Hi, Ken,
I feel the situation is a little different from what you described.
First, to clear the air, I acknowledge that I may not have explained things
as well as I might. I'd assumed my previous emails about the
significance of feedback loops and complexity in understanding design would
have made it clear was where I was coming from without further elaboration.
Tim's super analysis of Preiser-Kapeller's paper was interesting, but my
intention was *only* to draw attention to Figs 1-36 as a simple example of
how systems dynamic analyses in History might look, and to illustrate, as
I commented, that such papers were relatively sparse.
Practical everyday System dynamics analyses include many feedback loops
involving high levels of numbers of variables. It appears Turchin uses use
relatively simple dynamic modelling methods in cliodynamics compared to the
more complex tools used when system dynamists analyse social situations.
To my eye, Turchin uses more written historical analysis and less modelling
than the more complex system dynamics approaches (see, e.g .
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X06001395 ).
Systems dynamics models of history at a similar scale of complexity to
Turchin's approaches have been commonplace in the Systems Dynamics
literature for some years. A recent example, a model of the Irish War
1916-1921 is at
http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferences/2006/proceed/papers/ANDER426.pdf
and a model of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies at
http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferences/2009/proceed/papers/P1010.pdf
An introduction to system dynamics is at
http://www.systemdynamics.org/DL-IntroSysDyn/feed.htm . I feel systems
dynamics modelling is easier and potentially more useful in design (and
design history) than Turchins' cliodynamics. It's perhaps worth remembering
it was system dynamic modelling that led to the world realising the
environmental sustainability problem (the Club of Rome's system dynamic
model by Meadows and Meadows) and people didn't seem to find that too
difficult to understand when described in 'Limits to Growth'..
A review of the use of system dynamics for teaching history that offers some
limited insights for using it for design history analyses is at
http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferences/2007/proceed/papers/CRUZ%20325.pdf
You raised Murray Gell-Mann's (2011) comments about modelling human
affairs. These issues, are however, relatively old hat. You might enjoy
reading the recent biography Forrester
(http://www.systemdynamics.org/JWForresterBio.pdf ). Pages 14 onwards (from
1956) can be straightforwardly extended to theorising about design. For an
idea of the scope of system dynamics modelling relating to design of
complex outcomes , a Google image search on "System dynamics models" or
"Causal loop" will show many examples. A nice example of use in hospital
system design is at
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v61/n2/fig_tab/jors2008134f2.h
tml
While I'm thinking of it, Turchin's approach is also not so new - as he
acknowledges, it was proposed by Ibn Kaldun about 1300 AD
(http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/Khaldun-Saud.pdf ) For Ibn Khaldun see, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah . I've also found Ibn Khaldun's
ideas helpful in making design theory
You also mentioned Coon's comments about 'processes too complicated to
explain'. Yes, this is true there are many processes too complicated to
explain - conventionally in words. I identified the boundary point for this
at '2 feedback loops' some years ago. To resolve this problem of things
being too complicated to explain, imagine if we had a special language,
agreed by everyone - like Esperanto, and with the special property that it
could be used to really represent life, society, nature... reality; and it
could do this in such a way that describing a situation in that language
could enable us to predict the future. Mathematics is such a language.
I was a bit surprised you feel that the skills required to do the above kind
of design analysis are so extraordinary and rare. My guess is there is at
least 25% of the membership of the PhD design list that have the
mathematical skills and the understanding of a range of fields to be able
to make these kinds of models.
Best wishes,
Terence
===
Ken wrote>>
Terry did not draw out the exemplary lessons nor state his purpose in
offering the paper. ...
...Could we really make use of this approach to historical analysis -
cliodynamics - for design history? The answer is no. We can't use it at the
moment, and possibly not for some time to come. Let me explain why.
... Diplomat Carleton Coon (2012: 3-8) speaks of these issues as an effort
to grapple with "processes too complicated to explain.
...Physicist Murray Gell-Mann (2011) discusses the broad range of issues,
challenges, and problems facingresearchers who want to model regularities in
human affairs.
...Few of us have the advanced range of transdisciplinary skills needed
....Across all design fields worldwide, we probably have fewer than one
hundred people with the methodological skills needed
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