The Future of Systems is in the Past: From the Laws of Form to System Storytelling

tl;dr: Form theory as hardware enables systems research to tell formalized system narratives by (1) formalizing systems and their working as well as (2) enable understanding of systems.

The initial promise of systems research, providing a unique conceptual lens for addressing complex real-world problems, is probably more in demand in our age than ever before. Messy and intertwined problems like climate change mitigation and adaptation, managing the digital transformation of economy and society, as well as finding a new global governance framework in a time of resurgent nationalism and authoritarianism, defy classical predict-and-control approaches in the fields of economics or political sciences. Systems understood as a post-classical approach i.e. not bound to a single discipline (e.g. economics) and a single rationality (e.g. rational choice), must not be abandoned in the light of these challenges. In this contribution, we will argue for the need for more formalization within systems research and more rigour – yet also for increased playfulness within a formal framework we call the ‘hardware’ of systems research. We propose a certain tradition of system thought emanating from Francisco Varela’s work on a calculus of self-reference (Varela, 1975) that was based on George Spencer-Brown and his ‘Laws of Form’ (Spencer-Brown, 1969). This tradition continued with Niklas Luhmann in his theory of social systems that he based firmly on the grounds of second-order cybernetics (Luhmann, 1995) and culminated in the form-theoretical reconstruction of management and organization by Dirk Baecker in his ‘Form of the Firm’ (Baecker, 2006). In this article, part of a special issue on “The Future of Systems is in the Past“, some insights from our own work (Reichel, 2011, 2017) will be re-evaluated in the light of what we call an emerging form-theoretical approach to systems storytelling, constituting a new ‘hardcore’ of systems theory and research.

What we try to offer is a glimpse into new territories for systems research and the entire field of Systems. We believe that form theory as hardware enables systems research to tell formalized system narratives by (1) formalizing systems and their workings i.e. depict their stories in an economic and condensed manner, as well as (2) enable understanding of systems i.e. enable to tell their stories in the first place through form-theoretical storytelling. At the same time, our new hardware can give rise to a new hardcore for Systems in general. The route of formalization of systems theory with the help of a form-theoretical hardware has been sketched and illustrated by examples resting on a tradition of systems thinking based on second-order cybernetics, the ‘Laws of Form’, and formal notations for self-referential systems – from Spencer-Brown (1969) to Varela (1975) to Luhmann (1995) to Baecker (2006) to Reichel (2011, 2017). This tradition as it is continued in here rests on the firm assumption that only with an appropriate way of formalizing systems (the phenomena) can the promise of Systems (the field) be realized. The points of arrival are thereby multifold, yet if using our new form-theoretical hardware both rigorously and playfully – as a formal structure of understanding systems and connecting them to empirical reality as well as in the spirit of the ‘Laws of Form’ and the creation of endless worlds and possibilities – we are convinced that this will reinvigorate discourse within Systems and about Systems.

Reichel, A. (2017). From Hardware to Hardcore: Formalizing Systems with Form Theory. International Journal of Systems and Society (IJSS), 1(4), 37-48. doi:10.4018/IJSS.2017010105

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