METAPHORS (Systemic and cybernetic) 1)3)
← Back
"General constructs which can be associated with general tools of thought for organizing knowledge"(P. PATON, 1999, p. 150)
"Examples of systemic metaphors include: machine, text, organism and society"(Ibid)
Systemic metaphors should of course be used in a guarded way because of possible abuses of analogies that can easily lead to dubious interpretations and statements.
They may however reveal structural and/or functional characteristics of entities through researching apparent or real similarities between entitites of different natures or at different levels. A good example is J. MILLER's cross level research in living systems from cells to societies.
D. GREGORY observes: "What is important about perceiving the metaphors that we use is that different metaphors lead to different axioms, problems and goals: they constrain our thinking as much as they allow it to proceed in particular directions. They are both vantage points and prisons. They simultaneously support both great clarity and mind-binding impenetrability" (1993, p.69).
Consequently, a census of systemic metaphors could be very needed to create a clearer conscience of their own uses of language by systemists and cyberneticists.
Originally, systemic metaphors were basically organismic, while cybernetic ones were mechanicist.
As to the first ones, R.M. SNOW observes: "… the organismic metaphor is widely used in both functionalist and structuralist writings as well as in works of general systems theory. Functionalists portray systems as pursuing goals within "environmental" constraints. They also discuss the dynamics of social groups in terms of "development". Structuralists have coined an organismic term of their own: "genesis", used to label systemic changes of great magnitude. It is often used together with the concepts of "development" and "evolution" (1993, p.142).
Cybernetic metaphors, through the concepts of feedback, regulation and control, were at the beginning basically translated from engineering. This provoked a strong resistance from social scientists, but was more or less tolerated by biologists, who were already acquainted with the concepts of homeostasis and regulation. Later on, cybernetics diverged in two directions, with new and generally more accepted metaphors. First, M. MARUYAMA introduced the deviation-amplification model of "development", somehow related to the organismic metaphor. Next, H.von FOERSTER, H. MATURANA and F. VARELA introduced eigen behavior, organizational closure and the observer-actor, all of which are non-mechanicist.
SNOW also observes the existence of what could be called the digital metaphor: "… communication theorists have built their central scheme around opposing pairs: sender versus receiver and message versus noise. General systems models based on binary logics used to simulate a wide variety of behaviors" (p.143).
More formal metaphors appeared from the seventies on: "catastrophes", "fractals ", "fuzziness" and "chaos", for instance. These very terms imply a metaphoric bias, which may – and has – lead to abuse
→ Glue
Categories
- 1) General information
- 2) Methodology or model
- 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
- 4) Human sciences
- 5) Discipline oriented
Publisher
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).
To cite this page, please use the following information:
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]
We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible:
