An Ecological Account of Parts and Wholes Preparatory to a Comparison with Husserl's Account of Same Issues

Systems are defined by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy as “sets of elements standing in interrelation”.[1]  Acknowledging that the definition may seem vague, von Bertalanffy argues that when the idea is mathematized using differential equations, novel properties can be adduced in systems in general and in more specialized applied situations.  Although von Bertalanffy has quite concrete objects in mind, for instance “a galaxy, a dog, a cell, and an atom are real systems” [von Bertalanffy’s emphasis], he also recognized as systems those “conceptual systems such as logic, mathematics (but e.g. also including music) which essentially are symbolic constructs; with abstracted systems (science) as a subclass of the latter, i.e. conceptual systems corresponding with reality.”  [von Bertalanffy’s emphasis][2]  There is, it would seem, an immediate parallel between von Bertalanffy and Husserl in their recognition that thinking of parts and whole (Husserl) or elements and systems (von Bertalanffy) can refer to quite concrete objects as well as more essential rules.  It is pretty clear though that whereas Husserl has more commitments to the ideal over the empirical von Bertalanffy’s emphasizes the converse.

Hierarchy theory is a component of this more general systems theory that is applied to understanding the “architecture” of complex systems.[3]  “Nature loves hierarchies”, Herbert Simon, the social scientists, who pointed out that natural objects can be seen as arranged like Chinese boxes, each level inside a progressively larger box.  Herbert Simon recognizes four intertwining sequences: chemical, organismic, genetic, and human social organizations.[4]  This fourth hierarchy includes “the “programs” and other components called elementary information processes”.[5]  We might like to think of this as “mind”, but in this fourth hierarchy Simon also includes those programs which “have been occurring with growing in the artificial complex systems called digital computers.”

The tenets of hierarchy theory have been attractive to ecologists since observations of the nestedness of ecological levels, organisms, populations (of a single species), communities (of several species), ecosystems (the biotic community combined with the abiotic environment) and so on.  This hierarchy in natural systems is referred to as the “level of organization” concept.  Ecologists have proceeded with the assumption that subsystems on the same level can be studied without reference to one another.  For instance, we might study prairies, making the assumption that we do not simultaneously have to include tropical rainforests in our investigation.[6]  This methodological assumption relies upon the supposed “near-decomposability” of all medium-number systems and is rooted in the observation that “most interactions in nature, between systems of all kind, decrease in strength with distance.”[7] However, there are some dangers in simply conflating ecological hierarchy with “levels of organizations” concept since natural systems are comprised of more than just simple entities (organisms with clearly defined boundaries, biotic communities that are spatiotemporally reasonably well designed etc.).  They are also comprised of more diffusely defined sets of processes, and, depending upon the research question, there is more than one “n-1” level that might be examined.[8]

Husserl as Systems Thinker: Machines, Intentionality and Emergence

In distinguishing between simple and complex intentional acts Husserl refers to machines.  “A compound machine”, he says, “is a machine compounded out of machines, but so compounded, that it has a total performance into which the performances of the partial machines flow, and the like is the case in regard to compounded acts.”  (LI V §18, p115).  It seems to me that it would be useful to extend the analogy further by referring to the property of "emergence" known in systems thinking.  The function of a machine (“a combination of rigid or resistant bodies having definite motions and capable of performing useful work.”) is often not entirely predictable based upon an inspection of its parts.  One might look for quite some time at the interdigitating cogs of a watch before one surmised that the telling of time was the function.  Perhaps a clearer example is that of water where its properties of flow and the properties of its states seem not to be predicable from an examination of the chemical properties of hydrogen and oxygen.  One wonders in a parallel fashion if something of emergence is at play in intentionality?  Husserl insists upon the unity of the intentional act in a manner that seems to be more than just a mere summing up of partial acts. 

I’ll be working on this over the coming weeks for the Husserl Logical Investigations seminar I am taking with Frédéric Seyler.  Primarily I will be reading Logical Investigation III On the Theory of Wholes and Parts and LI V On Intentional Experiences and Their Contents.  Any thoughts on resources? Robert Sokolowski has some useful papers on LI III onwards from the 1960s.

The homeostasis of happy and unhappy families

From Love and Other Catastrophes.

A characteristic of families is that they stick around.  Even the shitty ones.  Men and women may clamor and fret to find life partners – there are apparently industries based upon facilitating this endeavor.  And sure enough some are sundered very rapidly.  But most families do not fall apart, at least not immediately.  The endurance of coupled humans can be attributed to the set of homeostatic feedbacks that develop to stabilize them.  The uxoriousness of men, the doting of women, the clandestineness of their intimacies, the inextricability of their shared tasks, the loftiness of their originary vows, and the damp conjugations of the bedroom: all helming the established couple along the straight and narrow.  And when the satisfactions have stopped, heedfulness of the pocketbook, solicitude for the kids and maybe even the steely comforts of a dependable foe can keep the relationship on the tracks even as the furnace of love sputters out.  Of course, in the worst circumstances unhappy families are maintained by unspeakable acts being perpetrated upon those who dare not speak of them.  Read more of the essay here. 

Introducing the Rules of the Ecological Game: The descent of a flock of hierarchy theories in Manhattan, circa 1986

TAKE HEED YE YOUTHFUL SCHOLARS: books discovered in your tender years will influence your thinking for decades to come. In 1987 while surfing the stacks of the library of CUNY Graduate School in Manhattan, I plucked off the shelves a copy of Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity by T. F. H. Allen and Thomas Starr (1982). Shortly after this I picked up a copy of a monograph by R.V O’Neill and his colleagues (including T.F.H. Allen) entitled A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems. I recall that this volume was regarded with a measure of scorn, albeit a bemused rather than a vicious scorn, by several of the ecologists who taught me at the time (primarily population and community ecologists). It was this book, placing the ecosystem into the framework of a more general systems theory, that ultimately had the longest lasting influence on me in terms of my conception of how the complexities of nature can be made tractable. 

Hierarchy theory was in the air back them. Perhaps one should say “hierarchy theories” since the observation that many of the complexities in the world can be resolved into structures comprised of parts within parts within wholes is not only a commonplace observation; it is one that has been theorized in many disciplines. Herbert Simon, a leading figure in developing this perspective, was an economist, Ilya Progogine, a chemist, Howard Pattee, a theoretical biologist, Jean Piaget a developmental psychologist. Hierarchy theory draws upon more general systems theory developed by luminaries such as Ludwig von Bertalanffy and James Grier Miller, both theoretical biologists. These early students of complex systems developed ways of thinking about commonalities between disciplines whose objects were structured as nested sets of parts within wholes (in more mathematical terms, hierarchies are a partially ordered set).