Destiny and Control in Human Systems
Studies in the Interactive Connectedness of Time (Chronotopology)
Charles Muses, M.A., Ph.D.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader
Prologue
1 Introduction: System Theory and Chronotopology
2 Syntactic Languages: The Symbolic and the Diabolic
3 Chronos as a System of Qualitative Resonances: Chronosymbiosis and Computers
4 Anima et Themis Mundi: Psyglyphs, the Multilevel Language of Qualitative Time
5 Fons et Origo: Some Traditions Uniquely Illuminating the Structure and Meaning of Time Systems
6 Social Applications
Epilogue: The Current Arena and the Birth of a New Era References
Index
About the Author
Note to the Reader Just as a medicine that does not cure illness of the body is vain, so the philosophy that does not heal distress of the mind is useless.
--Pythagoras
That all our ills, or at least the majority of them, occur from a wrongful changing and action of the mind, will not, I believe, be denied by any true physician.
--Flavius Claudius Julianus (Oration to Hera, ca. 360)
Alpha continues to begin Omega is refreshed at every end.
--Wallace Stevens (1949)
"Human" rather than "social" appears on the title page because we would not wish to confine ourselves solely to institutions but also address the experience of human beings, who alone make institutions possible. Indeed, the more the human factor is neglected or denigrated in an institution-political or economic--the more speedily such institutions will fail; and history is strewn with the skeletons of such failures.
This book will not be concerned with repeating either the already well known or the otherwise available.* Rather we shall, appropriately for this Frontiers Series, concentrate on those facts and connections that lead most readily, geodesically if you will, to new and useful viewpoints and findings. Time is an ultimate frontier.
These pages were written for all those with lively interests in the workings, events, and situations of the world in interpenetrating contexts including that of personality. It was written as well for system scientists who wish to incorporate the importance of timing and psychosocial factors in their system models and in their basic paradigms as well. The general or interdisciplinary
reader would probably first read the prologue, chapters 2, 4, 5, and the epilogue.
Many are interested in time, both for itself and its social and psychological implications, without being technically trained in the manipulation of mathematical notation. Hence for the sake of the interdisciplinary readership also addressed, technical mathematical expressions have been largely avoided.
The references (numbered in square brackets) are designed not as bibliography per se, but primarily to include work that may be of contingent value or contain passages cited in the text. Though all the chapters address subtopics, in the case of chapter 3 the subsections are substantially independent.
It should be noted that while on occasion mathematics enters importantly into the discussion, this book is not about mathematical systems theory. In fact, one of its underlying postulates is that mathematics is sometimes insufficient, and perhaps even inappropriate for problems peculiar to systems theory and practice, and that other symbolic languages must be deployed for sufficiently rich and applicable results.*
If you desire full use of the book you should see the notes, which often contain an excursus on substantive points that the flow of the text would not accommodate despite their value. This book has made for exciting research and writing, now shared with you.
C.M. C6te d'Azur, 1983
PROLOGUE
[Time speaks] I, that please some, test alL ...It is in my powerTo o'erthrow law and in one self-born hour To plant and o'erwhelm custom.
--Shakespeare ( Winter's Tale, iv, 1)
Time is not a clock, or a calendar. Time is an eroding, infinite mystery--in fact a son of a bitch.
--Preston Jones (Texas Trilogy)
In 1980 I was asked by a friend and colleague (John Casti), and then kindly invited by the editor (George Klir) of this series on Frontiers in Systems Research, to do a book on the nature and implications of the time parameter, a project that had occupied me several years. Given the further fact that this book was to be addressed to a varied audience of interdisciplinary scientists and informed general readers, I was aware of the novelty and difficulty of the task. The challenge, however, was a creative one and the theme close to the heart of human achievements (and problems!) in this climactic, fast-paced century of centuries so outstanding for both its triumphs and its tragedies, so bristling with timing-crises.
The following pages, then, summarize the results of a still ongoing pursuit of that most hidden and powerful of realities, Time. It is the author's intent that those results, suitably compressed for a book of standard Series size, remain accessible to even those general readers who nonetheless feel the fascination and sense the depths of the subject.
As a scientific field, ehronotopology is new. It constitutes a modem facet of systems theory (and praetice)--one dealing with what we call chronotopological systems, or simply ehronosystems, which signally include those characterized by the essential presence of human personality, human
perceptions, and human planning or time-scheduling. Thus most all systems, even ecological ones in our nature-manipulated era, are seen to be chronosystems or to have prime chronotopological components. The active presence of human awareness is impossible to disconnect from time, because its prime movers are desires and plans (implementations of desiderata); and these essentially depend on time for their denouement.
Without further ado, we launch the quest with Shakespeare's ever appropriate question, What see you else in the dark abysm of time? (Tempest, i,2). Since such predictive power lies at the heart of all scientific endeavor, the contribution of chronotopology to system theory is of large potential import.
DESTINY AND CONTROL IN HUMAN SYSTEMS
1 INTRODUCTION: SYSTEM THEORY ANDCH RONOTOPOLOGY
When contrasted with narrower, axiomatic, and necessarily more subjective ways (because of axiom choices and hence possible omissions), the inductive and phenomenological nature of Ludwig yon Bertalanffy's and George Klir's general approach to system theory turns out to be a candidate broad enough to accommodate the nature of time (e.g. see R. Orchard's exposition of Klir [1]), the arts2 [3, p. 16] and hence the whole range of psychosocial phenomena. Therefore this is the indicated general systems approach and philosophy most relevant to chronotopology. Only much later would enough be known to smugly write down a closed axiom set beforehand--with hindsight. And even then, that may well be a risky business because nature in her full gamut of powers and possibilities has a history of being extremely surprising to human presumption. Even mathematics is open-ended and is an experimental science which Oliver Heaviside profoundly and first clearly grasped as the nineteenth century closed, and which Kurt Godel clinched for the twentieth. Such infinite open-endedness is afortiori true of all the other less formalized sciences, and for system science par excellence. The moral is: work, observe, and record. Only in such an enlightenedly objective and inspired, inductive fashion will system science really make strides into rich applicability. This book is a call for such diligent observation in a new and potentially very significant field: chronotopology.
Time, one of the most anciently recorded [4] of human experiences, has also been one of the most mysterious and obdurate for analysis, and has remained so. That principal parameter of the vast cosmic system in which we are embedded remains as recalcitrant as ever. Space is more amenable, yet time holds the trump cards in the game of cosmic process. So we must push on further. To do so, we now consider the notion and corresponding entity of a system.
1.1 Time and Nonlinear Systematics: Chronotopological Systems (Chronosystems)z
Time, we know, enters very basically into systems theory, a system being any combination of human and non-human elements that functions more or less organismically, in relation to a given environment, in the interests of some end or enterprise, which may be only mere survival itself as in the case of parasitic organisms and systems. Indeed, survival as sole end is the primary definition of a parasitic system, biological or bureaucratic as the case may be. We can now give a more analytic def'mition of a system within the purview of this book. The usual definition is narrower, and results when certain of our conditions are restricted or trivialized.
By way of preliminary to a more comprehensive definition, the term trajectory denotes simply some space/time4 path of changing states undergone by the system. It is understood that transitions (along some trajectory) from state to state would have associated probabilities and that a system trajectory involving to --' t2, where t2 -- to is a time interval, will also carry the system through the state x(h), where t1 lies between to and t2 in time, and x(t) is the state associated with time t, all times being consistently measured. Note that "t" phenomenologically can be either the moment following upon the lapse of time interval t -- to, or else that interval itself, which are two quite different experiences, answering geometrically to a point and a line, respectively. One may distinguish these denotations by the usage of" at" and "after" time t.
Now the definition of a chronosystem can be given in terms of the following operational elements:
1. Given the initial state and future inputs, trajectories to future times exist which, however, need not be unique; and single trajectories may have branch points. Thus future outputs need not be unique, nor even necessarily expressible in ordinary (real) numbers; that is, they may be multiple and possibly expressible only in terms of hypernumbers.5
2. The start of a given trajectory may be before t = to and the first state of such a trajectory need not be x(to). That is, causes from before the initial epoch are admitted; although the most manageable chronotopological systems implicitly contain the possible futures of all such past effects within the nature of the initial state x(to), even though the trajectory began before that epoch.
3. State trajectories, though ordinarily continuous, may contain discontinuities.
4. A trajectory may depend on future inputs (which are only potentialities at present) as well as on the initial state x(to)--which itself may summarize prior inputs in terms of activating memories of the past--all acting in the present so as to affect the future still further by feedforward.
It should be noted that the fourth portion of the definition of a chronosystem makes it clear that while perhaps such systems can be simulated in some manner, they cannot be compassed by deterministic or even stochastic mathematics, since conventional predictive theories, as Norbert Wiener ever has stressed, depend solely upon the past, while here we confront present outputs that in some measure depend on future values of the input. We shall indeed see, in chapter 3 and beyond, that in chronosystems there is in general no unique future because of options and alternatives (free choice), although there are at time constraints for being able to exercise these prerogatives optimally or at all.
A corollary to all this is that mathematics need not be sufficient to represent chronosystems, thus making clear the important fact that mathematics (a linear, nonqualitative language) is not the essence of systemtheoretical methodology. What is the essence is an organismic and qualitative viewpoint, represented as precisely and appropriately as possible by the use of whatever symbol system, linear or not, may be pressed into service. The error of monolithically identifying systems analysis with mathematical analysis was exposed with clarity (and considerable acerbity) by David Berlinski [8], but his barbs fall harmlessly to the ground once the fact is grasped that the mathematical symbol system is not the essence of systems theory. In thus indirectly helping to make this vital fact clear, he performed an historical and scientific service to the subject, rendered with intellectual honesty.
It is thus seen that a chronotopological system or chronosystem is at least nonlinear6 and is in general much more complex than the more restricted definition of a system ordinarily used. In that simple (but far less applicable) definition, the initial state X(to) is all one requires to predict a deterministically unique state for any future time t, in which future outputs are
always expressible in real numbers. Moreover, the trajectories of such simplified systems are everywhere continuous and never can be affected by potential future inputs. In other words, in nonchronotopological system theory, the time parameter is merely quantitative and is essentially symmetric, passive, plastic, and colorless, whereas in chronotopological system theory it is asymmetric, active, elastic (or inherently energycontaining), and qualitatively--not merely quantitatively--specifiable. When those enhancements are relinquished, the chronotopological definition of a system degenerates into that of the simpler systems usually considered, which do not do justice to the actual world and hence fall short in their predicted outcomes.
1.2 The Human Factor Cannot be Neglected with Impunity
The more simplistic view works quite well, however, when a system has only inanimate components, though even then it has been increasingly found that assumptions of linearity must be broadened to include the pervasive nonlinearities found even in the purely physical world, let alone its biological and psychosocial contexts. That fact is not really surprising when we consider that even the differential equations leading to the surface of so simple an object as an ellipsoid are nonlinear, as I pointed out as early as 1962 in a lecture at Ravello for the School of Theoretical Physics of the University of Naples. Thereafter, nonlinearity became a big thing and all the previously linear people (e.g., J. Lions who was with me at Ravello) began writing books on it. But nonlinearity per se, without insight into the nature of time and awareness components of a system, is also futile in the long and even sometimes the short run. There is no substitute for living insight.
When we encounter the human factor in our systems and still try to force them into an un-chronotopologlcal straightjacket, we are then truly in for a host of unpleasant surprises in the form of erroneous predictions--a fact discussed in a seminar on surprise in systems theory that I conducted in October 1982 at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna [9].
The two elements of (1) personality variations and potentials and (2) human reaction patterns and their relations to time structures are the two most neglected factors in systems theory today. Continued neglect will lead to more and more serious discrepancies in predictions as these factors, by way of global social change at increasing rates, become inescapably more prominent. What is currently least discussed, much less treated, in systems
theory--except for the most elementary physical systems where those factors are either obviously predictable or else quite absent or uncalled for--are optimal timing and personality dynamics. Both of these factors are deeply engaged in chronotopology and hence in the theory of chronotopological systems, as we shall see more explicitly later.
1.3 Systematics and Phenomenology
In currently understandable terms, the thrust of this book is necessarily what Edmund Husserl well termed the "crisis of twentieth century science," appearing in the increasingly evident fact that naively smug scientism (with its assumption that physically oriented science and technology is all sufficient) is finding itself unable to determine humanity's authentic position in the scheme of things or to direct history sensibly. A corollary of that fact is our exponentially increasing social unrest reflected in economic malaise and political dilemma.
Under these circumstances, to cite Joseph Kockelman's paraphrase of Husserl [10], the world "to an ever-growing degree becomes an artificial world.., in which less and less [of the natural] is left over .... Man, too, becomes an artificial object which is no more than a product of his own scientific projects .... In its main lines this seems to be the core of what Husserl calls 'the deprivation of meaning' " that more and more forces itself upon the attention of current humanity as the greatest socio-anthropological obstacle in the way of deeper development of humanity and indeed of science itself.
These pages are an endeavor to show a prime direction in which our worldview needs to deepen in order to remedy our situation: clearly addressing the profound questions raised by the nature of time and seeking out their meaning for humanity and how we can use the answers gleaned. Ancient Egypt, the civilization that lasted some four thousand years--longer than any other as a cultural-geographical whole with a characteristic system of basic values and doctrine, paid profound attention to this question.7
The following pages can thus constitute a needed corrective to the omissive scientism that had so long neglected the anguishes and joys of the human heart as an ultimate scientific datum for any valid world-view. So in a practical as well as theoretic sense, this book appropriately appears in a series devoted to the frontiers of the social sciences.
The developmental biologist Hans Speeman, on the closing page of his last great work, "Experimental Contributions to a Theory of Development," clearly observed that time and again the very biological data had forced him
scientifically to use expressions that referred to psychological rather than physical analogues. He next acutely notes that this "must mean more than a poetic image," and then develops his conclusion:
It must mean that these processes of development [embryological and genetic], like all biological processes, whether or not they are at one time resolved into chemical and physical processes and can be constructed from them, at their most fundamental basis bear a similarity with those very living processes of which we possess the most intimate knowledge, the psychic.
It must mean that we ourselves.., solely in the interests of the progress of our exact basic sciences, should not forego the advantage of our position between both [physical and psychic] worlds. This recognition is now dawning in many places and I believe my experiments have taken a step toward this new and high aim.
1.4 Needed Metamorphosis in Science
But phenomenology is not enough. It is clear of course that a purblind science, lost in endless circles of carelessly shifting phenomena, is manifestly powerless to break out of that circle. But so is the mere raising of a critique against it, however well directed, as was the phenomenological critique starting with Husserl.
Indeed, the two endeavors taken together literally come to nothing and zero each other out. A third term is needed--a new standpoint and deeper foundation on which to build a better and more profound science, more attuned to the whole meaning and significance of humanity in this universe-a science that then incorporates not only knowledge but wisdom, which peculiarly applies to the knowledge of time's potential harvests and how best to garner them for the longest term welfare for all. There is no wisdom without such knowledge of time. And what science then becomes is like the winged imago to the crawling larva.
Of course there are still those who would not look through Galileo's telescope for fear of seeing Jupiter's moons, clutching prejudgments of what is deemed "impossible," often with destructively paranoid intensity. And there are those who, similarly, without a shred of their own study or investigation of the matter, still blindly cry "No" when they would begin to see that qualitative developments in time can be predicted from environmental determinants. For such obstructionists there is really only Max Planck's remedy: they will have to die and allow a new generation not so afflicted to succeed.
But this book is for those who are not yet willing to ossify intellectually, and are not afraid personally to investigate even at the expense of having to
forego past prejudices in the face of new realizations. Those realizations that we will be discussing forthwith have to do with a new view of time: as a selfresonating system of qualitative interconnections and self-connectivity--in other words, with what we have previously named chronotopology [11]. It studies the manifold interrelationships that flow into and affect the present from both past and future. As a necessary preparation for those considerations we shall first look at the most general idea of what a language is-a means of conveying meanings through some syntactic symbol-system operating in real time.
A preliminary consideration of syntactic systems as such is a necessary step in arriving at a language capable of discussing the as yet largely unfamiliar concepts intrinsically entrained by chronotopological considerations. Such a development is all the more needed because those concepts, to be efficiently handled, require their own language, as we shall especially see in chapter 4, in order to avoid confusingly long and round-about