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Albert Einstein reportedly said, “In the brain, thinking
is doing”. Now perhaps his remark was offered as a counterpoint to the
prevailing argument that doing is more important than thinking. Engineers and
practical people in general realize all too well that no matter how much you
think unless you do, nothing will happen. You can plan, prepare and predict
all you want, but action occurs through doing and that is what matters.
Many people frustrate the heck out of others by getting things
done, and getting them done remarkably well, without apparently much attention
being given to the thinking behind the doing. Philip Sporn once eloquently
remarked, “The engineer must often go beyond the limits of science, or
question judgment based on alleged existing science. He must frequently assert
his own over-riding judgment and stake his reputation to go into areas beyond
that which has been fully explored scientifically, and indeed, may even contravene
that which has been claimed to have been demonstrated incontrovertibly by the
science of the day.” It
is as if the engineer makes thinking happen by simply doing.
There is a value in doing per se, a value that thinking can
never lay claim to, and regrettably a value that is inordinately esteemed to
the very detriment of thinking itself. We are obliged to Dr. Einstein for helping
to redress this imbalance. But perhaps the renowned scientist was merely being
beguiling. Maybe he wanted us to see that though we make this evident distinction
between thinking and doing, at some level of observation there is none. What
is the thinking of a neuron whose dancing with neighbors produces a thought
that transcends the totality of neural choreography?
This web site is about thinking and it describes specifically
a type of thinking that makes sense of togetherness by deploying the notion
of ‘system’, a term that has achieved, in a relatively short space
of time, unparalleled ubiquity. Our engineering friends believe the term
‘system’ is theirs of right and they alone understand systems.
After all, who builds them? Who gets the job done? You would think, to
hear some engineers talk, that they invented the term itself. In fact what
propelled it into the high currency values it occupies today were the ideas
of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, an
Austrian scientist, who in making sense of plant life wondered whether
his line of reasoning, essentially systemic, could have application to many
other forms of life, including the societal and the technological. Could plants,
animals, rock formations, persons, peoples and the products that knit
us together, he reflected, be regarded as ‘systems’? It is thought like this
which this web site values and commends.
From an Austrian émigré to the grandson of Italian
immigrants. Rudolph Giuliani’s book on ‘Leadership’ is replete
with references to systems. Here are some:
- “For any system to remain
effective it must continually challenge itself”
- “Despite the failures of
some very high profile American businesses and the alleged “corporate
greed”
that caused them, the reality is that they reflect only a small
percentage of the business community. And all of these collapses actually
demonstrate that America's economic system is a very healthy one. Furthermore
the system is self-correcting … accountability works to improve all
systems”.
- “In a system as complex
as New York City …”
Interpreting Mr. Giuliani’s thoughts, we believe he
envisages at least three kinds of system:
· the
information management kind that gathers and processes data and makes reports
which inform action to improve what is being monitored;
· the
task forces themselves who use these information management systems in order
to stay on top of the job of managing a complex community of people, ensuring
its well-being; and, moving up the scale,
· the
cities, states, nations and their infrastructure that holds these entities
together, and adaptively so.
Giuliani’s book presents many principles of leadership
for us to digest, but the telling of these relies, somewhat imperceptibly,
on the more fundamental notions of systems thinking.
Einstein also knew the value of ‘system’ as a
notion to stimulate thinking. Here’s another of his many remarkable utterances
that gives evidence of this, “Gravity doesn’t explain two people
falling in love”. His point here is surely that there exist multiple
perspectives, differing levels of behavior, and that there is a real need for
different (systems of) knowledge, interlinked for sure but each emergent in
their own right, that we need in order to deal with the vastly differing phenomena
in our world. These systems of knowledge are the sciences – physics,
chemistry, biology, physiology, psychology and so on.
Einstein, a physicist, was a ‘systems person’.
So too was von Bertalanffy, who was a biologist. And now we have Rudy, an aspiring
44th President of the USA, by profession, an attorney. Evidently,
engineers are not the only professionals occupying the systems landscape. And
that’s a good thing. Of course getting these various disciplines to come
together on this landscape, in order to better understand this term ‘system’ and
make sense of togetherness itself is quite another thing. It’s a challenge
that this web site will not duck. We hope that you enjoy what we have served
up. Moreover, we invite you to contribute your own thinking, by doing something:
email thoughts@boardmansauser.com
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