Abstract
It would, perhaps, be premature to speculate here upon the question whether the methods of abstract science are likely at any future day to render service in the investigation of social problems at all commensurate with those which they have rendered in various departments of physical inquiry. An attempt to resolve this question upon pure a priori grounds of reasoning would be very likely to mislead us...We learn that we are not to expect, under the dominion of necessity, an order perceptible to human observation, unless the play of its producing causes is sufficiently simple; nor, on the other hand, to deem that free agency in the individual is inconsistent with regularity in the motions of the system of which he forms a component unit.
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Thanks go to the Austrian Ministry of Social Affairs (Ludwig Flaschberger, Franz Schmitzberger) and to the Austrian Ministry of Education (Herbert Pelzelmayer) which, with an unusual propensity for risky and potentially innovative research designs, opened up the possibilities for a detailled systems dynamics exploration into the fields of employment and education. Thanks go also to Adelheid Fraiji and to Lorenz Lassnigg at the Institute for Advanced Studies, whose collaboration in various stages of the data collection process and in the theoretical perspectives on the relations between education and employment proved to be indispensable.
G. Boole (1958), An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. New York, 20f
Boole stresses the observer—dependence in the construction and application of formalized methods in a very clear—cut and surprisingly modern fashion: It is the ability inherent in our nature to appreciate Order, and the concurrent presumption, however founded, that the phenomena of Nature are connected by a principle of Order.(Ibid., 403)
10n this term see esp. L. Laudan (1977), Progress and Its Problems. Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth. University of California Press, 66ff.
It remains an interesting phenomenon, though, that even after roughly 150 years of institutionalization in the social sciences, the notions of evidence and supportive evidence remain astonishingly weak and undecisive. On this point see, e.g. the Presidential Adress by Stanley Lieberson, in: S. Lieberson (1992), “Einstein, Renoir, and Greeley: Some Thoughts about Evidence in Sociology”, in: American Sociological Review 57, 1 — 15.
Since, according to Latour, an inscription device is any set—up, no matter what its size, nature and cost, that provides a visual display of any sort in a scientific text (B. Latour (1987), Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Harvard University Press, 68 )
For a historical survey on these models see esp. R. Paslack (1991), Urgeschichte der Selbstorganisation. Zur Archäologie eines wissenschaftlichen Paradigmas. Braunschweig—Wiesbaden.
Normally, the predominant metaphor in analysing society at large lies in a more or less sophisticated variation on the picture of a highly interdependent, functionally coordinated and internally stratified organism. Society, in its depictions from old—fashioned systems—functionalism to modernization theories or more recent conceptualizations like the ones offered by Pierre Bourdieu, Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens or, as one of the worst offenders, Niklas Luhmann remains by and large within the framework of highly intertwined, functionally related social subsystems. Contrary to the dominant view of an organic society of the non—Durkheimian variety, the present approach assumes, from the very beginning, two basic properties. The first one may be characterized most efficiently by the following quottation, viz. a vision of worlds ’°Consider an introductory remark like the following Die Gesellschaft der Individuen. Frankfurt am Main) or in the idea of a spontaneous social order by Friedrich A. Hayek. (See, e.g. F.A. Hayek (1980/81), Recht, Gesetzgebung and Freiheit, 3 Bde. Landsberg am Lech)
As a more formal corollary to the third requirement one may postulate, following Karl W. Deutsch and Bruno Fritsch, that the number of internal systems relations must exceed the number of the external ones. (See K.W. Deutsch, B. Fritsch (1980), Zur Theorie der Vereinfachung: Reduktion von Komplexitilt in der Datenverarbeitung fir Weltmodelle. Königstein, 40 )
The following demarcations offered by Francisco J. Varela use, more or less, a very similar tune:
Self-organization is a behaviour which is proper to autonomous units;
autonomous units can be appropriately characterized if we change from an input-type to a closure-type stance;
specifying the closure of a system leads to an understanding of the internal coherence (eigenbehaviors) such units have…;
if a system has enough structural plasticity the landscape of its eigenbehaviors will be divers and complex, and the pathways of change from one to another will be constrained, but not uniquely specified: there is a natural drift…;
such self-determined internal coherences and their natural drift, when observed under contingencies of interactions, will appear as the making of sense, novelty, and unpredictability, in brief as the ‘laying down’ of a world. (F.J. Varela (1984), "Two Principles of Self-Organization“, in: H. Ulrich, G.J.B. Probst (1984)(eds.), Self-Organization and Management of Social Systems. Promises, Doubts, and Questions. Berlin et al., 30).
See, e.g.¶.W. Anderson, K.J. Arrow, D. Pines (1988)(eds.), The Economy as an Evolving Complex System. Redwood City et al.
Following Erich Jantsch one is invited to distinguish between three types of collaboration across disciplines, namely multi-disciplinarity (common topic, various unrelated disciplinary methods and theories), inter-disciplinarity (common topic, common methods, seperated theories), and transdisciplinarity (common topic, common methods and common theoretical core). See, e.g. E. Jantsch (1972), Technological Planing and Social Futures. London.
G.A. Cowan (1988), "Plans fo the Future", in: D. Pines (1988)(ed.), Emerging Syntheses in Science. Proceedings of the Founding Workshop of the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Redwood City et al., 236.
l8 Not surprisingly, the point of systems demarcations and orderings has been widely discussed in the eco-sciences. See e.g. F.H. Schwarzenbach (1991), "Methodologische Beiträge zum Thema Dynamik von Waldökosystemen", in: K. Hutter (1991)(ed.), Dynamik umweltrelevanter Systeme. Berlin et al., 341-367.
Surprisingly enough, one does not find, by and large, a single notice on this problem in any one of the subsequent highly recommendable books on the modeling of social systems: T.J. Fararo (1989), The Meaning of General Theoretical Sociology. Tradition and Formalization. Cambridge University Press; K.G. Troitzsch (1990), Modellbildung and Simulation in den Sozialwissenschaften. Opladen or W. Weidlich, G. Haag (1983), Quantitative Sociology. The Dynamics of Interacting Populations. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York.
ln his Presidential Adress, Peter Checkland noted already five years ago that the systems notion has become, with detrimental effects on the systems movement in general, a much to common façon de parler:
0ne may also cite a pendant to a famous design principle, namely Edward R. Tufte’s Show data variation, not design variation (E.R. Tufte (1983), The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire) by stating: Model data variation, not conceptual variation.
On the morphological method see, as a very early example, O. Neurath (1981), "Zur Klassifikation von Hypothesensystemen", in: O. Neurath (1981), Gesammelte philosophische and methodologische Schriften. Wien, 85 — 101; for more recent elaborations compare e.g. P. Dubach (1977), "Morphologie als kreative Methode in der Langfristplanung", in: G. Bruckmann (1977)(ed.), Langfristige Prognosen. Möglichkieten and Methoden der Langfristprognostik komplexer Systeme. Würzburg—Wien, 112 — 125.
To give just one example from Table 19.3: The combination singular/compulsory segment within the educational system has not been, at least not to the present point in time, occupied yet and will, with an extremely low and even decreasing probability, ever come into existence.
1t seems, as a starting point for a systems dynamics analysis, even a promising endeavor, to use the basic dimensions of ESC as a primitive phase space — and to identify basic trajectories, basic patterns, and the like. On such an approach with respect to the cybernetics of national societies see, e.g., R. Trappl, S.A. Umpleby (1991)(eds.), "Cybernetics of National Development" in: Cybernetics and Systems 4.
For the slogan Truth is hard to come by see K.R. Popper (1965), “The History of Our Time: An Optimist’s View”, in: K.R. Popper (21965), Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York et al., 373.
0ne may also cite a pendant to a famous design principle, namely Edward R. Tufte’s Show data variation, not design variation (E.R. Tufte (1983), The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire) by stating: Model data variation, not conceptual variation.
On the morphological method see, as a very early example, O. Neurath (1981), “Zur Klassifikation von Hypothesensystemen”, in: O. Neurath (1981), Gesammelte philosophische and methodologische Schriften. Wien, 85 — 101; for more recent elaborations compare e.g. P. Dubach (1977), "Morphologie als kreative Methode in der Langfristplanung", in: G. Bruckmann (1977)(ed.), Langfristige Prognosen. Möglichkieten and Methoden der Langfristprognostik komplexer Systeme. Würzburg—Wien, 112 — 125.
To give just one example from Table 19.3: The combination singular/compulsory segment within the educational system has not been, at least not to the present point in time, occupied yet and will, with an extremely low and even decreasing probability, ever come into existence.
1t seems, as a starting point for a systems dynamics analysis, even a promising endeavor, to use the basic dimensions of ESC as a primitive phase space — and to identify basic trajectories, basic patterns, and the like. On such an approach with respect to the cybernetics of national societies see, e.g., R. Trappl, S.A. Umpleby (1991)(eds.), "Cybernetics of National Development" in: Cybernetics and Systems 4.
27For the slogan Truth is hard to come by see K.R. Popper (1965), "The History of Our Time: An Optimist’s View", in: K.R. Popper (21965), Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York et al., 373.
For surveys on the topic of self–organization see, among others, J.L. Casti (1989), Alternate Realities. Mathematical Models of Nature and Man. New York et al; F. Cramer (31989), Chaos and Ordnung. Die komplexe Struktur des Lebendigen. Stuttgart; E. Jantsch (1982), Die Selbstorganisation des Universums. Vom Urknall zum menschlichen Geist. München; B.O. Kippers (1987)(ed.), Ordnung aus dem Chaos. Prinzipien der Selbstorganisation and Evolution des Lebens. München–Zürich or G. Roth, H. Schwegler (1981)(ed.), Self–Organizing Systems. An Interdisciplinary Approach. Frankfurt–New York.
Especially the second point should make it clear that the self–organization paradigm has, also in the social sciences, a long established tradition since the insistence on non–intentional outcomes of a comparatively large number of intentional actions can be found both in the sociology of figurations by Norbert Elias (see e.g. N. Elias (21971), Was ist Soziologie? München and N. Elias (1988),
For each of the three systems, a large number of alternatives could be given in principle which, picking the employment system as reference case, range from a sectoral specification to a system of occupations, to types of work or to other forms centering on work locations, use of machinery and the like. Not only that, even the sectoral decomposition allows for different partitionings, ranging from a three sector frame to ten (OECD-scheme), nineteen (Input-output-matrix) or twenty six sectors (Micro-census in Austria).
For closer details, see K.H. Müller (1990), ’Langfristige Systemanalyse des österreichischen Beschäftigungssystems, in: K.H. Müller, K. Pichelmann (1990)(eds.), Modell zur Analyse des österreichischen Beschâftigungssystems. Wien, 49 - 169.
0n the notions of core-regions, semiperiphery, periphery, and external areas see especially I. Waller-stein (1974), The Modern World System I. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York, and I. Wallerstein (1980), The Modern World-System I I. Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World Economy. New York.
It should be interesting enough to point to the fact that the sectors of agriculture and household related services occupied a prominent position throughout the nineteenth century and became, by and large, marginalised in the subsequent decades only. In Germany for instance, one finds, out of a total labor force of 14.8 million people in 1849, roughly 8.3 million people in agriculture and a surprisingly high number of 1.8 million people in household related services compared to only 0 35 million people in firm related services like banking, insurances and the like. On these numbers see W.G. Hoffmann (1965), Das Wachstum der deutschen Wirtschaft seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin et al., 202ff.
For an operationalization of the singular-multiple distinction see K.H. Müller (1992), Langfristige Szenarienanlyse des österreichischen Bildungssystems. Wien.
0n alternative ways of conceptualizing the domain of schools even in the case of a small country like Austria, see, e.g. W. Clement et al. (1980), Bildungsexpansion und Arbeitsmarkt, Befunde zur Entwicklung in Osterreich bis 1990. Wien, Dell’Mour et al. (1985), Bildungswesen und Qualifikationsstruktur. Einige Simulationsrechnungen. Wien (Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung), or E. Holzinger et al. (1991), Der regionale Versorgungsbedarf an Bildungseinrichtungen. Expertengutachten des Österreichischen Instituts für Raumplanung (OIR). Wien.
Walter L. Bühl, among others, has complained forcefully on the very marginal utility of nonlinear natural systems dynamics within the universe of social processes by diagnosing a general Lebensfremdheit der Modelle and by arriving at the seemingly devastating conclusion … dann geht es offenbar nicht mehr um empirische Forschung, sondern um ein theoretisches Lehrbeispiel oder Spielmodell, das gerade nichts mehr mit der Beschreibung sozialwissenschaftlicher Systeme zu tun hat, eben weil hier alle möglicherweise sozialstrukturellen Faktoren ausgetrieben wurden - bis eine Art von thermodynamischer Teilchenphysik iibriggeblieben ist. (W.L. Bühl (1992), "Vergebliche Liebe zum Chaos", in: Soziale Welt 1, 36 )
R.W. Ashby (1981), "Analysis of the System to Be Modeled", in: R.W. Ashby (1981), Mechanisms of Intelligence. Ross Ashby’s Writings on Cybernetics, edited by R. Conant. Seaside, 335.
For a general conceptualization of the essence in synergetics one may recommend th following definition which sees
Already from an empirical point of view, it was simply amazing to identify the minimal amount of horizontal changes and adaptations between various types of schools which stayed, by and large, in the range far below 1%. In other words, a seemingly simple move into a specific school type turns out to be almost irreversible.
Mobilities in the school system follow two rather distinctive paths: On the one hand, vertical mobilities imply the movement of a whole school class from one type to a hierarchically higher form, whereas in the case of horizontal changes a transition from one type of school to another type, but within the same hierarchy level, takes place.
Contrary to the employment model, where each of the six subsystems was linked to all other components, the assumption of universal reachability does not hold for the school system, since a variety of transition like the one from primary school to the upper vocational school is explicitly and lawfully forbidden.
Due to reasons of common usage, it should be stressed at this point however, that the Markovassumption is not to be confused with the ordinary Markov-chains which, in the subsequent approach, play no significant role.
On this proble areas, see. e.g. J.C. Alexander et al. (1987)(eds.), The Micro—Macro—Link. University of California Press or G. Ritzer (21988), Contemporary Social Theory. New York, 366 — 384.
See, e.g. J.S. Coleman (1986), "Social Theory, Social Research, and a Theory of Action", in: American Journal of Sociology 91, 1309 — 1335.
To argue in a less metaphorical manner, the notion of essentiality can be related to genuine steps in micro investigations such as micro theory construction, micro empirical data collection, testing, the design of aggregation as well as disaggregation procedures and heuristics and similar research steps. And taking these procedures as points of reference one is forced to concede that none of them have been employed in the elaboration of the subsequent master equation design for the employment or the education model. These efforts, from their very beginnings, started as pure macro explorations, although it will become clearer in part II that the macro—factors utilized have to fulfil the criterion of testablity on he micro—scale.
1t should be noted however, that other research designs using a mster equation approach might well be able to perform a micro—macro transition of social dynamics. For closer details on this point, see the first chapter of part II.
For more details, see K.H. Müller (1992), Transdisziplindre Soziologien. Vermittlungs-Programme (forthcoming).
The term triviality of aggregation procedures can be given the following intuitive interpretation: It must not be the case that a MIM approach, while true on the micro level, turns out to be false on the macro level. More to the point, the MIM aggregation should turn out as a nonampliative procedure. (For this, see also W.C. Salmon (41975), The Foundations of Scientific Inference. The University of Pittsburgh Press, 5ff.)
See, e.g. E. Schlicht (1985), Isolation and Aggregation in Economics. Berlin et al.
Consider, to take the most elementary example, the case of the average height of a given population in a specific region, say R, then a trivial aggregation procedure would consist in measuring the heights of n individuals, and in calculating the resulting mean value h*. The feature of non-triviality enters however, even in this simplest possible procedure, if one interprets the results in the sense that the average height in region has the average value h*, since, for purely logical reasons, an additional macro-statement of the form Region R consists of a total of n people becomes a necessary ingredient to arrive at the desired conclusion.
G.S. Becker (1981), A Treatise on the Family. Harvard University Press, 40.
7.S. Coleman (1987), "Microfoundations and Macrosocial Behaviour", in: J.C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, N.J. Smelser ( 1987 ), The Micro-Macro Link. University of California Press, 171f.
See, once again, J.S. Coleman (1990), Foundations of Social Theory. Harvard University Press, especially the first chapter on metatheory and explanation in social science.
Thus, it must be the case that the corresponding micro hypotheses of the subsequent master equation approach to education like "On the average, pupils prefer school forms where the expected value of remaining in the education system is high to those school forms with a low level of expected duration", "On the average, pupils prefer those school forms which offer a comparatively large variety of employment opportunities" have to be not only confirmable in principle, but have to be confirmed in order to render the macro network the status of plausibility…
81J.S. Coleman (1990), Foundations of Social Theory op.cit., 3.
See, e.g. R. Boudon (1980), Die Logik gesellschaftlichen Handelns. Eine Einfiihrung in die soziologische Denk-and Arbeitsweise. Neuwied-Darmstadt.
0n this line of argument see especially J.L. Casti (1983), "Emergent Novelty and the Modeling of Spatial Processes", in: Kybernetes, 167-175.
It should be noted, though, that the micro-macro-distinction currently in use should be substituted eventually by a purely contextual separation whereby, on a given level, say the level of the individual, specific components, structures or processes may be qualified as micro (e.g. the brain organization), others as meso (like the behavior of social groups) and, finally, another set as macro (especially in the case of large collections of individuals). In turn, any of these microsystems may be qualified, under different levels, as macrosystems (e.g., Edelman’s neural groups (G.M. Edelman (1987), Neural Darwinism. New York) as microsystems of the macro organization of the brain), and conversely, any of the macrosystems at the individual level may become microsystems themselves (e.g., large social groups as single actors within a still larger macro-setting) — and so on… For a contextual interpretation of the micro-macro distinction see also J. Alexander (1987), "Action and Its Environments", in: J. Alexander et al. (1987)(eds.), Micro-Macro Link op.cit., 289-318.
J.H. Holland (1986), "Escaping Brittleness: The Possibilities of General-Purpose Learning Algorithms Applied to Parallel Rule-Based Systems", in: R.S. Michalski et al. (1986)(eds.), Machine Learning. An Artificial Intelligence Approach, Vol. II. Los Altos, 600.
See esp. D. Helbing (1990), "A Physical Model for the Movement of Pedestrians I: Individual Behaviour", unpublished manuscript. Stuttgart, and D. Helbing (1990), "A Physical Model for the Movement of Pedestrians I I: Collective Behaviour", unpublished manuscript. Stuttgart.
The present alternative may be formulated in contrast to the common insistence on the desirability and rationality of microfoundations for macroprocesses on behalf of methodological individualists process of model selection on primary research interests which, in the course of the last decades, have, in all probability, increased significantly…88
See, e.g. J. Miller (1978), Living Systems. New York. One qualification must be added however, since the modular architecture in Miller, staring from cells, organs, the organism and climbing up the biological ladder to groups, organisations, to the society and, finally, to the supranational system should only be considered as one among many alternatives at hand…
71On a code—conception of social sub(!)—systems see esp. Niklas Luhmann (1984), Soziale Systems. Grundriff einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main; N. Luhmann (1986), Ökologische Kommunikation. Kann die moderne Gesellschaft sich auf äkologische Gefährdungen einstellen? Opladen; N. Luhmann (1988), Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main; or, finally, N. Luhmann ( 1990 ), Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main, where, in all four books, the notion of primary codes and secondary programs has been utilized in an obsessive and, as an evaluation remark, in a highly fruitless and uninformative manner.
See e.g. U. Eco (1972), Einführung in die Semiotik. München and U. Eco ( 21981 ), Zeichen. Einführung in einen Begriff und seine Geschichte. Frankfurt am Main.
Just a single example should be sufficient to demonstrate the plausibility of the above claim: The scientific system, according to Niklas Luhmann, strives, as its primary code, for truth. But, according to a number of authors on the dynamics of scientific theories, the scientific enterprise is aimed in different directions, namely towards corroborations and refutations (Karl R. Popper), towards
The main reason for this phenomenon is directly connected with the expansion and the differentiation in the scientific system where, generally speaking, the number of different disciplines and conflicting schools within disciplinary confines exhibits an apparently secular increase.
Following, for the last time in this article, George Boole, one is led there to a simple metaphor of light and darkness which, according to George Boole, are not strictly conterminous, but are separated by a crepusular zone, through which the light of the one fades gradually off into the darkness of the other… and where, by analogical reasoning, it may be said that every region of positive knowledge lies surrounded by a debatable and speculative territory, over which it in some degree extends its influence and its light. (G. Boole, Laws of Thought op.cit. 400)
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Haag, G., Müller, K. (1992). Employment and Education as Non-Linear Network-Populations, Part I: Theory, Categorization and Methodology. In: Haag, G., Mueller, U., Troitzsch, K.G. (eds) Economic Evolution and Demographic Change. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, vol 395. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48808-5_19
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