostasis (of homios , the same one, and stasis , the stop, the setting at rest) indicates the capacity of a system to be maintained in a constant state, its internal form and its conditions, in spite of the external disturbances. In the case of the animals, the internal conditions are numerous and depend on subsystems (maintenance of the internal temperature, the blood pressure, the water content and other substances vital, etc). The term of homeostasis is forged by the physiologist Walter Canon in the years 1920; but the property is discovered as of the middle of the 19th century by Claude Bernard, which describes the principles of regulation of the internal medium. Theoretically, a perfectly autorégulé system would imply to be able to return in its initial state, following a disturbance. Nevertheless, if the alive world fights against the arrow of time (all living beings creating of the provisional loops of Néguentropie), they however never return in an identical state, but evolve to a slightly different state, that they endeavor to make as near as possible to their initial state. This is why the alive system maintains its form in spite of exchanges with the environment; it is also why its stability does not exclude a certain evolution. In short, the simple Cybernetic regulation to maintain a system in a constant state (as it is the case for a Thermostat) differs from the homeostasis which, in spite of its name, is a complex and autonomous process of self-regulation, implying a renewal of the autonomous elements and a structural reorganization.

5. Variety of a system

The variety of a system is the number of configurations or states that this system can cover. This property is necessary to avoid the sclerosis. However, the variety of the system should not exceed the capacities of control of this system, which cybernetician R. Ashby expressed by the law known as of the necessary variety: “ to control a given system, it is necessary to have a control whose variety is at least equal to the variety of this system ”.

6. Typology of the systems

There exist several typologies. Let us quote two:

the Typology of Jacques Lesourne (systems of the destiny), which distinguishes:

1. The systems in states (transformations inputs/outputs, without internal regulation. Ex: an engine of car).
2. Systems with goals (integrated internal regulation, capacity to achieve goals. Ex: a room with thermostat, a homing rocket).
3. Systems with training (including report, mechanisms of calculation, and capacity of decision making and adaptation according to the recorded data and process by tests and errors. It is on this level that the car-organization becomes possible. Ex: expert systems in economic or military strategy).
4. The systems with multiple decision makers (structure complexes of several systems with goals, being organized in a spontaneous way (plays) or a hierarchical way (organizations). When the hierarchies are tangled up in a system even broader and complex, one speaks about companies).

the typology of Jean-Louis Moigne, (the Théorie of the general system), which separates:

1. The system-machines, which concern mechanics and engineering.
2. The alive systems (and complex artificial systems), in which the processes of memorizing appear, of the decision-making centres (or of order) and coordination (or of piloting).
3. Systems human and social, with the appearance of the intelligence (or capacity to process data symbolic systems), allowing an car-organization by abstract mechanisms of training and invention, but also with the finalization (intentionality), reorganizing all the system according to selected ends in an autonomous way.

It should be noted that a new type of system emerged in second half of the XXe century: dynamic systems, in the field of the scientific research on deterministic chaos. The first idea characterizing this field is that, behind the apparent disorder, an order more complex hides than the visible order. The second idea is that this order emerges by car-organization.

Tools and scopes of application

1. The two systemic ones

One usually distinguishes two Systémique S (makes two successive contributions with the systemic approach of them):

the first systemic one (born from structuralism, cybernetics, and the analysis information theory of the systems of Bertalanffy) appears in the years 1950; it is centered on the concepts of structure, information, regulation, totality and organization. The essential concept is undoubtedly here that of regulation, such as it is defined through the concept of loop of feedback.

the second systemic one is born in the years 1970 and 1980, it integrates two other essential concepts: the communication and the Car-organization (or autonomy). At the base of the concept of car-organization, one finds that of open system developed by Bertalanffy: an open system is a system which, through its exchanges of matter, energy and information, expresses the capacity car-to be organized. The property of car-organization already exists in the physical world, like showed it Ilya Prigogine with the dissipative structures (of energy). If the car-organization respects strictly the second principle of thermodynamics (insofar as it relates to only the opened systems, able to create loops of Néguentropie, therefore primarily living beings, but also systems organisational and social), on the other hand it contradicts the deterministic laws, which apply completely only to the physical or chemical systems.

2. Systemic tools

the analogical reasoning : if one exceeds the simple mathematical idea of equality of reports/ratios, proportion, the Analogie is the type of reasoning which makes it possible to bring closer to the different fields. Held in suspicion in knowledge, she enjoys partly a renewal of favor thanks to the systemic one. The principal forms of analogy are:

1. The Metaphor.
2. The Isomorphism: analogy between two objects presenting of the structural similarities.
3. The model: making of a theoretical framework, that one can in general schematize, allowing to describe and represent theoretically a whole of facts. A model can be made up starting from a metaphor. Ex: Lavoisier, comparing the heart with an engine, offers a mechanical model of blood circulation.

The analogy appears not very reliable at the disciplinary and analytical level. On the other hand, at the interdisciplinary level, it can appear fertile. Thus, it makes it possible to transpose of the relevant concepts for a field in other fields where they are not it less:

ex 1: in the kinetic theory of gases, Boltzmann takes as a starting point the statistical laws of behavior of human populations.
ex 2: as from the years 1950, one uses the concept of matter information Génétique.

technical of decision-making aid (out of strategic matter). It come from the discipline called operations research , consistent in the application of the scientific methods of analysis and the techniques of calculation to the organization of the human operations. It provides tools in three fields: the combinative one, the random one and competition.

1. combinative the : it intervenes when it is necessary to combine, in the decision-making process, a number too important of parameters. This field uses two methods: the algorithm, detailed regulation of the operations to realize to obtain with certainty the solution of the problem arising; and linear programming, seeking to determine the values of variables or activities, according to the available resources, and for an optimum result.
2. random the : when one deals with situations with the dubious outcome, where the determination of precise values is not possible, one has recourse to the Probabilité S and the averages.
3. competition : very often, the constraints are due as much to the complexity of the parameters of the field considered as with the necessary taking into account of the decisions of partners or adversaries. This aspect of the decision-making process was analyzed by the mathematical theory of the plays and the economic behavior, born in 1944 from a work from John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern: Game theory and economic behaviors . The game theory applies to the competition, whether it is out of matter Politique, soldier or economic. In such situations, two strategies are possible: co-operation and the fight, and there exist three classes of plays, concerned with different strategies:

the plays of pure co-operation , where one adds the individual preferences to obtain the collective utility.
the plays of pure fight , whose paradigm is the duel, where only count antagonistic individual preferences: there is no possible collective utility, an individual preference must override the others. Within this framework, one seeks to anticipate the behavior of the adversaries:

1° by forsaking their intentions, subjective and by definition inaccessible;
2° by supposing their rational behavior (research of the maximum of profits for the minimum of losses).

the mixed plays , where it is necessary to take into account the rationality of the various players, but also collective utility: procedures of bargaining, negotiation or arbitration are then used.

the charts : work into systemic has recourse frequently to graphs to communicate whole of data which it would be tiresome and against-intuitive to present in a linear way, discursive. Three kinds of charts:

1. the Diagram : chart of the relations between several units. Ex: that is to say the histogram representing the percentage of children in school failure according to the various socioprofessional categories. In X-coordinates, there are the various socioprofessional categories, in ordinates, the percentage of the children in school failure, each rectangle representing the relationship between two parameters (a category and a percentage) of the two units considered;
2. the Chart : it is the representation in two dimensions of an object in three dimensions (a place, geological formation of a basement, a machine, a building, etc). The most known example is obviously the geographical map, whose two dimensions represent the plane surface of a site, according to a given scale, the height being restored thanks to level lines;
3. the Network : it is the graph of the relations between the elements of the same unit (family tree, flow chart of a company, computer program, highway network, etc).

the systemic modeling : with the scientific direction most general, the model indicates the abstract transcription of a concrete reality. The models were born from the models and the diagrams. Today, the cybernetic models (being used to study the conditions of regulation of a system in the engineerings or sciences of alive) and the data-processing models are most widespread in sciences. The graphic language is the language par excellence of systemic modeling.

3. Scopes of application

The principal fields are the following:

sciences of nature: Earth and life sciences, the ecology,

economic exchanges and the company: the economy, the Management, the Office automation ,

the sociological method : the typology of the organizations, the Social sciences, the Political sciences,

research on the human behavior: the cognitive Sciences, the Psychology, the group therapies, the Pedagogy, the Linguistic ,

the military Strategy,

research in engineering: the Data-processing , automation (Robot-like), the Artificial intelligence and the communication networks.

The systemic one is thus a new Paradigme which:

1 gathers steps :

a) theoretical,
practical b),
c) methodological,

2 poses problems concerning the modes:

a) of the observation,
b) of representation,
c) of modeling,
d) of simulation,

3 is given for objectives to specify the concept of system :

a) its borders,
b) its internal and external relations,
c) its structures,
d) its laws or properties emergent S.

Bibliographical sources

Norbert Wiener, Cybernetic and company , 1971,10/18.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, general Theory of the systems , 1993, Dunod.
Francisco J. Varela, Autonomy and knowledge, Test on alive the , 1989, Threshold.
Herbert A. Simon, Science of the systems, science of artificial the , 1991, Dunod. Translation and postface of Jean-Louis Moigne.
Jean-Louis Moigne, the theory of the general system. Theory of modeling , 1977, PUF. Republications in 1986,1990 and 1994.
Daniel Durand, systemic the , 1979,8° corrected edition: 1998, PUF, coll “Which do I know? ”.
Jean-Louis Moigne, the modeling of the complex systems , 1990, ED. Dunod. Republished in 1995.
Jean-Pierre Algoud, Systemic: life and died of Western civilization , 2002, editions Interdisplinaire , 2 volumes, 1.600 p.
Dominique Bériot: To manage by the systemic approach (2006) Foreword of Michel Crozier - Editions of Organization
Dominique Bériot: Of the microscope to the macroscope (1992) Foreword of Joel de Rosnay - ESF Editor

Internal bonds

Epistemology constructivist

External bonds

Village Sytémique (www.systemique.levillage.org)
Systemic and Company: An introduction to the systemic method (www.systemique-societe.org)

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