by Hugh M. Lewis

We normally understand operational systems as either networks or as circular frameworks, and sometimes a mixture of both. We do not see in systems functioning uni-linear causality, in which part A affects part B, in turn affecting part C. We of course are inclined by "common sense" reinforced by "common knowledge" towards a more direct, causal view of reality--strike a match, we get fire. Hit a hammer on the nail head, we drive the nail into the wood. We are not normally inclined to viewing the match stick or the hammer, nail and wood as a part of a larger framework or system of relations in which things are accomplished, hopefully in an organized manner. There is good reason for this--everyday logic underlying common sense demands simple explanations for otherwise complex problems, and there is little left-over for the elaboration of complex explanations entailed by looking at everything as a Hen & Egg kind of problem. But scientific explanation, in spite of a rule of parsimony, cannot rest satisfied with simple explanations to complex realities, especially if the appeal is primarily to "common sense" which is meant a kind of folk ethno-logic.

Fortunately, we have early precedents for a call to a basic shift in cognitive styles of scientific worldview and praxis. This call was issued by none other than Niels Bohr in his article "Natural Philosophy and Human Cultures" (in Nature, Feb 18, 1939: pg. 268-272), when he noted that traditional causal explanation, rooted in the precept that causal behavior was independent of the means of observation, could not account for subatomic phenomena he had discovered, and that a new model of complementarity: "Information regarding the behaviour of an atomic object obtained under definite experimental conditions, may, however, according to a terminology often used in atomic physics, be adequately characterized as complementary to any information about the same object obtained by some other experimental arrangement excluding the fulfillment of the first condition." (ibid, page 269) He goes on to relate this concern to the study of human psychology, as well as to the study of human culture, where he notes a critical dilemma of understanding between "instinct" and "reason." He offers complementarity as a reasonable solution to this kind of dilemma.

He more succinctly elaborated his argument in another essay written in 1958, entitled "Causality & Complementarity", (from Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, by Niels Bohr, 1963 posthumous). "Far from restricting our efforts to put questions to nature in the form of experiments, the notion of complementarity simply characterizes the answers we can receive by such inquiry, whenever the interaction between the measuring instruments and the objects forms an integral part of the phenomena"

   In general philosophical perspective, it is significant that, as regards analysis and synthesis in other fields of knowledge, we are confronted with situations reminding us of the situation in quantum physics. Thus, the integrity of living organisms and the characteristics of conscious individuals and human cultures present features of wholeness, the account of which implies a typical complementary mode of description.....the gradual development of an appropriate terminology for the description of the simpler situation in physical science indicates that we are not dealing with more or less vague analogies, but with clear examples of logical relations which, in different contexts, are met with in wider fields.

Thus we can understand that scientific explanation is in its own development forced to adopt the wider field of view and to take into account the relativity of the observer in all instances, as well as the possibility of alternative, complementary points of view and frames of reference in relation to the phenomena being described. What appears from a conventional standpoint as an insuperable dilemma, as a hen or egg kind of problem, becomes from a complementary perspective the natural holism of divergent frames of reference.

Causality can be inferred in systems--systems function, and make things happen. As a windmill works for instance, the wind turns the vanes of the wheel, which in turn powers a shaft, that in turn drives gears in turn empowering whatever mechanical equipment might be attached to these gears, or alternatively, an electric generator. In a simple diagram of such system, we can infer causality, but we can also see that this system runs on a continuous basis, as a system, as long as the wind turns with sufficient force and speed.

At the same time, we can always construe causal events in systems on the basis of the cyclical processes that can be said to recur in such systems on a regular and predictable basis. We can look at the same system and its behavior from multiple points of view, depending upon our frame of reference, and this multiplicity of frameworks is not mutually exclusive, but complementary to the problem set implicit to the system.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I