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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
As the title suggests, this is a gentle introduction to the wide world of systems theory. Unlike many primers, this one actually starts from zero and builds up the basic models of state, flow and feedback through various diagrams and descriptions. Really interesting stuff, though most of the concepts weren't foreign to me after spending nearly a decade working with engineers. Nonetheless systems are the way of the world and this book does an excellent job exposing the principles of system design through real world examples.
informative
medium-paced
I dog eared almost every page because I kept finding anecdotes I wanted to go back to at some point.
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to design complex systems, who needs to undertand why systems surprise us, or for an eye opening read. System thinking is an important, if not essential tool in science and engineering, but it goes beyond the technical reals. The last few chapters the author does and excellent job of putting everything together. Most importantly it tells you what thinking in systems can, and cannot do. I enjoyed this book, insightful, informative and yet, concise and accessible.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
One of those books I have to have in hardcopy, digital, and audio format.
One of the most important books I have ever read. If your are up for systems and complexity thinking this is an excellent place to start!
Inspiring and accessible intro to system thinking and its application across multiple domains.
In order for one to think within a system, it is first worth spent time studying a system, seeing how it works, and how things move within it. For Donella Meadows, this lesson is paramount for not only mapping our how feedback processes balance, and reinforce each other, but also as a method for understanding how the world works and how one can change it.
To her credit, Meadows favors a slow and deliberative process descriptivism which accounts for chaos and human error. One major concern I had when beginning this book was: Will Meadows, as a system theorist, favor an despotic analysis which figures the systems-analysts in the same way Plato figured the philosopher-king? The systems-analyst, like the philosopher king, may sit in their pedestal, having studied and crystallized the world as it is in its current motion, would view the world in motion as a cyclical force which it could control for itself. Luckily, Meadows does not “fall into traps” like these. Rather Meadow’s raises the concept of the chaotic, the dynamic, and the diverse, and the qualitative to high level of importance beyond simple quantitative stability or growth.
Meadows, like a true Materialist, first proceeds from a careful study of systems how they appear to us. And like a true pragmatist, is focused on how they work and what they can do. Meadows answer to the question of how to improve a system largely depends on how the system works, and what goal the system is trying to respond to. This means that a system-goal is a dynamic teleology which changes over time by its own internal logic, but also by outside influences (such as by other feedback loops external to itself).
For example, in the case of a thermostat-house relationship. The “telos” of a thermostat is to regulate the temperature of the house with a balancing feedback loop. But it can also just as easily, as an example provided by Meadows’s (179), can be made into a clunky effort to reduce cost by withholding control of temperature to an external, calculating, authority. In this example, by setting the goal of the system to “reducing cost”, and by making the solution be “giving control of the thermostat to an outside authority”, the result was a more chaotic and less regulated system. The way the question is posed determines the solutions, and not always as they are intended.
For all of the Anti-Soviet examples given in the book, Meadows is ironically quite Marxist in her method, if not entirely in her conclusions (which are decidedly Pragmatist). At one point, Meadows acknowledges this directly, giving some credit to Marx’s analysis. What Meadow’s should have recognized is how Marx analyzed Capitalism as a reinforcing feedback loop much longer before Systems Theory was invented. Additionally, how Capital is largely responsible for value-positing in contemporary systems. Why is growth of GNP, employment, and profit viewed as markers in contemporary society? Because capital determines these values by setting up its rules and conditions. Unless we understand Capital as a meta-system which models its models, we may never truly understand the root of the problem. We can still acknowledge the existence and determinedness of other feedback systems without fully dismissing the primacy of capital.
I believe Meadow’s liberalism is what makes it challenging for her to abandon a business ontology, despite her attempts to do so. Meadows resists quantification and systems-domination, yet cannot think of how to improve relations beyond the implementation of new systems, the strengthen of them by adding more information, or by establishing new schemes for valuation.
With all of this said, these critiques are minor when considering the accessibility of her book in bringing these concepts into popular understanding. I thought at many times that “this sounds like Marx, Deleuze, Guatarri etc”. In fact, if someone asked me for an introduction to Deleuze and Guatarri, I would tell them to start by reading the first few chapters of this book, and then to contrast them with the first chapter of Anti-Oedipus. What they will find is that while their starting points are very similar, their conclusions are very different insofar that Deleuze and Guatarri take their analysis of the non-totalizable much further.
To her credit, Meadows favors a slow and deliberative process descriptivism which accounts for chaos and human error. One major concern I had when beginning this book was: Will Meadows, as a system theorist, favor an despotic analysis which figures the systems-analysts in the same way Plato figured the philosopher-king? The systems-analyst, like the philosopher king, may sit in their pedestal, having studied and crystallized the world as it is in its current motion, would view the world in motion as a cyclical force which it could control for itself. Luckily, Meadows does not “fall into traps” like these. Rather Meadow’s raises the concept of the chaotic, the dynamic, and the diverse, and the qualitative to high level of importance beyond simple quantitative stability or growth.
Meadows, like a true Materialist, first proceeds from a careful study of systems how they appear to us. And like a true pragmatist, is focused on how they work and what they can do. Meadows answer to the question of how to improve a system largely depends on how the system works, and what goal the system is trying to respond to. This means that a system-goal is a dynamic teleology which changes over time by its own internal logic, but also by outside influences (such as by other feedback loops external to itself).
For example, in the case of a thermostat-house relationship. The “telos” of a thermostat is to regulate the temperature of the house with a balancing feedback loop. But it can also just as easily, as an example provided by Meadows’s (179), can be made into a clunky effort to reduce cost by withholding control of temperature to an external, calculating, authority. In this example, by setting the goal of the system to “reducing cost”, and by making the solution be “giving control of the thermostat to an outside authority”, the result was a more chaotic and less regulated system. The way the question is posed determines the solutions, and not always as they are intended.
For all of the Anti-Soviet examples given in the book, Meadows is ironically quite Marxist in her method, if not entirely in her conclusions (which are decidedly Pragmatist). At one point, Meadows acknowledges this directly, giving some credit to Marx’s analysis. What Meadow’s should have recognized is how Marx analyzed Capitalism as a reinforcing feedback loop much longer before Systems Theory was invented. Additionally, how Capital is largely responsible for value-positing in contemporary systems. Why is growth of GNP, employment, and profit viewed as markers in contemporary society? Because capital determines these values by setting up its rules and conditions. Unless we understand Capital as a meta-system which models its models, we may never truly understand the root of the problem. We can still acknowledge the existence and determinedness of other feedback systems without fully dismissing the primacy of capital.
I believe Meadow’s liberalism is what makes it challenging for her to abandon a business ontology, despite her attempts to do so. Meadows resists quantification and systems-domination, yet cannot think of how to improve relations beyond the implementation of new systems, the strengthen of them by adding more information, or by establishing new schemes for valuation.
With all of this said, these critiques are minor when considering the accessibility of her book in bringing these concepts into popular understanding. I thought at many times that “this sounds like Marx, Deleuze, Guatarri etc”. In fact, if someone asked me for an introduction to Deleuze and Guatarri, I would tell them to start by reading the first few chapters of this book, and then to contrast them with the first chapter of Anti-Oedipus. What they will find is that while their starting points are very similar, their conclusions are very different insofar that Deleuze and Guatarri take their analysis of the non-totalizable much further.