SYSTEMANTICS

- -
How Systems Work
and Especially
How They Fail

----0. Blechman
JOHN GALL
Illustrated by R.
-
.--

Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co.

 CONTENTS

CopyrigiH @ 1975 b}' John GaiL PR EFACE How This Treatise Came to "Be Written~ vii
F1rst pLibl i hcd b) Quadrangle/ I TRODUCTION Paradox Lost and Found. Di-
The cw York imes Hook Company. Inc. l977. .
mensions of the Problem. XI

Draw in •s and captlon ~ 1977 by R. 0 . Blechman . I HISTORICAL OVERVIEW. The Primal Sce·-
All righh reserved, mduding the right to reproduce tlus nar1o. Early Prophets. Korzybski. From Potter to
book or portion\ thereof an an~· form For informatiorn,
ddres" Quadrangleifhe cw York Tim~ Book Com- Peter by Way of Parkinson. 3
pan}', Inc., Three Park Avenue, l!W York, ew York
10016 Manufucturcd in the Umted States of Amenc.a.
II FIRST PRINCIPLES. The Fundamental Theo-
Pubiish(;d simultaneously in Canada by Fttzhenry & rem. The Law of Conservation of Anergy. The Big-
Whiteside, Ltd., Toronto. Bang Theo~rem. Laws of Growth. 9

Destgned by Beth Tondreau. III THE MYSTERIOUS WAYS OF SYSTEMS.

The Generalized Uncertainty Principle. CJimax De-
Pr~:v10u ly publ~shed by the General Systemantics sign. The Non-Additivity Theorem. 16
Press, Ann Arbor, M1ch1gan.
IV FEEDBACK. The Principle of Le Chatelier. The
Library of Congress Cataloging in P ub1icatio:o Data Power of Positive Feedback. Oscillating Systems. 23
Gall, John, 1925-
Systemanu~ . V FUNCTIONARY;S FALSITY AND THE OP-
ERATIONAL FALLACY. 32
First ed.' pub1i~hed in J97S under title: General
[Link] . VI INSIDE SYSTEMS. The F.L.A.W., Systems-
Btb~iography: p.
Delusions, The Coefficient of Fiction, Systems-People,
I . Sy tern thf!:OJ]'-Anecdotes, facetiae satire etc 39
I. Tttlc. ~ • · Manager,s Mirage, Orwell's Inversion.
P 62li.S93G l977 003
ISB 0-8129-0674-8 76-50820
 CONTENTS
.
VI

TARY SYSTEM -FU CTIONS.

II E EM ~ d · istrator's Anxi-
lmpotent Potentate Syndrome. A mm
PREFACE: HOW THIS
49
ety. TREATISE~ CAME
VIII ADVA C D SYSTEMS-FU CTIO S. The
Functional Indetermmacy Theorem (F.I.T.). The
TO BE WRITTEN
54
ewtonian Law of Systems~ Inertia.
IX SYSTEMS-FAILURE (THEORY OF ER-
RORS). Failure-Mode Theorems. The Fail-Safe Theo-
61
rem.
X APPLIED SYSTEMANTICS 1: PR ACTICAL
SYSTEMS DESIG . Th.e Sy~tems Law of Gravity T he immediate motivation for undertaking this work was
(Vector Theory). 67 provided by the bizarre experience of a colleague of the
XI PPLIED SYSTEMA TICS 2: MANAGE~ author (Jet us call him Jones), a medical scientist specializ-
ME T A D OTH ER MYTHS. Catalytic Manager- ing in the study of mental retardation. This field, until
ship. The ~· Problem '' ProbJem. 72 recently, was a very unfashionable one,, and Jones consid-
XII APPLIED YSTEMANTICS 3: TAMING ered himself fortunate to be employed as Research Associ-
SYSTEMS. 77 ate at a small State Home for retarded children. In this
E VOl BEYO D EXPERTISE. 85
humble, even despised, position he was too low on the
CiviJ Service s~cale to merit the attention of administrators,
APPENDICES
and he was therefore left alone to tinker with ideas in his
I Annotated Compendium of Basic Systems-Axi- chosen field. He was happily pursuing his own research
om , Theorems, Corollaries, etc. 87 interests when, following presidential interest and na-
U First Biennial Readers; Se1f-Eva]uation 'Quiz. 95 tional publicity,. mental retardation suddenly became a
III Readers' T~ear-Out Feedback Sheet. 98 fashionable subject. Jones received an urgent invitation to
join .an ambitious federally funded project for a systematic
IV Annual uAuntf' Awards for Syst,ems Antics of
the Year. attack upon the "problem"• of mental retardation.
99
V Antics, Entry Blank. Thinking that this new job, witb its ample funds and
103 facilities, would advance both his research efforts and his
VI Glossary.
104 career, Jones joined. Within three months his own re-
BIBLI,OGRAPHY search had come to a halt, and within a year he was
109

*See The "Problem, Problem, Chapter XI .

..
Vll
 PREFACE PREFACE .
lX
\'111
ink intelligently in the understand the basic laws governing the behavior of com-
ble to ~pea k or 'th
complete IY una · H h d 1n fact, become re- plex organizations. A great enterprise can flounder help-
field of menta! retardatlon. c a ' . less1y or even wither away before our very eyes as the
tarded relative to his previous con~IUon. . . . result of malignant but as yet unnam~ed disorders, or in
. to [Link] tf pos~able, what had
Looktng abou t h tm · ' . response to the operation of natural laws whose Newton
f' d that a dozen other k tlled profes-
happened, Jones .oun . . has not yet been born to announce them to mankind.
ionals v.·ho made up the staff of the pr?~ect h ad . ex-
F aced with thi realization, .and moved by the dramatic
perienced the satne catastrophe. That"amblhou~ proje~t,
and touching crisis that had ov~ertaken his colleague, the
designe-d to advance solutions to the pr~blem, had . ln
fact, taken most of the a vai1able workers tn the field and author resolved to redouble his researches into the causes
of organizational ineptitude and systems malfunction,
neutralized them.
What had gone wrong? Jones, knowing of the author's seeking deep beneath the surface for the hidden forces that
interest in sy terns operation, turned to him for ad vice, cause the best-laid p]ans to "gang aft agley.~, Little did he
and the two of us; jointly, tried to analyze the pr~ob]em. We suspect, at that moment, where those studies would lead.
first or aU reviewed Parkin<;on ·s classic essay on Institu- He had not yet experienced the blinding illumination of
tionaJ Paralysis, • hoping to find enHghtenment there. Was the OPERATIO AL FALLACY. The FUNDAMEN-
the disea!)e a fu]minati ng ca e of lnJelititis?** Obviously TAL THEOREM OF SYSTEMANTICS lay well over
not. The profe ional staff of the In~ti tute were competent, the horizon. Even the relatively simple and easy-to-under-
dedicated, and hardworking. Furthermore, the adminis- stand GENERALIZED UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
trator were experienced, energetic, and extremely logical was not yet a gleam. Those and other deep-ranging and
in their approach to problems. The Institute was failing in depressing generalizations were to come only much later.
spite of the best efforts of every one of its members. after exhaustive researches conducted under the l~east aus-
Was it an example of the Peter Principle,*** in which picious circumstances and in settings not calculated to
members had ascended the hierarchy until they had bo]ster the faint of heart.
reached jobs for which they were not fitted? No. This was What foUows is the fruit of those researches set forth as
a new organization, and no one had been promoted very briefly and simply as poss~ble, in a style that is deliberately
far. Slowly it began to dawn on us that men do not yet austere and (the author may be permitted to hope) not
without a certain e1egance~ derived from the essentially
*C. ~o~thco_te Parkinson. Parkinson's Law and Other Studies in mathematical nature of the science itself. The reader must
Admuustra. tlon. Boston: Houghton M·m·1 10 1957
**lb"d
t . I nJe
· 1lUtts·
· Incompetenc ' d . ' . .. . imagine for himself at what cost in blood, sweat, and tears
cording to the formula JlJ) e an Jealousy tnteractlng ac- -and in time spent in deep contemplation of contempo-
•••La urence J. Peter and Ra m ,d H rary systems-these simple statements have been wrung
New YorJc Bantam Books, ~ ~n
17 uU. The Peter Principle.
from the messy complexity of the real world. They are
 PRE ACE
X
r. . th that a knowledge of the
d · th hope an d 1a1
olfere m eif . . lex sustems \ViU enable mank1nd to
natural Jaws o comp / f 1!.
.

t
INTRODUCTION: PARADOX
.
avoid some of the rnore eg
regious errors o tue pas ·
. LOS~ T AND FOUND.
t his little book may ser e as a warntng
At thc very least
· ·
' t thus helping to counter the hea · ong
to those who rea d t ,
dl DIMENSIONS
rush into Systemism• that characterize our ag~. An~ who OF THE PROBLEM
knows.? Per aps r~eaders of this modest treat. tse .w1H be
·h
stimulated to discover new Systems-insights of thelr own,
that could lead to even higher achievements for the infant
science of Systemantics.
All around us w~e see a world of paradox: deep, ironic, and
intractable. A world in which the hungry nations export
food; the riche t nations shp into demoralizing economic
recessions; the stronge t nations go to war against the
smallest and weakest and are unable to win; a world in
which revolution against tyrannical systems themselves
be~ orne tyrannie . In human affairs, celebrities receive till
more pubhcity becau e they are "well known"; men rise
to high positions because of their knowledge of affairs only
to find them elves cut otT from the sources of their knowl-
edge; ctentists opposed to the use of scientific knowledge
in warfare find them elves advising the government on
how to win wars by using scientific knowledge ... the list
is endless. Ours is a world of paradox.
Why is thi ? How does it come about that things turn
out o differently from what common sense would expect?
The religious person may blame it on original sin. The
historian may cite the force of trends such as population
•systemlsm:
. n. 1. The state of . . growth and industrialization. The sociologist offers rea·
belief that systems can .be d mlndless .behef in. y terns; the
son rooted in the peculiarities of human associations.
goals. 2. The state of be' m~ e to fun~tlon to achieve desired
·
bemg 1ng 101 mersed · Reformer blame it all on "the ystem., and propose new
a System. -person. (See Ch · ln s~ste~s; the tate of
apter VL Insmde Sy terns.'') systems that would, they assert, guarantee a brave new

.
.XI
 I TRODUCTIO N 1 TRODUCTIO ..'
Xl ll
.
X1l
d abundance. E vcryone, it -ever come to clear awareness of this dread and ob cure
·u tice peace, an . dh
worl d of J • . of what the problem 1S an o . uhject.
seems. has hts own idea n one point-that their 0 one, these days; can avoid ~contact with systems.
d But a ll agree o .
It can be correcte . n 'f only tt v,fere u ntVef - Systems arc everywhere: big systems, little systems~ sy ~
0\\'fl system would work very we 1
terns mechanical and electronic, and those special systems
ally adopted. · d 'cal that con i t of organized associations of people. In se]f.
. . d in this essay ts m ore ra J
The polnt of \'Jew espouse . l
v and at the same ttme more pe~simistk. Stated as ~c~tnct y defense, we must learn to live with ~ ystems, to control
'b• . t~~-.e fun damental problenl does not he Jn any them lest they control us. As Humpty Dumpty said to
as p0'-1 ~1 .c. u S 1 ·
. I ·t but rather 1n systems as such. a vatton, A lice (though in another context): "The question is: which
part 1cu ar sys em h ·
if it i attmnablc at an, even par tially, is to be sou~ t ln is to be master- that's all.'"
a deeper understanding of the vlay~ of \)'Stems, not Slmply No one can afford not to understand the basic principles
in a criHct"m of the errorl;j. of a particular ystem. of How Syst·ems W ork. Ignorance of those basic laws is
But although mt=n huild systems almost in ttnctiv~ely, • bound to lead to unreaHstic expectat~ons of the type that
the; do not lightly t urn thetr ingenuity to the study of have plagued dreamers, schemers, and so-called men of
How Sy~terns Work. That branch of kn owledge is not affairs from the earliest ti·m es. Clearly there is a great need
congenml to man ~ Jt goe~ against the grain. Goal-oriented for n1ore widespread knowledg~e of those basic laws. But
man~ the upright ape wi th tht! spear, is 1nt~erested tn the (and j ust h ere is another ex amp~le of the paradoxical na-
end-result. If the spear flies w1de of the mark, man is ture of systems-fun ctions) there is a strange dearth of
equally likely lo trample it to bit in a rage or to blame the available iniormation written for the general reader. Tech-
erratic flaght on malevoJcnr .ptnts. He is m uch 1ess likely nical tomes of ystems analysis and operations research
to undertake a critical analy i of hand-propeJled missi]es, abound on the shelves of science libraries and of business
and infinitely less 1ikely to ponder the austere ab tractions
management inst itutes. But now here is there to be found
pr~cnt ed mn thi book.
a ingle, basic primer t hat speUs out the essential prag-
If young people lack expenence and interest for under-
matic facts of systems in the form of simp)e and easy-to-
~tand1ng How System Work, older people are already
grasp axioms. Similarly there are no courses in Systems
defeated. hey may have learned from direct experience
Function in our high schools or junior colleges. Like sex
a few th1ngs about systems, but their experience will have
been fragmentary and painfu1--and in any case, for them education, systems sophistication has until recently be~n
the battle 1 over. No, only a handful--only a lucky few a taboo subject This book breaks the taboo. It tells all, tn
frank and intimate language understandable to anyone
*Recent research has linked rh·1 · . who is wiUing to read and reflect. No longer can people
birds and to token-coll t. . ~ •m~u lse t? nesting behavior in take refuge in the plaintt " Nobody told me.,, It's aU here~
ec mg 1" h1gher pnmates.
within the covers of one small book~
 I STOR CAL
OVERV EW

A H over the \VOrld, in great metropolitan centers as well

as in the ren1otest rural backwaters. in sophisticated elec-
tron!cs laboratories, and in dingy clerical offices, people
everywhere are struggling Ylith a Problem:

Things Aren tt Working Very Well.*

This, of course, is nothing new. People have been dis-

courag,ed about things jn genera~ many tlmes in the past.
A g,ood deal of discouragement prevailed during the Dark
Ages, and moraJe was rather low in the Middle Ages, too.
The Industria) Revolution brought with it depressing
times, and the Victorian Era was felt by many to be partic-
ularly gloomy. The Atomic Age isn't remarkable for
cheer, either. At all times there have been people who felt
that things weren,t working out very well. This observa-
tion has gradually come to be recognized as an ongoing
fact of life, an in eparable component of the human condi-
tion. Because of its central role in all that follows (being
the fundam~ental observation upon which all further re-

•For an extensive review of things that aren't working very weD

at present, see Peter and Hull, op. cit., Introduction, pp. ix-xviii.

3
 I. HISTORICAL
OVERVIEW

.t\ ]] 0\'L'f the \VO rl d , in great rnetropolitan centers as Well

a" in the rcn1otest rura l baL: k'" ate rs, in sophisticated eiec-
l f'(ltll c ~ 1a boratories , and in dingy c lerica 1 offices, peopl~e
every\v here arc st ruggling \Vi th a Problt!m:

Things A ren 't Working Very Well*

·rl!is, of cou r&e, i~ nothing nc\v. People have been dis-

couraged about things in general n1any t1mes in the past.
A good deal of di couragemen t prevailed d uring the Dark
.Ages, and :m orale \vas rarher low in the Middle Ages, too.
Th~e Indus trial Revolution brought \vhh it depress!ng
tim~es, and the Victorian Era was felt by many to be partic-
ularly gloomy. The Atomic Age isn't remarkable for
cheer, either. At aU times there have been peop1e who felt
that things \Veren't working out very well. This ob erva-
tion has gradua11y come to be recognized as an ongoing
fact of hfe, an inseparable component of the human condi-
tion Because of its central role in aH that foUows (being
the fundamenta1 observation upon \Vhich all further re-

• For an ex tensive revie\\<' of things that aren't working very w H

at present, see Peter and H uU, op. cit., Introduction, pp. ix-x\riai .

....
.)
 4 SYST MANTICS HIS ORICAL OVERVIEW 5
earch into y tern ha been )( ed) it i kn wn a The If nything Can Go Vlrong. It Will.
Prima) "c nario. e give it 1e o t fu11:
In the Law as thus formulated, there is a gratuitous and
'1 hings (Thtng Generally / All Things I he unjustified clement of teleology, an intrusion of supersti-
Whole W rks) re Indet;d ot Working Very tion, or even of belief in magic, which we today would
\'le11. In act, he ever Did. resolutely reject. The Universe is not actually malignant)
it only seems so. •
In fc rn1al systerns terminology it may he stated con- Shortly after Murphy there appeared upon the scene a
cisely in a ·iornahc form: new and powerful mind, that of Count Alfre-d Korzybski,
in who e honor the en tire field of General Systemantics
System In General Work P 10rlv Or at At All. has been named. Korzybski was the author of General
"'
Semantics, a vaulting effort at a comprehensive explana-
But this fact, repeated y observt;d by men and women tion of Why Things D on't Worka This early attempt to
o 'n through the ag(;; , has been, 1n the past. always at- pinpoint the flaw in h uman systems was itself flawed,
tributed to various ~pe "'iaJ circum tances. It has been re- h owever, by the author's monistic viewpoint. Korzybski
ser ed for our own time, and for a maJJ band of men of had convinced himself that all breakdowns of human sys-
genius, \\'Orking mostly alone, to throw upon t he whole tem are attributab1e to m isunderstandings-to failures of
ubject th brilliant 11ght ()f intuition , illun1inating for a ll communication.
mankind the pre\ io usly ob cure rea ons why Things So Korzybski faiJed to grasp the essen tial point that human
Often Go Wrong, or Don't Work, or Work in Ways ever systems are not prevented from working by some single,
Anticipated. To list the narnes of tho e contributors is to hidden defect, whether of communication or anything
recite the I onor Ron of Sy temantics. else. F ailure to function as expected (as we shall show
,
o hL tor of the subject would be con1plete witho ut later) is an intrinsic feature of system s, resulting from laws
some reference to the errdle endary, almost anonymous of systems-behavior that are as rigorou a any in atural
Murphy (jioreat circa 1940?.. who c hose to disguise his Science or Mathematics. Hence, the appropriateness of
genius by stating a fundamental systems theorem in com- the term GE ERAL SYSTEMA TIC for the entire
monplace, almo t pede trian terminology. This law, field. It is a perfectly general feature of systems not to do
known o schoolboys t e y..rorld over as Je/Jybread always what they are ~ntended to do. Furthermore, the word
falls jelly-side down, i here restated in Murphy,s O\\~ n ANTICS hidden in the term carries this implication in a
ords, as it appears on the waHs of n1ost of the worJd's
cic _tific laboratories: *See uThe Mysterious Ways of Systems," Chapter III.
 YST MA TICS HISTORICAL OVER\'IEW 7

li ly \vay. Y DI .p A Y A rTICS. They qact Having paid tribute to all these en, however, one must
up .., everthele , as we shall ee, _orz bski by stressing recognize that the infant cience on whose foundations
the in1portance ol p eci. e dtdiniti n~, laid the ground- these giants \Vere working (one mu. t mix metaphors now
\vnrk for the Operational allacy, \vhich is the key to and then) was stilllirnited. There was no organized set of
understanding lhe aradoxical behavior of y terns (see basic principle from which to operate. The foundations
Chapter V . had been laid erratically, a piece at a time, by individual
After rzyb ki, a brilliant trio of founder established "'orkers of genius.
the rea] ha i oft fi ld. Of the e, the earliest wa Stephen Still needed \Vas a systematic exposition of the funda-
Pott r, * \Vh( pain takingly elaborated a variety of elega t mental principles-the axioms-upon which all later
methods for b ·nding rcc' Jcitrant , tern to the need of superstructu es could be uilt.
pers( nal advanccn1ent. It must be admitted that Potter he present work · hun1bly offered as a first approach
was essentially , pr' gmatist \\'hose goals were utilitarian to that goal It will have its, shortcomings, of course. The
and \\'ho 'e form lations lack the broad genera itie of a individual proposition will be arguedt dissected, and criti-
Parkinson o a Peter. cized; and then either rejected as trivial, erroneous, or
o11o ing Pott~ , orthcot.:. Parkin on estabhs ed
an undying clain1 to fame y rophesying- as early as
1957- the future emergence of the problem of Table
Shape in dipl n1atic conferences. •• He '"''as, of course,
triumphant! vindicated in the Pari~ Peace Talks of] 968,
\\'hen an entire sea on was devoted to just this topic bt!fore
di cussion of the ccs ation of hosti1ities could even begin.
No cl arer demonstration of the Generalized Uncertainty
Principl could have been a ked.***
Third in the brilliant trio of founder i Doctor Lau-
rence J _ P t er, \\'hose Pri ciple of Incompetence comes
close to being the Central Theorem of Administrat1ve
y, temantic .

tephen Potter. One-upman.:1hip. N e\\' York: Henry Holt &

Co., 1952.
* ark in on, op. cit., p. 17.
••• rue, Parkin n did not recognize it as such at the time.
 YST EMA TICS

j, comprehensible; or cnshr'ned in the literature as having

tL od the test of open debate and criticism. Th1s is as the
author would wi ·h ·t
II. F RST P I C PLES
In the pages that follo\\ we haH be princLpally con-
1
,

cerned \Vith sy terns that involve human beings, particu-

larly t ho e very large y terns such as national govern-
n1ent , nation themsel es, religions, the railway system, We begin at the beginning~ Ylith the Fundamental Theorem:
the post office, the university ~·y tern, the public chool
system, etc., etc., etc. But in our ormulations of the laws
New Systems Mean New Problems.
of such ystems~ we have ·triven for the greatest possible
d . grce of generality. If we are correct, our theorems apply Explanation: When a system* is set up to accomplish
to the steamship itself as well as to the crew who run it some goal, a new enfty has come into being~the system
and to the com any that built it. it elf. 0 matter what the ugoal'' of the system, it immedi-
Here, then, is t he very fir. t Book of Systems Axioms, ately begins to exhib't system behavior; that is, to act
the very _ rst at tempt to deal ith the cu sednes of Sys- according to the ge era laws that govern the operation of
tems in a fundamental, lo ical \\'ay, b getting at the basic all systems. o the system itself has to be dealt with.
rules of their behavior. Whereas before, there was only the problem-such as
warfare between nations~ or garbage collection-there is
now an additional universe of problems associated with
the functioning or merely the presence of the new system.
In the ~case of garbage collection, the original problem
could be stated briefly as: hWhat do we do with all this
garbage?'" After setting up a garbage-collection system, we
find ourselves faced with a new universe of problems.
The e include questions of collective bargaining with the
garbage collectors' union, rates and hours, collection on
very cold or rainy days, purchase and maintenance of
garbage trucks, millage and bond issues, voter apathy,
regulations regarding separation of garbage from trash,
etcq etc.

*For definition of y tern, see Appendix VI.

9
 iO SY TEMA TICS FIRS PRI C PLES 11
It 1ough cal;h f th" problern . c 'nsidered individu- The . um total oj'probletnsfacing the community has not
al!_ , seem to be c nly a specific t chn1cal difficuJty having changed. They have tnerely changed their f orm and relative
to do \\'ith set t 1r1g up and operating a garbage-collecting importance. \Vc require at this point a Defin~ tion:
"'ystcm \'e Jntend to hn"' that such problems are really
~ peciHc cxaanples of he operation of general laws applica- Any state or cond;tion of the Universe, or of any
ble to any s sten1, not just to garbage t.;ollecting. For ex- portion of it that requires the expenditure of human
anlple, absenteeism, brokcn-dov.'n truck , 1ate conections, effort or ingenuity to bring it into Hne with human
and inadeq ate fund for operation are pecific example desires~ needs or pleasures is defined as an ANER-
of the general a th~. t LARGE SYSTEAfS USUALLY GY-STATE.
A ERG Y 1 measured in units of effort required to
OPERATE I FAIL C.l RE MODE... Again. if the collection
bring about the desired change.
men bargain for n1ore and more restrictive definitions of
garbage, refustng to pick up tvlig • trash, oJd lamps, etc.,
Now we are in position to state a Theorem of sweeping
and even leaving behind properly \\trapped garbage if it Js
generality:
not placed \Vithin a rcguJatton can, so that eventually most
taxpayers revert to clandcst1ne dumping along the high-
The Total Amount Of Anergy In The Universe Is
' ~ay, this exempli fie th Le Chateli~r :f) Principle* (THE
Fixed.
YST M TE DS 0 OPPOSE ITS OWN PROPER
F CTION), a basic law of ery general app1ication. This is known, naturally, as the Law of Conservation of
These and oth r basic Ia\Y of system function are the Anergy.
ubject of sub equent chapters. We offer without proof the following Corollary:
In mos to\vns of sn1a ll -to-medium-size~ a garbage-col -
lecting ysten1 qualifies as a small-to-medium-sized sys- Systems Operate By Redistributing An~rgy Into
tem, and syst ms of such ize often do accomplish a mea- Different Forms And Into Accumulations Of
. urable fraction of \Vhat they set out to do. Some garbage Different Sizes.
does get collected. The original prob1em is thereby some-
what reduced in magnitude and intensity. Over against One school of mathematically oriented systems the-
this benefit, however, one must balance the new problems oreticians holds that the Law of Conservation of An-
facing tbe community, the problen1s of administering and ergy is on~y approximately true. According to them, in
n1aintaining the collection system. very large ystems a Relativistic Shift occurs, whereby the
total amount of Anergy increases exponentially· In really
*to come large and ambitious systems, the original problem may
 12 ... ) TEMA. cs
persisr unchanged a nd at the an1e tin1c a n1ultitucie ofne\\'
problen1s ari e to fe t cr (or ferrnent un e~olved . The
Relat~vLts p int to ga bage eollection in htrgc nlctropoli-
tan area. as an exanl le. N<'t on ly does the garhagc not get
collected, but al o armies of tn 111g ''lorkers mu t be ted
and clothed, the n1ultitude of the city rnust be in1mun1zed
against di ea e. of filth the transportation ystcn1s h eak
do\vn because car and buses cannot get around the moun-
tains of refu e. and things in general quickly go to an
extreme degree of d L repair. Granted that som ' of these
effects \VOuld have been pre ·en t to son1e degree had there
never been any garbag~-col1e~tion ·ystern at all. it is clear
that they become tnuch worse because people had come to
rely on the . ystem.
Laws of Growth.
Sy "ten1s are like babie'"': on.;e you get one, you have it.
They don't go a\vay. On £he contrary, they display the
most remarkable persistence. They not only persist· they
grow. And a -- they grO\\' ~ they encroach. The gro\\'th po-
tential of systems\ ·a explored in a tentative, preliminary
way by Parkin on, \Vho conc]uded that administrative sys-
tems maintain an average rate of gro\vth of to 6 percent
.- (
...

per annum regardless of the \\ rk to be done. Parkin on

was right o far as he goest and \Ve must give him full
honors for initiating the eriou . tudy of th1s important
top ·c. But \\'hat Parkin on failed to percei e, \\'e now
en unci ate-the general sy terns analogue of Parkinson~
Lav.'.
14 SYST ...MA T CS IRST PRJ IP S 15

peasants \Verc subj cted to grinding taxation to upport

T'he y. ten1 It elf end o Grow At 5 To 6 the ar1 to racy, wbo \Vere not ta ed.* he sy tern of go -
Percent Per Annum. ernn1ent, at its biJSb a systcn1 for protecting the people,
encroached upon thern until it became their worst oppres-
Again, thi La\) • 1 but the preJin1inary to the most sor. In the United State , the nterna1 Revenue Service not
general possible formulauon, the Big-Bang '"fhcorem of only collect our taxe , they also make us compute the tax
Systen1s t oJogy; for them, an activity that exacts an incalculable cost in
sweat, tear. , and agony and takes years off our lives as we
System· 1d o xpand o Fi11 The K n O\\'n groan over their c 1mplicated form~.
Universe.* In accordance \Vith the same principle, patients in hos-
pitals are blamed for not getting well or for reacting badly
We have ren1arkcd that ystems not only grow, they to medicine or surgery. otorists whose cars develop en-
a[~o cncroacl1. An entire volume cou ld be devoted to re- gine trouble are ticketed by t e poUce,. or their vehicles are
earches in thL area alone. Innumerable examples of the towed away and crushed into . crap metal. And school-
phenomenon of encroachment can be found every\\·here in boys who have trouble learning their Jes on a re punished
our "'Ociety. triking e ·ample i. the "do-it-yourse1r· by their teachers. Truly, Systems Expand and as they
movement, in tigated b ' manager of the largest and most expand, they Encroach .
ophisticated sy. ten1 of mass production in the world to
make the consu 111er do some oj' the work the system is
supposed ro do. The consumer is encouraged to do the
work of assernb 1 g the parts of the product he has bought
on the bizarre grounds that Hit s'tve.. so much work and
expense., Sev al hours late , the exasperated and frus-
trated purcha er may re aU that the sys em of mass pro-
duction a.-.. set up in the fir t place he au e such functions
can be more cheaply and rapidJy done under factory con-
ditions. The ystem ·imp]y prefers to ncroach; that is, to
make someone else do the \\'ork. *A similar tendency can be discerned in the tax policies. of the
Pushing the expense off on the consun1er goes back at United States. 1t [Link] i~s climax in the late 1960s w•th the
practice an1ong high government. officials of Jri!ing-off onels
least as fa as the ancien regime in ranee, where the official papers at inflated valuauons. T~e pr~ctace h~ been
designated (by us) as Nixation. or negattve (n1x-) taxation for
That thi. outcorne do not occur in fact i~ due to the existence the well-to-do.
of various 1nhihilory forces (see Chapter IV).
 I I. T E _YS IO S (
1 -
WAYS OF SYSTEMS

The Prima[ Scenar o enshrines the universa] observation

-----------------~------------~
that hings Don,t Work Very \VelJ. For most people, it
is enough to sig 1 and rcn1ark that Things Were Ever Thus. ~---~-------------~~~~-------­
..._.. ----

However, to the serious systemspstudent, a world of ab-

sorbing ;nterest lie beneath the su erficia] ob ervation of
things as they arc. he more one ::.lves beneath the sur-
face-the more one become committed to close observa-
tion and, mo t importantly, to generalization from partic-
u]ar experience-the n1orc one begin. o attain insight into
the true and deeper meanings o hing ... Such is the case
with the Primal Scenario. Let us ask what lies beneath the
surface of that melancholy but universal observation. Just
what is the characteristic feature of things not working
out? To ask the q1 e tion is o see the answert almost
immediately. It is the element of paradox, to which we
have already alluded. Things not only don't work out well,
they work out in strange, even paradoxical, ways. Our
plans not only go awry. they produce resul we never
expected. Indeed they often produce the opposite result
from the one intended.
Item: Insecticides, introduced to control disease and
improve crop yield , tum up in the fat pads of Auks in the
Antipodes and in th eggs of Ospreys in the Orkneys,
...
..
resulting in incalculable ecologic damage.

16
1 SYS EMA TICS l9

ltr:rn: rrhe As\ •an Dan1. bui t at enormous expense to Con1ple S)stcn1s Exhibit Unexpected Behavior.
tnt prove the lot of the _.gyptian pe' sant, has caused the
ile to deposit its crtilizing sedirr1ent ir1 ,ake asscr, The one is merely a pes~imistic feeling· the other con..
where it 1s unavai]ab!e. Egypt1an fields must now be artifi- veys the exhilarating euphoria that acl;ompanies the rec-
ci· lly fertihzed. 1iganh fertilizer plants have been built ognition of a Law of Nature.
to meet the new eed. The plants require enormous
Incredibly en Jugh, the first big breakthrough in recog-
nition of the G ERALIZED NCERTAINTY PRI -
arr1ount o electrictty. he dam must operate at capacit y
C PLE (G. U.P. did not come until the 1950s when a
merely to uppl t e increased need for electricity which
daring-if anonymou ·-group of biologist toppled Wat-
\\'a · creatt:d by the building of the dam.
~onian detern1inism \vith one short, pithy aphorism now
/tenz: an back ward nations, \\<'hose greatest need is
known as the Harvard La\v of Animal Behavior:
food to feed the1r people, sell their crops and bankrupt
thcmselve.. to buy- not food- but advanced military
Under Prt=cisely ControUed Experimental
hardv.~are forth purpose of defend1ng them .. elves against
Conditions, A Test Animal WiH Behave As It
their equally back\V< rd neighbor , [Link] are doing the same Damn Well Pleases.
thing.
xamplcs could be multiplied indefinitely, and the The formulator· of this Law failed to generalize to sys-
reader is encoura ed to provide his O\Vnt as an exercise. tems as such, thereby mis ing-by a whi ker, so to speak
What is th common element in all the e surprising and ~their chance of immortality:
paradoxical situation·? It is ju t this: in each case a com-
plex system has Jailed to act as expected by its destgners, Not Just Animal Behavior. But The Behavior Of
but ha instead e hibited behavior that no one expected it Complex Systems Generally, Whether Living Or
Nonliving~ Is Unpredictable.
to exhibit.
O\V, so long as one i content merely to make the
It is fitting that this Law should ha\e been foreshad-
observation that a particular system · n 't working well, or
owed, even if in limited form, by biologists, for they, more
isn't doing \vhat i · expected, one i rea11y only at the leveJ
than other , are brought face to face in their daily profes-
of in. ight summarized in the Primal Scenario. The crucial
sional activities with the ·essential unpredictability of liv-
step forward in logic is a sma11 one, hut it is of critical
ing things. Mathematicians and engineers have considera-
importance ·or progress in Systems-thinking. There is a
bly more difficu1ty with the G. U .P. Accu torned as they
world o d1fference, psychologically speaking, between the
are to creating systems out of their own heads, they are
pas ive observation that Thing Don't Work Out Very
affronted that uch systems-their own creatures, so to
Well, and the a tive, penetrating insig · t that
speak-should exhibit behavior that was unplanned and
 20
r EMYS I l SWAY OF 'lST'EMS 21
c\ e 1 undrean1cd f b} then1sel te Son1e go so far as to
a ert that the G . >. 1 '·not log1ca1."
'e .~'mpath1ze with th' t point of vte\V, or rather, v.~ith
the 'riscera] reaction undeil) ing it. As long as a system \\
exist 1nJy in the head of its creator, \\'t: ould agree that
it might be kno\vable in all it 1n1pli ations. But once that
system i · tran lated into rhe real \\'Odd, in to hardv.•are and
~
people, it become som .. thin r eh;e. It becomes a real·world
thing, and rncre m rtals can neve know all there i to
know ahout f he real w·orld. ~ herein lies the inevitability
of the G .U.P.
The opcni!tion Jf the G.U.P. i perhaps most clearly
displayed in th rea lm of Climax Design, i.e., in the con-
truction of the la1 gcst and mos con1plex e ·amples of
man-n1ade ysten1 , w hether buildings, ships and planes,
or organization . h ultin1ate model (the largest. fastest, Item: More disquieting, if no surprise to the serious
taHest, etc.) often, if not In variabl ,, exhibits behavior o System -student, is the fact that the Bell Telephone Sys-
unexpected as to erge on the uncanny. The beha\ior is tem , largest in the world, is beginning to exhibit cracks in
often an unsuspected way of failing, to \Yhich, because of the System-vagaries of behavior that not even the com-
its importance, we have devoted an entire chapter. • Let us pany experts can entirely exp1ain. T he crucial change
review only a fe\\' examples of Chn1ax Design: probably began about the time when the operator,s famil-
Item: The largest building in the \vorld, the space vehi- iar request, hNumber, please, udden ly reversed its mean-
cle p reparation hed at Cape Kennedy. generates its own ing. No Jonger was the young lady at Central asking you
to tell her the number you wanted to reach; she was asking
weather. including clouds and rain. Designed to protect
for your own number. for purpose beyond a layman's
pace roc ets front the e]ement., it pelts them with storms
comprehension. Since that moment, the changes have
of its own.
come \ ith increasing rapidity. People are discouraged
1

Item: The Queen Elizaberh II, greatest ocean liner ever

from di aJing the operator and are made to feel guilty if
built~ has three separate sets of boiler for safety, rehabil-
they do. ut more to the point: the sophisticated comput-
ity, and ~ p eed. )"et on a recent crui e, in fine \Veather and
ers that reroute your telephone call through five states in
a calm sea, all three ets of baden\ failed simultaneously.
order to utilize the least-congested circuits have begun
putting you through California when you call next door.
*Chapter IX, Systen1s- ailure 'Theory of Error ).
2 SYSTEMAN ICS

' u a) lift th receiver to ial a number and discover

) ou are e< v~dr p ing on a tran atlantic conversation;
}OU n1ay dial you1 par) and end up in a thre - or four-\vay
IV. FEEDBACK
corn•ersation with a neighbor and evera1 perfect stran-
g r . Th end is not yet in ight. •
We fo ...malize the. e ob e vat ions in the 1 on-Additivity
Theorern of "'y tern -behavior~ alternatively kno\vn a. the
Every tude t of science is required at some point or other
Clima.. De ign Theoren1:
in his career to Jearn Le Chatelier's Principle. Briefty, this
La\ state~ that any natural process, \Vhether physical or
A ~arge. Syst ·rn, Pre duced By Expanding The
D1mens1on Of A Sn1aller Sy tern, Does ot chemical, tend. to set up conditions opposing the further
Behave _.ike The Smaller Sy tern. operation c f the process. A ]though the Law has very
broad apphLation, it is usualJy looked upon more as a
curiosity than as a profound insight into the nature of the
Universe. We. on the other hand, regard it as a comer-
.. tone of General Systemantics4 o one who has had any
experience of the operatio of large systems can fail to
appreciate· its force, especially when it is stated in cogent
Systems-terminology as follows:

Sy terns Get In The Way.

Or alternatively:

The System Always Ktcks Back.

In lightly more elegant language:

Sy. tems Tend To Oppose Their Own Proper

Functions.
*It is conceivab]e that private cirizen will begin bugging their
own phone in order to learn \Vhat is going on. In this practice In the field of human organizations, probably the out-
their leader. are clearly ell ahead of he public. standing exarnple of Le Chatelier's Principle occurs in

23
 SYSTEMA TICS FEEDBACK 25
c nne t1 n \Vith th oal and b1ectjvc ania. a spe- consequence of failure to con1ply.
'i lized manifestat io of a very ncient and \videspread ·ov.· 1'ri1 lium reall doe. have ·orne personal goals of
h n n1enon l'no\vn a· dmintstrative [Link] hi oVrrn, that hi study of Botany can advance. In actual
Let us t~ k<! a , n e afnple the ca ·e of 1onel rillium, fact he entered that fh:ld bec;;lU e of unanswered ques-
young . t\~sistant Prote ( r in the Department of Botany tions* havii g to do with the origin of babies. His boyhood
~ Hollyoak Colle e. Although it 1s no too ]ate to do any curios1ty was never sati fied, and it became fixed on the
go d for p r 'Tnlhuin, \Ve shall rev1ew hi case hi tory, mechanic f reproductive processe i living creatures.
tep by tep, in the hope that similar tragedies may be But to tudy reproduction directly, in animal . creates too
av rted in the future. much anxiety. Therefo e he has chosen the flowering
nllium' Department Head, Baneberry~ ha for son1c plants, hose blatant sexuality is safely isolated from our
year n :l\V failed to in1tiate n Vl and intere ·ting hypotheses own. r111i urn is happy as a botanist, and never so happy
about the heh a"~ or of the "'Jime Mold!-!, his chosen area of as \Vhen he is elucidating tht.! life cycle of an angiosperm.
·pecialfzation . Paralleling this dl;;cline of scientific produc- But nov..· his Chief is demanding Goals and Objectives.
tivity, he ha e hi It d increasing interc t in improving This is both di turbing and threatening. Trillium doesn't
th "efficiency·· of hi. partn1ent. The medically ori- ""·ant to think about his real goals and obJectives; indeed,
ented reader will recogniz in the e yrnptom the insidi- hey are un nown to his consciou mind. He only knows
ous onset of intellectual menopau' . Baneberry ha actu- he likes Botany.
ally gone to the c/tr~mc of checking out of the 1ibrary But he can,t just reply in one Jine, "'I like botany and
some recent publications on managetnent . cien~e. B~fore wan t to keep on studying it.,. No, indeed! What is ex-
his jaded e}e a ne\\'· \\'Orld ha bee revealed and his mind pected is a good deaJ more formal more organized,. than
is nO\V buzzing 'A'ith th terminology of Intormation Re- that. It should fiH at Jea t three typewritten sheets, single-
trieval System , T chnology Assessment, Program Bud- paced, and hould list Objectives and Subobjectives in
geting, and above all, anagement b} Goals and Objec- order of priority, each being justified in re1ation to the
ti e . He fires off a rnemo to the . taff of hi Department Overall G oal and having appended a time-frame for com-
requiring them to submit to him, in tri lica e, by Monday pletion and c;ome criteria for determin ing whether they
next, statements of their Goals and Objectives. have b~en achieved. Ideally, each paragraph should con-
This demand catch s Tnlliurn at a bad tirne. His tudies tain at least one reference to D A or the phrase "double
of angios perms are at a cntical point. Nevertheless, he heli x.... TriJl 'um goes into a depression just thinking about
mu t take time out to consider hi Goal and Objectives~ it.
as the Vw'ording of the n1en1o leave little do ubt of the Furthermore, he cannot afford to state hi. true goals.

For admini trator ' neuro. , "'ee Chapter V . * hat he never dared ask his par~nts .
 27
He 01USt at an co ts avoid giving the impression of an
inetfectivt! putterer or a dilettante. e must not appear
fuzzy-headed. His goa1s must be well-defined, crisply
stated, and must appear to lead ~ omewhere important.
They n1ust in1ply activity in areas that tend to throw
reflected glory on the Department. After all, one can't
expect a University to maintain a Department just for
people 1t ho have a faintly scurrilous interest in how plants
reproduce. Therefore, Tri1lium is forced to include in his
statement all kinds of things that he's really not the least
intert!sted in.
· rillium struggles with all these considerations, which
ht= does not consciously formulate. He only feels them as
a deep malaise and .sense of confusion that seizes him
·whenever he thinks about writing the Goals and Objec-
;,'o...., . tives statement. He puts it off as long as possible, but still
v ~ ' .

'
l""
t (.
r"' , f

I
.
...,
,' "' ~·

' it Interferes with his studies of angiosperms. He can't

concentrate. Finally he gives up his research, stays home
three days, and writes the damned thing.
But now he is committed in ·writing to a program, in
r+ o ..,../ ' terms of which his usuccess', can be objectively assessed
by his Chief. If he states that one objective for the coming
year i to write three papers on angio penns and he actu-
ally writes only two, he is only 67 percent ..successful,"
even if each of the two papers is a substantial contribution
to his field. Or he may not write any papers at all, devoting
the time instead to a book for which the idea has unexpect·
edly matured. In that case his usuccess" is zero. No matter
that he has overachieved in an unexpected area. His fail-
ure to achieve his stated objectives is demonstrable in
b1ack and white. Trillium has been led, step by step, down
the primrose path of 1ogic to disaster. The logic was cte.
28 SYS EMANTICS EEDBACK
29
VJscd by others, ut that i~ n \,;ons l~ation to him. Baneberry, 1neanw hile, has been powerfully reinforced
he next step is even n1ore ata trophic. Because Tril- in his ne\v-found function a judge of other botanists. His
liunl ha~ c1early tated his Goa) and Objectiv , tf is now o"vn b< tanical career may be \VHting, but he has found a
possible to ded ucc \"V1 h rigorou · logic ho·w he shou 1d ne\v career in assessing the trcngths and weaknesses of his
spend hi ''aking and working hour.. in order to achieve col lea ue ·-especially their \veaknes es. The heady expe-
them most efficiently. o more pottering a round pur. ui ng rience of hobnobbing with legislators and people of power
spontaneou impulses and tcn1porary enthusiasms! o in the Hreal'' world gives h1m a new lease on life and
more happy hours in the Departm nta1 greenhouse! Just convinces him that TrilUum really is just a poor potterer
as a straight line i the hortest distance between two \\'ho \Vill never amount to anything. If only Botany could
pointst o an efficient \\''orkcr will move from Subobjective attract men of action 1' ke the lawgivers with whom he has
A to Subobjective B in logical pursuit of Objective K, been wining and dining!*
which leads in turn to~Nard the Overall Goal. Trilhurn can The Power of Positive Feedback-A Warning.
be graded, not on]y on his achievements for the year, but W c have 'een that the natural tendency of systems is to
also on the efficiency \Vith [Link] he move tO\\'ard each set up negative feedback to their own operations (Le
objective. He has bec.:ome admini.\'trativelv encircled. The Chateher's Principle). But what about positive feedback?
admini trator , who. c or1gin(3) purpose 'Nas to keep track A great deal of nonsense is talked these day about
of writing up plies for the profe ·sor no\\' have the upper positive feedback. W h en the term is used merely as an
hand and sit in j udgment on their former masters. inflated way of referring to praise given a person for a job
On]y one seep remains to complete rillium's shackling we]] done, no particular harm results. But feedback in
in the chain he himself has he Iped to forge. On ad vice of electronic system leads to oscdlationf resulting in a loud
the University admini trators, the legislators of his State squeal and lo s of function. The entire energy of the sys-
e tablish by lav.' the number of hours a Profes or of Bot- tem suddenly goes down the drain in a burst of useless or
any must spend on each phase of his professiona] acti vi- even harmful noise. In mechanics, the ill-fated Electra
ties. T rillium n1ay feel impelled to protest, but how can he? airplane was a victim of positive feedback of energy from
The la~ tnaker are on[y formalizing \vhat he himsjelf has the propellers to the wings. PoHtical ral]ies, with their
told t hem, through his Goals and ObJectives statement , engineered positive feedback, provide the same ominous
he wants to do~ The System of Management by Goals and sense of things vibrating out of control. No, students of
Objectives, designed to impro e Trillium\ efficiency and Systemantics, positive feedback 1nto a large ystem is a
measure his pcrforma ce a a botanist) has gotten in the
way, kicked back, and opposed its own proper fun ction. *Administrator's Grandiosity N~eurosis: desire to recreate the
Once more the universai validity of Le Chatelier,s Princi, world tn the administrator's image. For other administrators'
neuroses, see Chapters VI and VI .
pie has been demonstrated.
..-0 SYSTEM ANTICS E DBAC 31

the advocate of rogram ' A" to graduate, retire, or oth-

er\vi sc lea e the sl;ene of action, being replaced by a new
generation hose t~endency 1s (having been exposed to the
effects of Program HA") to demand Program "B.,t After
son1e ml)nths or years of Program hB,, a new generation
of po~tulants is ripe to begin agitations to restore Program
,~.A ...
hus in acaden1ic affairs, Pas. -Fail versus numerical or
dangcrou thing. Remen1bcr. even though a system may
alphabetical grading represent t\vo polar positions. In
funct1on very poorly, it . till tends to xpand to Fill the
n1o t universities, the Committee on Student Academic
Kno\vn Universe and posit1ve feedback on1y encourage.
Affairs slowly o ciHates from the one to the other of these
that tendency.
twn positions. The time period of this particular oscilla-
Son1e radical hurna11ists have sugge ted that people-
tion ts just over four years, thus qualifying such Commit-
ordinary human )e1ngs-should receive positive feedback
tees as Medium-Period Variables.
(i.e., praise) for tl1eir hutnan qualiues. and that negative
feedback to 1ndividuals hou]d bt! avoided. In accordance
\Vith our basic Axion1s, uch a polic \\'Ou1d cause people
to tend to Expand to F111 the Known niver e, rather than
Shrinking to it the System. The result, it may fairly be
specu1ated would be rcvolutionary if not millenial. And
1

s1nce this is not a handbook for revolution, we cannot

officially endorses 1ch a policy. But \\-'e can suggest infor-
mally: try it, you n1ight llke it.
Oscillating .[Link].
Alternating positive and negative feedback produces a
special forn1 of stab1llty repre~ en ted by end1ess oscillation
bet een t\VO polar states or cor1ditions. In human syfo\temst
the phenomenon i perhaps be t exemp1ified by certain
committees whose recommendations slo\v[y o cH late be-
tween two polar alternatives, usually over a period of some
years. The period of the cycle has been found, on close
examination, to be ju. t longer than the time required for
 FU lCTIONARY'S FALSITY 33

contracts, planning budgets, and other administrative ac-

V. FU CT O,NARY'S r1vities. Clearly, they are not in any concrete sense buiid-
ing hip . In cold fact, a SYSTE is building ships, and
ALSITY DTH the SY TEM is the shipbuilder. We conclude from the
OPERATIO AL FALLACY above that:

People In Systems Do ot Do What The System

Says They Are Doing.

l''his paradox was clearly recognized and described in

detail by the nineteenth-century team of empirical sociolo-
We n1ove now to a con idcration of a.n absolutely indis-
gists. Gilbert and Sullivan. [Link] they wrote:
perLabJe principle that mu t b understood by anyone
'vho wishes to be considered adept 1n the field of Syste-
But that kind of ship so suited me
antics. It is not at easy theorem ; it is ubtle and elusive; That no\V I am the ruler of the Queen's Navee.
and true mastery of it requi Tt!S real intellectual effort. In
order to make the road of the neophyte a little moother The ~'ship" referred to. the reader will recall, was the
as he struggle · upward ov~r this pon asinorum of systems Admiral's legal partnership.
theory, \Ve approach it gradually and ptecemeal, beginning Unfortunately. Gilbert and Sullivan, Hke so many pio-
\Vith a lesser but closely related theoren1. neers of the prescientific era. failed to recognize the para-
Exarnp/e. There is a n1an in our neighbor hood who is dox as being of the e sence of systems functions. By this
building a boat in hi. backyard. He know very little of oversight, the entire fi~eld was held back at least forty
boatbuilding and still Ae s of sailing or navigation. He years.
works from plans dra\\'n up by hin1self. everthele s, he In general, the larger and more complex the system, the
is demonstrably budding a boat and can be called, in some less the re emblance between the true function and the
real ense a boatbuilder. name it bears. For brevity, we . hall refer to this paradox
N0\\ if you go do\l n to
1 ampton Roads or any other as FU CTIO ARY,S FALSITY .* F urther examples
shipyard and look around for a shipbuilder, you wi11 be ate legion. The following case tudies may serve as wann..
disappointed. You wi 11 find-in abundance- welders, car- ing-up exercises for the reader, who is urged to try out his
penter , foremen. engineers, and many ot er pecialists, own analytic skiU:
but no shipbuilders. rue, the company executives may bski's
*Advanced students are encouraged to use the term K orzy
caH themselves hipbuilders, but if you ob erve them at Semantic Anomaly.
their wo ' , you will see t 1at it reaUy consists of writing

32
 4 YSTEMA TICS U CTIONAR1..,S F ALSIT ' 35

1. \ 'hat is the re· I-\V rld function f a king?

Answer. In theor~ king are upposed to rule their The unction Performed Ry A System Is Not
country, that i . to govern. In fact they spend much of Op~rationa11y Identical To The F unction Of The
their t1nle and energy-and heir countryts treasure- Same Name Performed By A Man. I n Generalt A
unction Performed By A Larger System Is Not
fighting off usurper . In democratic countries, a newly
Operationally Identical To T he unction Of The
elected President may find it expedient to begin planning Same Nan1e As Performed By A Sma11er System.
immediatel ' for the next election.*
2. What is the real-w< rld f nction of a univer. ity For exan1ple. you have a desire for a fresh apple.
scholar? (a) Nonsy terns approach: You may (if you are very
Annver. Un iversity scholars are supposed to think and lucky and the season is right) stroll out of your farmhouse
tudy decp1y on basic in tellec al problems of their O\vn door and down to the orchard where you pick a dead-ripe,
choosing. In fact, they rnust teach assigned courses, do lusc1ous specimen right off the tree.
··research'" on problems for v.'hich research money is (b) A small system serving the function with the same
a vail able, and publish, or peri h. name (supplying a fresh app]e) is the neighborhood gro-
By no\ the Sy terns-student h lUld be sufficiently cery. Your grocer gets his app les in bushel baskets from
equipped to un dertake. on his own, the analysis of such the com mercial orchard 20 mile away. The apples are not
common Systems-functions a Profes ional FootbaH quite as fresh , and th e very be t of the lot have been
Player (must i nc1udc TV appearances · Minister of the selected for sale to gift houses ~ but you are still reasonably
Gospel (m ust be ab le to appear to advantage at White satisfied.
House breakfasts), o University President (fund- raising, (c) A large system serving the 'csame,.. function is the
riot-cont rol). supermarket chain. The app\es are picked green and
T he OPERATIO A FALLACY i merely the Sy - placed in "controlled atmosphere., storage where they
terns-analogue of C IONARY'.._ FALSITY. Just as tend to ripen, although the ripening process is now by no
PEOPLE ~N SYSTE S DO OT DO WHAT T HE means the same as tree-ripening. The apples are then
SYSTEM SAYS THEY ARE DOING, so also THE SYS- sh ipped by rail, spending days or weeks in boxcars under
EM ITS LF DO S NOT DO WHAT I SAYS IT IS variable temperatures. The resulting product is called a
DOl G. In sJightly greater detail: -·fresh apple" but in texture and flavor it bears little resem-
blance to (a) above.

*On the other hand, a ystem de igned to gua ran ee reelectton

may develop unexp cted bugs. thus pro uci ng creeping paral-
y
.IS.
 6 SYSTEMA TICS FU TC 10 RY' FALS TY 37

A further point of utmost unpor ancc for what comes

after, is t hat rnost of the th1ngs we hurnan beings desire are
nonsy~terns things. We want a fresh apple picked dead ripe
off the tree. But this is prccisel · \\'hat a large system can
ne 'ef u pp 1y. o one i going to et up a 1arge system in
order to ~ upply one person [Link] a fresh apple picked right
off the tree. The ystem has other goais and other people
in mind.
Apparent exceptions tn the Operational FaHacy can be
found in abundance. The true state of affairs, however,
[Link] not escape the discerning eye of the reader of this text
who has taken his lesson to heart.
Exarnple 1. Doesn't the auto industry supply us with
millions of neY.' cars each year, even tailoring them to our
changing tastes in tyle and performance?
Answer. The rea on 'A7e think the auto industry is meet-
ing our needs 1 that we have almost completely forgotten
what we originally wanted, namely, a means of going from
The Function ( r roduct) Is Defined By The
Systen1s-Opcrations That Occur In Its one place to another that would be cheap, easy, conve-
Pcrforrnance Or Manufacture. nient, afe, and fast. We have been brainwashed into
thinking that the Detroit product meets these require-
The importance of Korzybski's contribution to under- ments.
standing systems is no\v apparent. An apple that has been
processed through the upcrn1arket sy tem is not the same If Detroit Makes It, It Must Be An A utomobile*
as an apple picked dead ripe off the tree, and we are in
error to u e the same ord for two di ffcrent things.* Obviously, if what we desire is what a sy tern is actually
producing, the system will appear to be functioning as we
•we han not attempt to pursue the origins of this sloppy . e-
mant1c habit back to medieval scholasticism. which wa more wished.
1nterc ted in the general essences of things than in their par- Example 2. Doesn"t the universal availability of cheap,
ticularitv. or sha11 ~ 'e n1ention Plato, to whom only the es- fresh, enriched white bread repre~ent a great systems
sence w~~ reaJiv real. Presumably. Plato had a plentiful supply
of fresh apples fn sea on and didn't ha\'e to worry about particu- • A Systcms-Delus1on. See Chapter VI.
lar .
 SYSTEM 1 TICS

~ hi~"e\ ernent 1n terms of nourislung the American popula-

tton. VI. INSIDE SYSTEMS
nsw·:,lr. he ·hort an v.·er Is that it is not bread. The
Fr~nch peasant eat's fresher bread than \VC do, and it tastes
better. The gyptian feHah, one of the poorest farmers in
the \\'0 ld, cat. bread that is still hot fron1 the oven at a
price he can ea ily afford. Mo. t of the co. t of our bread Our tudy of the Operat~onal a Hacy has made clear how
is n1iddleman co t. -co ts \vhich \Vou1d not be incurred if and \\rhy it is that (1 large ·y~tems really do not do what
it were produced by local baker rather than by a gic nt they purport to do and that (2) people in systems are not
ystem. actually performing the function ascribed to them. These
The reader \vho has mastered Korzybski's Semantic two facts quite naturally lend an air of unreality to the
Anomaly and f he Operational r~allacy will he able to ab- entire operation of a large system. In the present Chapter
sorb \v]thout excitement and even to nod kno,vingly ac we propose to explore in more detail some of the effects
the lat~st exan1pJe of "t. operation a reported 1n the daily of that unreal atmosphereJ cspeciaUy its effects upon the
press and on television. He \Vtll mile on being informed people in the sy. tern itself. But first,. following our rule of
(as if it " 'ere son1ething ui exp cted) that Leadership placing the most fundamental Axioms at the beginning,
Training Fails to rain eaders. e ill quickly grasp the we present the Fundamental Law of Admini trative
truth that the Boy cout n1ovement, de igned to popular- W~orkings (F.L.A.W.):

ize camping out in the \vildcrness, ha actually popular-

ized-Scouting. And finall_ (that saddest example of the Things Are What They Are Reported To Be.
Operational Fallacy), he lvin understand the meaning of
the fact that ever_' peace-keeping scl eme ever devised has This Axiom has been stated in various ways, all to the
included-as an e sential component-an army. arne effect. Standard formulations include the following:

The Real World Is What I Reported To The

System

If It lsn''t O,fficial, It Hasn,t Happened.

This proposition, which is fundamen tal to communica-

tion theory as well as to epistemology, may have been

39
 0 SYST ... MANTICS I SIDE SYSTEMS 41

foreshado\v d by Mar hall c. uhan, * although he introduce quantitative methodology into thts important
seenl~ to have gotten it backward.: correctly stated, The area of rc ·earch, they have paid particular attent~on to the
lvfessage zs Jhe Mediutn bu which the S t k amount of informat,on that reaches or fails to reach, the
the \Vorld. J ys em no\\>'S
attention of the relevant adm1nistrative officer. The crucial
The ubser .Jnt ystem~-.student \Vill no doubt be able to variable, they have found, is the fraction:
supply a number of variant reading of the same aw
glean d tr ,m the nc\\·spaper. and his O\Vn observation. of
government fficial ·,corporation executive , ct al . Th c ne t
effect of tbi Law i to ensure that people in ystems arc \vhere
R" equals the amount of reality which fails
nev~r ~ealing \\'ith the real v-.'or1d that the rest of us have
to reach the relevant adminis-
t?hve 111 hut 1th a filtered~ distorted, and censored ver- trative officer
SIOn \Vhich is all that can get past the sensory organs of
the systcn1 it e~f. and
Corollary 1Va. 1: R~ equals the total amount of reality pre-
, en ted to the system.
A ystem s o Better Than ts Sen ory Organs.
ThL Corollar the valid1t of which is crystal clear to The fract1on ~varies from zero (full awarenes of outside
you and me, i viewed with perple.. it by the personnel reality) to unity (no reality getting through). It is knownt
living withtn the system. or thern, the real world is sim- of course, as the COEFFICIE T OF FICTION.
Positive Feedback (P.F.) obviously competes with Real-
ply what their intake . ay it is, and any other orld is on]y
ity (R) for input into the System. The higher the P~F·t the
a wild hypothe._ is. A true ystems-pcrson can no more
larger the quantity of Reality which fails to gain entrance
imagine inadequacy of .. en ory function than a Flatlander
to the System (Ro) and the higher the C.F . In systems
can imagine three-dim n, ion 1 spate.
employing P .F., values of C .F. in excess of 0. 99 have been
Corollary o. 2:
recorded. * Examples include evangelistic religious move-
To Tho e With"n A Sys em, The Outside Reality m nts, certain authoritarian governmental systems, and
Tends To Pale And Di appear. the exe'-.:utive suites of most large corporations.
This effect has been tudied in some detail by a small A high C. F. has particular implications for the relation..
group of dedicated General Sy. ten1anticists. In an effort to ship between the System and an Individual Person (repre-

•V..'ith cLuhan it is difficult to be sure about anything. The

*In theory the C.F. may attain [Link], but in practice [Link]
the last shred of reality from the sen ory input becomes Increas-
reader seeking greater clarity is referred to the murky briUiance
of cLuhan ·s ov.'n prose. ingly difficult.
 42
SYSTEMAN ICS I TSIDE SYSTE S 43
~en ted by the lo\\ er-ca e letter i) * \Ve state the re]ation- of any such agency ha the author seen a notation to the
~hip as foJl< \V •
Corollary 'o. 3: effect that

The Dossier Is Not The Person

The Big er The Sy "tet 1, The Narro\ver And Mon.:
Speciali zed he In terface With Individuc:1L . -nor doe. he expect ever to see such a notation.
At th i ~ point e must offer our emendation of the work
In very large ystem , the relationship is not \ •ith the
of Dr. Laurence J. Peter, \vho rightly pointed out that
individual at all but with his social ccurity number, his
people 'Nithin the __ ystem rise to their Level of Incompe-
driver's license or orne other paper phantom.
tence~ with results every\vhcre v1sible. But it must be clear
In systen1s of mediu 1n . ize, some rc i dual a "-'arencss of that the strange behavior of people in systems is not solely
the individual may rill persist. A hopeful indication was nor even primarily the result of mere incompetence, any
recently observed by the _uthor in a rnedium- ·ized hospi- more than it is mere ucriminahty•' that makes men com-
tat Taped to the \ all of the n rse~' tat ion. j ust above the n1it crimes. Would that the solution \Verc so simple! A
Vital Sign · Rem te Sensing Cot ole that enables the large role must be ascribed to the F.L.A.W., which iso-
urses to record he her the patient is breath ·ng and even lates the Systems-person fr m the everyday world. As we
to take hi pulse \ ithout actually going do\\'n the hall to all know, sensory deprivation tends to produce hallucina-
see him v.-tas the following hand-lettered reminder: tions. Similarly, imn1ersion in a system tends to produc-e
an altered mental state that results in various bizarre mal-
The Chart ls ot The Patient. functions, recognizable to us but not to the people in the
system. We therefore pause for a Definition.
Unfortunately thi' slogan, \Vith its humanistic implica-
tions, turned ou to he misleading. The nur es \Vere neither FUNCTIO ARY'S FAULT: A complex set of mal-
attending the patient nor making notations on the charts. functions induced in a Systems-person by the Sys~em
They were in the ho ·pital auditorium tak'ng a course in itself, and primarily attributable to sensory depnva-
In terdi '(.;iplinar)' Fu ction. • * tion.
Governn1ent agencie. , on the other hand, q uahfy as
Several subtypes of Functionary's Fault are known. •
component of truJy large systems. owhere on the waU
Only hvo will be ~ingled out for specia~ m~ention here. We
In mathematics> i rcpre~ ents an in1aginary quantity. leave to other the task of elaborating the complete
•• nterdisciplinary unction ~ The art of correlating one ~s own
professiona1 activiti~ more and n1or vlith tho e of other profes- • Parkin n' recognition of Injelititis (see p. viii) stands as a
ion"ls while actually clo1ng less and les . 1 ndmark in the early history of Sy. terns-pathology.
 4
SYSTE!\.1A "TICS INSIDE " 'ST J
45
no logy of di order of thought and behav1or produced
by ) sten1s.
Delusion y ten1s Versus y re1ns Delusions.
1. functr'ona'y' Pnde. ·· ' n1 going to tly to e\ York th is afternoon,,, you say.
But \\that :you really do, after driving an ho r to get to the
. . "'his disorde \Vas aJready anc1ent y,:hen it was defini-
airport. is to trap yourself into a coffin-like tube of sheet
[iveiy cha racterized by Vl. hake peare ,1 ''the insolence
meta l and ren1a!n almost in1n1obile, except for be1ng pas-
f office .., kind of n1ania of elt-e tt; '"m induced by titles
i vefy haken ahout for a period of some hours. Y ou are
and the iJJusion of pO\\'er, it i . o well kncnvn as to need
not flying in any real en .. e. At best the airplane could be
no further descnpt1on. I O\vever, this treati. e c1aims dis-
aid to be flytng, though certainly not in the ense that
tinction a the first to attribute tht! syndron1e, not to inher-
birds fly.
ent ice nor to n1aladministration, but to the operation of
the F. .A .W. in the ysr·em itself upon the officeholder.
Whv .. do u.·e not say that y u are la boring under a delu-
sion? The ans\Yer is: bccaust! \Ve share your set of bel~efs.
2. Hirelings liypnosis. We are in your delusion ystem, and we arc both victims
of a systems delusion.
A trance-Jike tate. a uspension of norn1al mental ac-
Systems-delu ion, are the delusion systems that are al-
tivity induced b m ~n1bership \VI thin a ystem.
most universal in our modem \\ 0rld. Wherever a system
1

Exatnple. A large private med1cal cr nic and ho pi tal

is, there is also a system. -delusion, the inevitable result of
installed '-1 computerized hiHing sy "' tern . One day the sys-
the Operational Fallacy and the .L.A.W . in systems.
tenl printed out ~.~. biH fore ·actly 111.1 I for every one of
Two System -delusions deserve particular mention be-
the n1ore than 50_000 per. ons \'vho had attended the clinic cause of their practica[ importance.
during the pre<.:edj r g year. or the ne t scvera] days the
switchboard lA'as Januned \Vith calls from irate recipients
of the erroneou bin~. mergency calls could not get
through. early ten thou .. and former patients took their
businc c]se\vhere, for a total loss to the clinic of almost
a n1illion dollars.
The per on operating the computer systen1 that day, as
well as the office clerks, the programmer, and twelve em-
ployes hired to stuff, eaJ, and stan1p enve]opes-aJJ had
ob erved the striking idenLity of numbers on the bills but
had done nothing to . top the error. The system had hyp-
notized them.
 4
''tS EMANTI S INSIDE SYST ~ MS 47

related in another, ubtler \Vay. A elective proccs goe~ on

1. 1anager· \1tra e.* \\'hereby systems attract and keep those peopie whose at~
he beli f that ome ~\ent (usually caUed an " out- tributes are such as to make them adapted to Hfe in the
orne,,.) V+'a:s actua lly c< us d by the operation of the Sys- . ystem:
tern . or xample: The Pubhc ch ol ystem is believed
by c e to be responsi ie for 1he 1i terary \\'arks of
Faulkner, I ernrn \vay, cHid Arthur M11lt:r~ ince it taught Systen1s Attract Systen1s-People.
th >Jn to writ . ... in11larl', the I is credited \ ith the
major biomt:dJcaJ ad ances of the past generatton. since it While Systems-people share certain attributes in com-
funded the re\e 1rch. We generalize: nton, each specific ~ ystem tends to attract people with
pccific set of attribute . 'or example, people who are
attracted to au to racing are likely to be people who enjoy
~ he Systern akcs 'The Credi t ( (lf What Wou]d driving fast, tinkering with high-powered cars, and beat-
Probably Have app ned Any\vay). ing other people in fierce competition. The System calls
fort h those attributes in its members and rewards the
2. Orwelr~ In version. extreme degree of them. But a 'W'Ord of warning is in
Th~ confusion of Input and utpur. order. A priori gue. ~es as to what traits are fostered by a
Exalnple. A gaant program to onquer Cancer is given system are likely to be v_.rrong. urthermore, those
begun. At the end of fiv year , cancer has not been c:.;on-
3
traits are not necessari]y conducive to successful operation
quercd, but one th usand re~ r;:arch papers have been puba of the System it e]f, e.g., the qualities necessary for being
lished. In additi n, one n1iJlion copies of a pamphlet enti- eJected president do not include the abi1i ty to run the
tJed ·•vou and the War Aga1nst CancerH have been country.
distributed. ho. e publicati Jns \vill absolute! be regarded Systems attract not only Sy tern ~people who have at-
a. Output rather than Input. tributes for succe s within the system. hey also attract
Systenl.\-People. individuals who possess specialized attributes adapted to
The preceding consjderat ·ons have provid -d convincing
e idence that the ""'~ystem has it.\ effect:J on the people within
it. It iso1ates t 1em, feed , the1n a d~storted and partial
version of the out ide \\'nrld, and gives them the iHusion
of power and effectiv ness. But systems and people are

Equivalent technical terms; Output As. imilation~ Kudos Cap-

tur

- . - ~ --

~~ - ~ - ~
 4'
SYSTEMANTICS

aUl)\V th n1 to thn e t the cxpen e of the ·tern, i.e.,

person~ vho parasitiz., Lt1em. As the barnacle attaches to
the \vh. le~ these crsons attach then1"elve to systems,
VII. ELEMEN ARY
gc:tti~g a fr ~ nde and a free lunch a long as the systen1 SYS , EMS-FU CTIONS
.., llf\'IVCS.

Effort to ren1 v para~ it1c S.)'. tern. -J eople by means of

reening C( n1rnUtt;~s. r~viev.~ boards, and con1petcncy ex-
amination n1 rely gen rate ne\ job categorie. for such
people to oc.;cupy. OnJy the ancient Egyptians, \vith their ~r never ruled Russia. Ten thou and clerks ruled Russial''
deep insight into 1un1an organizations, had the courage to Thus poke Czar Alexander on his deathbed. Was he
provide the radic · J remedy: a dual hureaueracy in \vhich right? Of course he was! And at what a price he pur-
each jnh \\'as represented t1h'ice, once by the honorary chased that deep and depressing insight! There was a
officeho1der nee by the actual executive. system designed, if any system ever was, to be a tool
in the hands of one man, to permit that one man to
carry · nto effect his slightest whim. And what happened?
The system would not work. Wor e yet, Alexander,
with all his absolute authority, was unable to make it
work.*
If Czar Alexand~er had been inclined to philosophical
reflection, he would doubtless have meditated upon the
functional vagaries of systems-their propensity for
failing to work when most needed and for working
overtime when one could rea11y do without them. He
might even have attained insight into the basic Axiom
of Systems-function, from which all others are ulti-
rnately derived:

*~mpotcnt Potentate Syndrome-a rather straightfo~ard ex·

ample. A dditional examples: :tvlohamn1ed c~~mand1ng the
mountain to come to him; King Canute des1nng the ~a to
recede·, President 1xon ordering the Watergate mess to dtsap-
pear.

49
 ClQ
L MEt ARY SYST -M -F NC 0 S 51
Big y t rn.. lth I 'ork On heir Own Or They
A in1ple Systen1 May Or May Not Work.
)on't. If Tht:) Don\t, ' ou C an ,t ake Them.-
s;mple systems that work are rare and precious addi-
Ignorance l f thi ba ic A xiom js rc ponsible for the
tions to the arn1an1entarium of human technology.
n1os wide pread and fut·~lc o all adm1n1 trative errors-
They should be treasured. Unfortunately, they often
pushtng harder on he n nfunctioning ystem to n1ake it
pos._ e s attr1b lltes of instability requiring special skiH in
\vork better (A mini trator .~nxiety) :
[heir operation. For cxan1ple: the common fishing pole
\ ith line and hook; the butterfly net; skis; the safety
razor; and (in \Vestern hand ) the boomerang. But sim-
Pushing n The Sy. ten1 Doesn't elp. ple y tems possessing the required attribute of stability
do exist: the footrule, the plumb bob, the button and
You rnight as \\ell try to bring the el~vator up to your buttonhole ._ y tern, to name a fcVr'. Among simple sys-
floor by pullin on the indicator ]ever or pounding the call tenls involving human associations~ the family occupies.
button. In fa t, a , we shaH shov.' 1n another place: a special place.*
Although many of the world's frustrations are rooted
in the malfunctions of complex systems, it is important
to remember that Some Complex Systems Actually
Even rying To Re , elpfu[ Is A Delicate And
Dangerou ndertaking. Function. This statement is not an Axiom. It is an ob-
servation of a natural phenomenon. The obverse of the
We do not den that occasionally the parts of the Primal Scenario, it is not a truism, nor is there any-
no func( oning y tern n1ay be so di. po ed that a good thing ~n modern philosophy that requires it to be true.
SVr'ift kick \\'ill cau, e then1 o fa11 into place so that the We accept it here as a given} and offer humble thanks.
system can resume normal func ion. Ordinarily, how- The correct attitude of thankfulness leads naturally to
ever, such a n1aneuver merely produce~ one last spas- the following Rule of Thumb:
modi effort, after \vhich the sy ·ten1 ub:-\ide in to total
immobilitv. ... • If A Sy tern Is Working, Le-ave It A1one.
With this by w·ay of introduction. let us proceed to a Don't Change Anythi ng~
n1or,e detailed analysis of Systems Function, Malfunction,
and onfunction. First off: But how does it come about, step by step, that some
complex systems actually function? Thi question, to
* Vending 1\1uchine fallacy. Compare Vendetta: a feud be-
t een a t:u. omer and a recalcitrant vending machine. *See Chapter X: Practical Systems De ign.
 YST ,MANTICS
ELEME TTARY ,YSTE. S-FU C 0 53
\\ hi~h \le a tu nt of General y ten1antic attach the
htghest imp rt. nee, has not yet yie]dcd to intensive mod-
ern method c f n ve tigation and analy 1s. As of this writ-
7
1ng. only a partial and lin1ited breakthr )Ugh can be rc-
porlcd 3 fo1h w :

A Con1ple' Systen1 I"hat orks Is Invariably

ound l a e Evolved rorn A Simple ystem
That \Vorkcd .

The paralle1 prop lsition also appears to he true:

A CompJex ystem De igncd rom Scratch Never

Works And Cannot Be Made To \\1ork. You
ave To tari Over, Beginning With A Working
Sin1pie Sy tent.

Diligent scare for c ceptior1s to these Axioms has

yielded negative results. • The League of Nations~ o. The camp, we \vill remark that rhe mechanism by which the
United Nations? Hardly. evertheless. the conviction per- transit] on from working simple system to working complex
sists among some that a working complex system will be system takes place is not ·nown. Few areas offer greater
found somewhere to ha e been established de novo. from potential reward for truly first-rate research.
cratch. Mathematician · and engineers, in particular. in-
sist that the~e form u1atious are too S\\'eeping; that they set
forth a .natural lav.' what is merely the result of certain
technical difficulties, which they propose to overcome 1n
the near f uture.**
Without committing ourselves too strongly to either

•Readers are invited to part1cipate in the ~ carch and to report

result (.. ee Appendix III).
• pace for publication of their reports will b re. erved in the
Journal of egative Re\ults.
 ADVA SYSTEMS- U CTIO S 55

In ace rdance \Vi th our practice of movtng from the

VI. ADVA CED Limpler and rnore easily understandable to the more
SYSTEMS-FUNCTIONS profound dnd 1mpaJpahle, we present the following
N ..,TI l AL I DETERMINACY THEOREM
( .1. .):

In Cornple Sy tern . Malfunction A nd Even

ln the preccdin chapter \\le introduced certa1n elcrnt!n- Total onfunctinn May tot Be Detectable For
tary principl relating to the function or nonfunction of Long Periods, lf Ever.
syste~s. V..'e ~1 0\ no\ to rn re advanced concepts, some
~)f lJ.'hJch req111r close attention 1f they arc to be mastered. This th eorenl often elicits urprise when first pro-
he student will ren1en1 ber that our goal is t\\'Ofold: first, pounded. l Io\vever, illustrative exan1ples abound, espe-
to pre. ent the ub · ~ct matter w1th rigorou logical correct- cially from history. or ex mpJc, it \\'Ould seem r~easonable
ness, n1oving cqu r tially from simple to more advanced to suppoL e that ab. olutc n1onarchie , oriental despotisms,
ideas· and second, to provide a ground\\·ork for practical and other government in which all pov.'er is concentrated
mastery of the sub·ect, o that the attentive tudent may
in the wi11 of or e man wou)d require as a minimum for the
adequate functioning of those governments, that the will
deal with sy ·tern \Vith the .. rength that con1es fron1 un-
of the despot be intact. N everthele "'S, t he list of absolute
der ·tanding. On the one hand, ,why flounder in unequal
monarchs \'.l'ho were hopelessly 1nc ompetent, even insane,
struggle \\'hen you can n( \\' in ad van e that your efforts
is surprisingly long. They ruled with utter caprice, not to
will be unavaihng? Nothing is mon: useles than strug-
say \vhimsicaHty, for decades on end. and the net result to
gling against a la\v of natur . On the other hand, there are
their c ountries ' as-undetectably different from the rule
circun1stanc s (highly unusual and narro\vly defined of
of the wisest kings. •
course) ~·hen one' kno\vledge of Systen1s-Functions w·ill
On the other hand in strict accordance \Vith the Gener...
provide prec1sely the measure of e tra added ability
alized Uncertainty Principle, t he greatest a nd wi est kings
needed to tip the scale of a doubtful operation in onets
favor. Those rare 1noments arc, to the . erious Systems- Student wi. hing to investigate this fascinating topic in more
tudcnt, then! vard and the payoff that makes worthYlhi[e detail are ad ised to study the lives of Henry VI II, George Ill,
certain mpt.:rors of Japan~ the Czar.. of Russi th~ ultans of
the entire long period of disciplined study a nd self-denial
Turkey, etc., etc. Readers may also wish to rev1ew the perfor-
involved in as ery of this complex subjec . nlan~e. of present-day heads of tate-the author wisely re-
frait s.

54
 56
57
a' e n1ade d c1 Ions that proved disastrous. Char 1e-
source hould be tnade available, and deepest of all,
nlagnc. for c ( n1ple, in hi des1re to be fair to his three
the n1ore difficult becomes the problem of the legiti-
son . d1 idccJ hi en1pire ar 1 ng thern-an act that ga,,..c mate values of the ystem. *
rise to France, Germany, and Alsace- orrainc, and even-
t ual!y to two odd War . But, however difficult it n1ay be to kno\\' what a system
he probJern f evaluating " ucce s'' or ''failure'' as is o1ng, ore en Vt'hcther it is doing anything, we can still
applied to Jarg sy tern 1s c mpounded by the difficulty be ur of the validity of the Newtonian Law of Inertia as
of finding proper Titena for such evaluation. What is the applied to y tern :
ystem reaJly supposed to e doing? or example: was the
Feudal Sy tern a "success~ or a Hfail ure"? Shall it he cal ed A Systemhat Perforn1s A Certain Function Or
a usuccessu bccau e it achieved the physical survival of Operates In A Certain Way Will Continue To
'W~estern civilization, or shaJJ it be cafJed a Hfailure'' be- Operate n hat Way Regardless Of The Need ~Or
Of Changed Conditions.
cau 'e in place of the internationa]ism of Rome it be-
queathed u the doubtful legacy of nationalism and a di- In accordance \Vi th this principle, the Se~ective Service
vided Europe'. Some thinkers. overwhe med by the System continued to regi ter young men for the draft, long
difficulties of ans\vering uch questions, have taken refuge after the draft had ended.
in a Theorem of dou fu] vaJidity. vhich is presented here When a System continue to do its own thing, regardless
for completeness' sake, without any commitment a to its of circumstances. we may be sure that it is acting in pur-
uJtimate correctness; suit of inner goals. This observation leads us, by a natural
extension, to the insight that:
Complex Systems Are Beyond uman Capacity
To Evaluate

For our own part, ~ e shaH be content to quote the

\vords of one of the wise t of the Systems-Thinkers, as
follO\\'S:

In general \Ve can say that the larger the system

becomes, the more the parts interact, t e more diffi-
cult it ?s to understand e vironmental con traints, ~c. 7
est Ch rchman. The Systems Approach. e York: Dell
the more ob cure becomes the problem of what re- Publishing Co., 1968, p. 77.
 59

Systems evelop Goals Of Their Own The Instant

They Come Into Being.
(_f>C\,..., .., .,., ~

(. J f L II

'-Z,.. urthermore, 1t seem ., axiomatically clear that:

/ I ntrasyst cn1 Goals Come F irst.

- ~
The reader ,,.rho m~ ster. this powerful Axiom can read-
ily comprehend V.'hy the United Nat ions recently sus~
pended, for an enti re day~ its efforts at dealing with
drought, detet1te, and desert oil, in order to debate
Y.'hether U employes should continue to ride first· class
on airplanes.
We have used the te ms Goal. Purpose, and Function a
number of times. In the interests of clarity; we here
sharpen our distinctions so as to recognize three separate
entities.
1. The Stated Purpose of the Sy tern (The "Goal'' of the
Designer or Manager.)
2. The Built-in Function (What the System really does).
3. The Goals of the System ·tself.
In an ideal world, there would be trivial differences only
--J -- among these three things, and the Science of General
Systen1an tics would be much simpler than it is. But we
must deal with things a they are, and at the moment we
are talking about umber 3, The Goal of the System
Itself.
Prior to and underlying any other Goal, the System has
a blind, instinctive urge to maintain itself. In Axiomatic
form:
 60 YS'fEMA TICS

1h tern Has A \Vi11 To

.
1ve.

[Link] have stated H i A ion1 in ~u ~ective terms redolent

IX. SYS EMS-FAILURE
of teleology 1o ~.vh1 h orne philosopher n1ay obje~t . As (THEORY OF ERRORS)
\Ve eek no ten entious argument \ tth them or \Vith any-
ne e]se \\'C \\'1lltn r}y retreat to a fit re I eutral formu}a-
ti n and as~ert ~in ply:

• he . . y, tern Beha es As If It Ha A ill To Live. In the early days of the development of electronic compute
crs, engineer \vere startled to observe that the probability
This natural ten j r cy >n the part of Systen1s, L:Oupled of n1alfunction \Vas proportional to the fourth power of the
\\'ith the F. L.A .W . and the po\.ver ot Systems-Delusions, number of vacuum tubes. That observation led them to a
often cause. managers, political leaders~ and other Sys- preoccupation with component reHab;Hty that has cul-
tem -per"ons to produce statements of the general form~ minated in modem transistorized, solid-state computers.
hWhafs good for General otor i good for the Coun- But, in1pressive a .. that development may be, it is, from the
try. ' standpoint of general Systemantic , merely a neurotic di-
Such propo ition mere]y reflect the Sy terns-bias of gression from the straight and narro\v path. Improvement
their authors. They n1ay he n1omentarily accurate, but in con1ponent reliab1lity merely postpones the day of reck-
they cannot be generally cor cct in any 1ogical or scientific oning. As the system grows in size and complexity, it
sense. Only one proposition of this form is necessarily gradually but inevitably outgrows it component specifica-
true. With modest pride we state it a follo\\•s: tions. Parts (whether hu man or electronic) begin to fail.
T he important point is:
What' Good or General Systemantics Is Good
or The Country. Any Large System Is Going To Be Operating
ost Of The Time In F ailure Mode.

What the systen1 is supposed to be doing when every-

thing is rocking weH is reaUy beside the point because that
happy state is never achieved in reat Hfe. The truly perti-
nent question is: H ow does it work when it component~
aren ;t working well? How does it fail? Haw well does zt
function in failu re mode?

61
62 Y "E A TICS SYS EM - All R T EORY 0 RRORS) 63

ur ba 1' c1ppr ach 1s [Link] ed In tht; Fundan1cntal and in politic con1monly deny the truth of this A ion1
Failure Ih"oren1 ( . .T) until it 'alid1ty ha · b~en repeatedly borne in upon them
h · repeated disa ter attendant upon their own pet
) stt.:rn an n nfinitc umber C f ~hcmes. Son1e tndecd, in b th profe, sions, persi~t in their
av. S) terns del u ional vacw·s to the very end of Hfe. As a
re ult, it t u uall y the ca e that:
An . trern e ample J the governn1cnt ofHatti, \vhich,
\Vlth one exce h n, appear to c nsist ntirely f dcpart-
nlent that don >t function.* Doz n -J[ r~ahcnal and inter- he Crucial Variables Arc Discovered By
Accident.
nat:~nal aid a cncae , fru tratt.!d by the inabillty of the
ra1t1an gov rnrn nt to cope \ ith outside assistance, ha\ e
E'xarnple 1. The Pyramid of Snofru. On the edge of the
ent en1ergen~ ·epre entathes t( Haiti, to teach the gov-
desert, a few n1ile · ~ outh of the Great Pyramids of Egypt,
crnnl en t Jffictal how to fill our request.\ }or aid.
star1d a ruined lO\\'er of rnasonry some two hundred feet
Puri. ts at1d the ret1ciar s n1ay argue that the number of high. urroundcd by great mounds of rubble. It is the
Vt'a in \Vhtch a ) 1em can fatl i nnt truly infiniteJ but ren1ains of a gioantic pyramid. Its ruined tate has been
n1erely very large. 'h11e conceding th~ theoretica1 interest variously attributed to time~ \veather. earthquake, or van~
of uch speculatl(ln , \Ve h ld ourselve aloof from the dust dahsm de pi te the ob\ ious fact that none of these factors
ofpoh!mical tnfc. More to the p 1nt of our inv tigations, has been able to affect the other Great Pyramids to any-
\vhich are oriented to\vard the \\ orld of practicalities, is
where ncar the same degree.
the fact that, \Vhile some kincts of failure n ay be easily Only in our own time has the correct solution to this
predictable~ mo t are not. In gener;. J: enigma been advanced. In conformity with basic Systems-
princtple * the an \\'er was provided by an outsider, a
The Mode Of Fatlure fA Con1 1 x Svstem physici t unaware that there \va any problem, who, after
Cannot Ordinaril) Be Predicted roni Its a vacation in Egypt, realized that the pyramid of nofru
Structure. had fa !len down. The immense piles of rubble are big
enough to recon truct the entire pyramid. It is clear that
Stric I_ .. peaking~ t hi proposition is merely a corollary
the thing \\ras almost complete when it fell.
of the GE ALIZED CERTAI T'i' PRI CI- Wr y dtd Snofru ,s pyratntd fan down \vhen that of his
p · E· buL because of its practical importance, it is here grandfather Zo er; which had the form of tepped tower,
le ated to the status of an Axiom. Beginners in science did not? be answer (provided by our visiting physicist)
*The tobacco ta ·, hich goes directly into the President'~ per-
*See ''The ~Problcn1' Problem," Chapter XI.
ona bank account, 1 mcticulou ly collected in fulL
 4 SYSTEMANTICS

1 that n fru tri d t face hi ~ tower \\'lth stone hlocks to

reate a true pyran11d \\ ith smoothly sloping ides. l [n-
kn \\'n to ,nofr 1, the crucial ft3ctor y.•as just this: a stepped
t< '" r of tho e giganuc din1ensiuns 1s table. a true pyra-
mid is not. It fell down.*
Exarnple 2. 1 ~l ~ Pyratnid of Cheopj. [Link], . on of
\,
- k<: R ~r. EI.,i.J
A iV 0 F I! E 1~ F"1t. "~
Snofru, vo\\·cd not to make the same tnistake. With great A p .~ o ~ ' v c-· .tv r

care he constructed hi.. p 'I amid of finely d re ed lin1e- V AJ 1 r/ (3- P_ ~ I r r. ,.

(( ne block ·, nutthematicaHy plalJed to distribute the
stre ses. ·s yran1i did not fa ll dO\Vn, nor did those of
his in1mediate successors, which were built in the same
\\'ay. But the gyptian state, subjet;ted to unbearable
trcs e b_ the building of those monster of pride, col-
lapsed into anarchy. Egypt j{df down.
Tne Fail-Safe 'llzeore1n.
In expounding the cience of General Systemantics \\'e
have triven to remain at the level of tundamental theory
providing the reader with ba ic insights of broad general 1H (J v }e; t.. 'A.,..... ~r
If" r .,~(
w 1-~ f -~ f( I( E
validity, and '" toppin by the \ 'ayside o· ly occasionally to ( I I
I S ~ v, L r, . '· I • P

r ("' ( ~r5 e.• ,. ~ ~4 u

... A tV N 0 T t!... t • f (/ ) F
p 1uck a Paradox or col1ar a Corollary of special 1nterest /'of e:> T w o A. .a:: .,- .., 6

for specific sttuati n We have not tried to teU the reader """'e "' .
.---
how to run his own affa1r or tho .. c of the particular com- "' 4 'f f-
munit - , socic:ty, ( r nation to v.~hich he may happen to I ""5 + +:lt , ..
~ ~e ~~ ""'"
fT
)
""' "1
belong. We wil1, in generat continue to adhere to that c..v o .-f • ..--.. J
tv Co W • .)
7
) p o 'f S

policy. But at this point in our exposition \Ve deliberately

, ,.,. D v fP r ."c. "' 1t
?..,--- ------ .
S\\lerve trom our splendid isolation to inject a note of
~~ ..., .. // ~ :::-~~
'-~,...-./
exhortation, eve[ of urgency, into the discus. ion . We be-
lieve the Fail-Safe Theorem to be of spec1a1 immediacy for u.J
( '~
7 ( ~
r;r:J/
everyone concerned "''ith the fate of Homo sapiens, and we ~l
LJ);;;;;-L
( LJ
;-
l )
* endclssohn, Kurr. ''A cienti. t Look at the Pyramids.'~ rr'-' ort~rffl-
<j
'lo
(j v- r 1 f'J o ~ P E I< r ¢. /) J:. • . , . . . - - J i1,. f
{s ~ .,- f HE !,- ,.ll A .f'/ '1' 1 H ("
4 merican Scientist. 59: 210-220 (March-April), 1971. F Jv r He 1 ~ ~E - li"E
-,
t'V ~ r fFE..,._,
r 1: r. c: c.. s oP ~ ·"""- ., J 'T ..,. 'TWIJoi)T"~fl
~ (' {) I.. IF
. I
.~ G- ~ A ...... ~ ~~~t.t-> T b 1 a v f T-~ .-11
lftl '( t- A .1-~ .
JS ("" e~ 1:1 r:JJ I 'Jf (. v- ~ "' jU "! 1 S' f (& .ti Jl fl- t f
 ''{ST oJMAN ICS

herefon:: ur e H re< d r to read, n1ark, lcanl1 and in-

" ardl dt t r t t l e nd that ~uturc policy may not X. APPLIED
tgnore tt but r· thet ta ~e 1t and lts in1plications into ac-
count. ed1ou t xegc 1 \\Ould be insultJng to readers of
SYSTEMANTICS l:
this work ani, [Link] , bo ng. e gt e it, therefore, in all PRACTICAL SYSTEMS
it au5tcre ,.nd forbidding irnphcit_ . DESIGN
\\'hen Fall- afe ten1 ails, It aiJs By
aii&ng ·ro Fail Safe.
uclear trat 1st. please nott=.

Up to this point our tnode of development of rhe subject

has been rigorously logical, austerely theoretical. We have
made few if any concessions to mere expediency or the
demands of the market plact!. The earnest Systems-stu-
dent who has toiled thus far may justifiably ask: Is this all,
this handful of abstractions? Did not the author promise
/ us, way back in the Pr~eface, that we would gain not merely
in understanding but also in practical know~how if we but
applied ourselves to mastery of this difficult science?
True, the insights of practical wisdom so derived are
pitifully few, and their power is strictly limited. You have
already mastered the hard lesson of the Operationai Fal-
lacy, ~'ith its dreary implication that SYSTEMS EVER
REALLY DO WHAT WE W A T THEM 0 DO.
What is now offered is a primer of What Can Be Done,
given the existenc,e of such built-In limitations. Briefly'"
what can be done is to cope. and, on rare and ati fying
occasions, to prevail. The mature and realistic Sy tems-
tudent asks no more than this of life, taking his content-
ment primar1ly from the fact that he has lived in accord

67
 MA T S APPLIED SYS EMA TICS 1 69

th rure h rs f and onl} econdaril~ from the fact Eventually you come to believe that the n1isbegotten prod-
uct it o grudgingly delivers i. \\·hat you really \\'anted all
t at no one el<; can et n 'nor , elt her
t 15 hard I) ncce ary to tate that the very fir t principle the time.*
At that poin t encroachm!;!nt has become complete. You
of tcnl -desig' 1 a negat1 one·
have become absorbed. You are nO\\' a Systems-person.
Furthermore, some things just can't be done well by a
De It 1thout A stem H You Ca . system. In formal language:
"

or tho. e wh n reason for uch a elf-evident propo-

ihon, \\. offer the folJo\ n1g conci e un1mary 1f the en- Many Functions Are Intrinsically Unsuited To
The Systems Approach.
tire field of Genera[ Sys emanLics.
y ten1~ arc educt i c. hey pron11 e tf' do a hard j~,b
~· ter, better, at d n1ore castly tl1an ou could do it by Anyone who has tried to manipu1ate an umbrella in a
your elf. But if) ou et up a y ten1, you are hkcly to find h igh wind has an intuitive feel for what is involved here.
our ume m1d effort no b ing consurned in the care and Technically, it has omething to do \vith rapid and irregu-
~ dn1 of the y tern Jt If lar fluctuations in the p arameter . ** The great secret of
e\v probl m are created b) its very presence. Syst~em Design is to be able to sen e what things can
Once et up, 1t w n~t go a\ 'ay, it grov. sand encroaches.** naturally be done easily and elegantly by means of a sys-
It be Ill"- dr) t range nd \\ o c1 erful t h 111 gs. ** * tem and what things are hard- and to stay a\vay from the
reak d0\\'11 in \ ay yt u nc e1 thought po sib1e. *•** hard things.
I1 kick .. bac · et tn th a}, nd oppo e its own proper Also, if you really must build a system, by all means
unction ••• * remember the Systems La\\' of Gravity, otherwise known
Your \\D per pc.!"'ti e he orne di torted by being 1n the as the Vector Theory of Systen1s:
} t m ** **
ou becon1e a x1ou n pu~ h on it to make it
ork. * * •

Fundamental heorem.
••Law of Growth
• Generalize Jn crt mt) rindple (G. J.P.) Sys terns-delusion.
\ro
•••Fund m .. ntal cuiure Theon.:m (F F.T.) **Parameter are variables travelling under an a ·umed name.
* ..e Chatelier' Pnnctpl hey are variab1es that are held mathematicalJy constant which
Funchonar ,• ault . just g(JeS to show how little mathematic know about the real
• Admiru tr tor,s Anxiety. world.
 0 APP I 71

Loo e Systen1s La t Longer And unction Better.

Consider, for example, the Systen1 of the Family. T he

family has been around for a loll g time. Our clo e primate
relatives, the gorilla forn1 family units consisting of hus-
band and \vife and one or n1ore offspring. l\ Jane Goodall
has sho\vn, gorillas t'tke naps after meal·. (Every day is
Sunday for large primates. The youngster \Vake up too
soon~ get bored and .. tart monkeying around the nest.
Father gorilla eventually wakes up, leans on one elbow,
and fixes the errant youngster with a penetrating stare t hat
speaks louder than \Vord . he offending juveni]e there-
upon stops hi irritating hyperactivity. at lea ·t for a few
minutes.
ystetn ur Be t V.l1en Designed o Run Clearly, this is a functioning fam ily system. It immense
wn hill.
survival power is obvious. It has endured vici situdes com-
In hun1an t rn1 thi n1can · \ ork "ng with human ten- pared to which the stresse our [Link] day puts on it are
del ies rather than aga1nst thern. For cxarrtp]e, a state- trivial. And what are the sources of its strength? T hey are
run lottery flouri...hes even in lilnes of econon1ic depre - extreme simplicity of structure; looseness in everyday
sion becau e it~ function is aligned with the basic hun1an functioning: "~nefficiencyn in the efficiency cxperfs sense
in tinct to gantbl a mall .. take in hopes of a large re- of the term; and a strong alignment with basic primate
motivations.*
\Va rd. · he public chool . .ystern, on the other hand ' al-
though foundtd with the highest and most altruistic
goal in mind, retnain.. ·n a tate of chroni failure be-
cau lt violates the human principle of spontaneity. t
goes again. t the grain, and therefore it doe not ever re-
a11y uccecd.
Fin all , don't make the y tern too tight. This is usually
• Even in it remotest origin , however. the FamiJy Sy t n1 e -
done 1n the nan1e of efficiency, or (paradoxica11y) in the acts its price. \Vhat Father GoriHa wanted is not c actl) hat
hope of n1aking the y tern more permat ent. N'e ither goal be gets. here is a tradeoff fo r t he continued presen e of the
· chi ved if th resultin y.. tern (a) doe n't \Vork at a11; fema1e-n amdy, the continued presence of the offspring. he
Op~rational FaUacy ts not to be denied.
( d1 tntegratc ; or (c) rapidly Joses steam and peter3 out:
 APPLIED SYS EMAN ICS 2 73

lowed by a rash of crinllllclJ trials of th top officials and

X. APPLIED the announcen1ent of a new and more ambitious Five-
Year Plan, starting from a ha eline some\vhat lower than
SYS EM TICS 2: that of the preceding Plan, but with higher goals.
NAGEMEN Catalytic Jfanagership.
AND OTHER MYTHS Although in a theoretical work of th is type we cannot
stop to offer specific advice, \Ve can suggest that the Sys-
tems-sophi.. ticated Manager will adopt a style which we
designate as Catalytic Manager hip. Briefly, Cata]ytic
Managership is based on the premise that trying to m ake
something happen i .. too ambitious and usual1y fails, re-
sulting in a great deal of ·a ted effort and lowered morale.
ur pre\i u en ount..:r w11h Czar A le ·ander and the It is, however, sometime possible to ren1ove obstacles in
mpotcnt Jl tentat · "yndron1c sh< uJd have alerted u. al- the \vay of something happening. A great deal may t hen
read to th pit al r f "'ystcm -n1anagement. Should we occur with little effort on t he part of the manager, who
actuall) find our.. elve , against our b t·tter iudgmc:nt, in a nevertheless get a large part of the credit. The situation
rot n erial ore e~utive po it ion, \ e should remember the is similar to that of the lumberjack \Vho picks out the key
read eff~.:cts of the · ..... A. W ., of llireli ng's ypnosis, and log from a logjam~ or the chemist who adds the final pinch
oft he per\ a .. 1ve ysten1 -delusions. h combined effect of of reagent to an unstable mixture. u a warning ts 1n
tho e forces 1 such as to render very doubtful any form order. Catalytic Managership ·ill only work if the System
of ~anag men Sctence. f there is no \vay of being sure is so designed that Something Can ActuaHy Happen-a
what the real effect 1f ur n1anagerial actions ha been, condition that common1y is not met.
ho can you 'Il \\' whe her t)U have done '''ell or ill? Catalytic Managership has been practiced by leader of
The .L.A.W. n1ay e en operate in such a \vay as to genius throughout recorded history. M. Gandhi is re-
hide from the adn inistrator the operation of the G.U.P. ported to have said: " There go my people, I must run and
In c;uch . ituat1uns, the adrn1nistrator ~ink into compla- catch up with them in order to lead them.'' Choo i g the
cency V\o'hile ht Sy tern c· rcen from di. a tel to d1sa ter. correct System is crucia] for success in Catalytic anager-
In recognition of rnaJor Ru sian contribution to our expe- ship---consider the p robable career ofW. Chur ·hill had he
nence of th1 phenc 1ncnon, it i.. kno\vn as the Potemkin been Prime Minister of Angola.
'tllage Effect. The P. V. . is e [Link] pronounced in The "Prohlef'n" Problem.
1 e-Year Plans which typical] y report sen. ational over- For the practk:ing Systems·manager, the great t pitfall
a hie ement during the fir l four a nd a half years,. fol~ lies in the realm of Problems and Problen1- olving. ys-

72
 4 S""'l'S E ANTIC PPLIED SYSTEMA 1T ICS 2 75
ren1s can o rna 1) th1ng , but on Unng hey cmphatican ' biology. And an1cs \Vats n, \VhO solved the puzzle, was
can 1ot do i ~ to h P oblcn1 lds 1. b~.;;cau e Prohlcn1- not an X-ray crystall ographer. Ic was not even a chemist.
oh ·n ts not a.) te1n ~-fun tton , and then; is no satisfac- Furthermore, he had been refused a rene\val of his re-
t r~ y tern • ppro imat~on to the ol ution of a Prohlem.
earch grant becau~e his . pOn!Sor felt he \\'a n 't sticking
. . ) ten1 repre ent meone' olutton to a problen1. he to the point.
, ten1 d e... not ~ohe 1he problen1. Yet, wh never a par- As th se xamplcs make clear, great advance may be
ticu Jar probletn i ~arge enough and p zzhng enough to be achieved by individuals \vorking essentially alone or in
con idered a apual- > )roblcn1, n1en ru h in to solve it . mall teams. ut what of the reverse situation·~ What is the
b) mean of a } stem. track record of large sy terns designed for the express
nc a pr blern is re(.;ogn1 zed as a lrublcnl. 't un- purpose of solving a major problem'? A decent respect for
det go a su )d n1eh1n1c rpbosis. Experts in the .. Prob- our predecessors prevent · u. from dwelling upon the
enf' e:wea pr <:C ito clab rate it complexity. They de ign effort of succes ive govcrnn1cn tal administrations to
y t t to attack it. 'I'hi · appro{ich guarantee~· failure, at eradicate poverty reduce crin1e, or even get the rnail deliv-
lea t for a11 but th rnost pedcstnan task . A ystcn1 that ered on time. The bankruptcy of the railroad system, al-
1 ufficicntly lar 7e, cornplcx and arnbiti u can reduce ready achieved under private n1anagement. has been fur-
outp 1t far beJo\'l "rand rn ., leveL . Thus, a federal Pro- ther compounded \Vith government assistance. In the field
r m to conquc:r cane r rnay tle up all the competent of science, a famed research ~enter recently creened over
r earcher in the fleJd, leaving th~ prob1em t( be olved fifty thou and different chemical sub tances, at great ex-
by sont one el e typit:ally a graduate .student from the pense, for anticancer activity-with negative resu]L. We
niver H) at l'asn1ardn dning a little re4..,:reational ento- conclude that:
mology on hi vacat1on . ..)o/utionr usually cotne frotn peo-
ple who see in the problen1 onzv an interesting puzzle, and
Great Advance<; Do Not Come Out Of Systems
whose quaiificatlOll »ould never satisfy a select comrnittee.
Designed To Produce Great Advance. .
lten1. hen Pasteur · c ·epted the challenge of the
rench silk producers to di cover the cause of. ilkworm Furthermore:
disea e, he had never t: n, much less tudied, a silkworm.
Ife wa not e 'en a biologi ·t.
Complicated Systems Produce Con1plicated
It 111. e r1 ht brothl:rs, \\'ho buHr the first uccess-
Responses ( ot SoJutions) To Problems.
ful heav1er-than-an~ n at;hlne, were bicycle rnaker.t
Item. h~;; n1olecular ·tructure of the gene--clo est Even more disastrous than the ''Problem, approa h to
thmng to the true '' ecret of lifc''- was n.:vealcd through problems is the "Crash, approach. The hCrash" pproach
-ray c y tal1ograph ',a technique having little to do v.'ith combines the adverse dynamics of the "Problem'" ap-
76 SYST MANTICS

proa h \ ith el n1ent dn11n1 trator's Anxiet (Push-

Jug on the Sy ten1 to
nd .r th pr s ur
·e It \Vork) and plain hysteria.
1f uch a Sy tern, ·cien tist.. them-
XII. APPL ED
h (norn1aHy th rno t trr nqutl and reflective of men) SYSTEMANTICS 3·
ma begin to era k. cutt1ng off tails ar1d painting the skins
of rnace n1 de p ult ef ort to meet the artifi ial but pres -
TAMING SYS EMS
1ng goal of the Sy ten1. Th pre ention of u h di a .. ter
cJearJy caJJs for .,atalyt1c anagt;r~hip of the highe t
order.

o treatise on Systems w u1d be complete without some

mention of those profe--sionul Systems-peoplt! \Vho can
themselves •'change agents.~, The belief that constructive
change in a systen1 i possible through dire<..t intervention
i, an optimistic vie~ that die hard. The alert Sy tems-
tud,e nt will recognize it as the common psychological
phenomenon of denial of unpleasant reality. In factJ it
may be viewed as a c[assic example of a Systems-del us ion.
Even more instdious, however, is the implicit assumption
that there is a science of Systems-intervention which any
diligent pupil can master, thereby achieving competence
to intervene here and there in system large and smaH \Vtth
resu lts objecti veiy verifiable and of consi tent benefit to
mankind . Such a belief is clearly in conflict with the Gen-
raHzed Uncertainty Principle.*
We do not take an abso]uteJy pes.., imistic stand. It is
possible, we beLieve, to exert ~ orne limited influe ce on
large systems. But v.'e re olute]y assert that any such in ft u~

•Most change agents survtve between job by writing rnagazine

articles explaining the reasons for the di aster that struck the
latest object of their change agentry.

77
 APPLIED SY ~ E Tl S 3 79

n e mu o cur '' 1thu1 the ran1 \\ ork of, and in accor- to point out its defect as a y. tern, thereby qualify;ng
dan with, t 1c g nera] Ia\\ of sten1s-fur1Ct1on enun- hin1self as a pio11 cer S) sten1s-thin ker.
'"'I ted in th · treatJ~ Briefly, the Token Syst en1 1 intended to prov1de for
he ork of ch( ng agt:tH i rr1ade enonnously more di.. tribution of \\'ealth al lng cert~li.n rational tines~ ·uch as
dehcate nd ur certain b) 1he act that the n1ere pre~ encc the contribution of the individual to the comn1on welfare.
of a change a 1t (r cognb:able as . uch) has about the In practice, ho\vcvcr, and in accordance \Vith an inelucta-
an1e effect on a organization as an efficiency expert seen ble natural la\V of Sy sten1s-lbehavior. the tokens are ac-
trolhn across th fact tlonr \ •th topwatch tn hand: cun1ulatcd hy tho e who ·e primary virtue is skill in ac-
1t promptly induce b1zane and unpredictable alterati ns ~umulating tokens-a point o erlooked by Marx.
In the behavior of the systen1. ecause oft hi, effect anyone A recital of the chen1e d vised by mankind to cor rect,
'' ho Jdcnttfic hirn cJf pubJicly as a change agcn t au ton1at- or at least neutralize, this intrinsic difficu]ty with t he
JcaJiy con\ tct hin1 elt of incornp~.::tence. h~tn' · \\'ill cer- Token System make. tcdiou artd depressing reading tn-
taanJ) occur as aTe. tdl , I ut they are not 1ik ly to be the dced. here arc son1e \Vho go o far as to assert that
cha1 g d ~ ired. modern history is mainly the story of those efforts. Gov-
D sp1te rhe built-In difficulties Jf chang agentry, there ernments everywhere, \Vhether capitalist, ocialist, or
re a fe\\ e ·arnp1 on record of situation in \Vhich a con1mun ist, have struggled to Tame the oken System .
r c· Ic1trant systen1 has been tan1ed, i.e., the \VOr t features Only one society, hidden in a far-off corner of the wor1d,
of it beha ior have been ternpcrcd so a· to produce a has had the imagination and daring to achieve uccess in
tolerab]e re ult How uch interventions have come about this effort. For the sake of our industria] civilization, su n k
i not at all clear. o. t are hroudcd in the ob . L:urity of in the miseries of operation of the oken System, we here
the istant pa t. What is clear 1 that the r medy must present our findings.
. trike deeply at the root of Lhe systen1 itself in order to On the I land of Yap in the South Pacific, money i in
produce any signifi ant effe 't. urthermore, an uncanny the form of stone co!ns, as big as cart\vheels, \vith a hole
elen1ent of paradox is pron1inent in the fe\V exan1plcs so in the center. T he value of a coin is based, not on size, but
far r portt!d. hu . , the 1 ng ~urvival of the British monar- on the number of people who died bringing it acres the
chy i probahly attributable to the fact that the King open sea, la hed to the bow of a fratl canoe, fron1 the
re1gn but doe not ruJc. he ~ohesion of rhe far-flung 1imc tone quarries of the island of Palau, 250 miles from
dominions of the .rnpire is similarly based on the para- Yap.
do 1cal fact of\ oluntary assoc1ation. No Yapese person can reasonably hope to accumulate
An even more challenging exan1ple i the Token Syste1n. any large number of such coins. In fact, when p l e" ion
Uh 'h1ch mankind ha~ been ha 'ing trouble ever since of a coin cha nges, the po. ition of the coin itself doe not.
the Phoen1cian"' 111vente 1H. K. Mar "'a~ perhaps the first It continues to lie \Vherever it has always lain, alon a path
 APPLIED SYS ~EMANTICS 3 81

or on the edge of a village. On y the abstract title cha11ge ,

and noth1ng of consequence ha~ chang~d for the Yapese
people.
Clearly there is no problen1 of theft or of hoarding.
he assignment of va]ue on the basis of men lost on t he
journey i an additional stroke of genius. The coin cannot
T " '
be used as a ymbolic ub titute for human Jabor. It does
not rcpre ent so many coconuts collected, o many pounds
of copra produced. or .. n1any head of cattle or chickens.
No one can, by accumulating token\ hold the community
to ransom.
Critics may argue that thi cure of the faults of the
Token System is too radical-that by depriving coinage of
( the t\vo attributes of portability and syn1bo ic repre enta-
tion of human labor~ the Yape e have in fact Hde-monet-
ized" their currency, so that it is no longer money. Against
this hyperfine argument we place the sin1ple observation
I
l 0 that everyone, everywhere immediately recognizes the
Yapese coins for what they arc-rea] money. It w111 take
) U\).
~~
~ more than the quibbles of specialist to convince the aver-

; L~
{(/
age man that what he sees with his o v.·n eye~ is not the
truth.
I
._
j~ Can the Governtnent System be Tamed?
Students of General Systemantics will have ap-
prehended by now that General Sy ~ temantics dot not
offer ready-made formula. for the solution of Sy .. terns..
problems, even of such pressing problems as Warfare be-
t\\leen Nations or G overnmental Oppre~sion. The Axioms
are too fundamental for direct application to practi I
ituations, and the intervening methodology hru in any
case not been worked out. At most, one may derh e clue
 1'ST Mi\ TICS APPLIE 'STEMA TICS 3 83
t a rneth d f ppr ach hereby the Intnn ic Difficulty new f reedom., in addttion to the traditional Four Free-
1 pc 1fic:d a prectsel) a po~ 1ble, ·o that daring and dorns. The e t\\·o nc\\' freedo1ns, appropriately designated
una tnati \ orr ctn s may be tried ... he ri k of fatJure or as the Fifth and Sixth Freedon1s, are~
e 1 o atastro he 1 v ry high, and the undertaking ( 5) Free Choice of T err it ory (Distributional Freedom).
·} ould be b g n on] \\ h(;rc the pre ent evil 1 very clear (6) Free Choice of Guverr1n1ent (Principle of Hcge-
( n th con. e ucnc sofa Hili carriag~_. arc judged to he no nlonic Indeterminacy .
n1orc unbearab1 than a conttnuatior' of the original un- Under Free Choice of Territ 1rv, a citizen of an y coun-
•
att fa tOr) i uati n
try is free to live in any part of the world he chooses. He
\Vtth these I ervatJons, \Ve may perm1t our e]vc a bit remains a citizen of the govcn1ment he prefer ·, to \\thich
f harm~ s peculation on the (J v~rn n1cnt System . Gov- he pays taxes a nd for \ hose officers he votes. H o,vever, as
ernrncn r ystcn1 , acting iii ace or dance \ ith the La\VS of the term Free Choice of Governmen t implies, h e may at
r \ 'th, 1 nd to ·p;. nd and Enl5roach. [n encroaching
-4
any tim e change hi citizenship and his aHcgiance from his
up 11 their O\ 'TJ c1tizen , they produce Tyran ny, and in present govern ment to another governm ent that offers
encroactung on other overnn1cnt Systems t hey engage m ore attr active tax rates, better pensions, more interesting
1n \\'arfarc. J one could correct 1y 1dcntify the Intrinsic public officials, or simply an invigoratin g change of pace. •
Ifficu1t \VIth t e Govemn1cnt Sy "tern. one n1ight be able With these two new Freedom~ in effect, one would ex-
to curb or neutralize those hvo tendencies. to the benefit pect that after a short period of equ ilibration, citizens of
of th an kind Sy, ten1. any nation would be distributed amongst the citizens of all
What J(; the Intrinsic Ditl1cu1ty \\lit h the Government other nations-not necessari]y a t random ~ but sufficiently
) ten ? Previou. reforrners, identifying the core problem so for our purpose, which is to remove them effectively
as the concentration of po~1-·er in a fev~' hand s. have at- from the grip of their own government. A government can
ten1pt d to improve thi ngs by d iffusing that po\ver. This hardly put any large number of its own citizen. in jail if
ork temp rariJy, but gradually (Systern La\\, of Grav- it has to send halfway around the world for them, one by
Ity) the po\ver become. concentrated again. one, and persuade other governments of the justice of the
breakaway group of General Systeman dcists, startin g proceeding . Raising armies would become admini tra-
from the principle that it L very difficult to unscrambl~ tively impossible. Furthermore, wars of one government
eggs, ha 'C pn,posed that the L Or e prob1cm is not the con- against another would become impracticat since large
centration of power bu t the cof! centrati or~ of the governed numbers of the ~~enemy ' ' would be distributed all over the
1n one place, \Vhere the governm ent can get at them . They
ha~e propos d, not the d iffusion of po\ver, but the diffu-
•common courtesy would seem to require two week -advance
ion of the targets of po\ver-the citizen then1selves. notice; the standard nouce any employer would gi e an em-
hey "(II uld ach tevc this by providing citizens \\'ith two ployee.
 r'S A TICS

"orld, inc1ud n ' the tern Of) of the home go ern men t.
h n tr uh of tt e hvo nc~ reedom ouJd be to
oncentrattr n cfthe Governed, to divide and ENVOI:
1 thro aghout l)ther government . (_ princi- BEYOND EXPERTISE
ple \\'hich v.~ haH caH the Conuninution of He'' 1nony. If
practJced on a worJd-u•ide calc 1t could lead to rev JJ uti on-
f) changes in the relation htp of c1tizens to their govern-
nlent , rever 1n the traditional polanty and rna ing gov-
ernrnents f~.;arfuHy dependent upon the favor or even the
\\'c have con1e to th.e end of our presentation; why not
him ofth~tr atiz ·r1ry rather than v1ce ver a. ln keeping
sin1ply stop? Does Euclid bet her to round off his Elements
\\ 1th th revolut1onary a p cts of this proposal, \\'e hereby
with a poHshcd littlt= essay on the significance of the whole
roach the soJeflHJ quest ion:
work?* But, lest readers ft!el that they have been left hang-
ing in air; so to speak, this coda is appended. We ha11 not
\Vorld Co1nn1inut i n: · hreat Or Prom i e?
revie\ll the purpo e set forth in the Preface that motivated
us to undertake this \VOrk, nor shall \Ve descr;be at length
how the interventng chapter" have neatly covered all as-
pects of the topic. Instead, \\'e shall speak to the necessity
of a New Breed of Systems-student-one whoj having
absorbed the Axioms here collected and, more impor-
tantly, the spirit infusing them, can progress beyond tech-
nology to the kind of wisdom the \\?orld needs. The world
already suffers from too many experts. They tell us more
than we need to know or dare to ask about heavier-than-
air machine . fu ion bombs, and management science.
What \Ve rea1ly need o know is much more . ubtle.
he que~tions \Ve must answer for good or ill are of a
ditferen t order: Can placing a microphone ju the Oval
Office bring down the government? Will setting up Man-
agement by Objectives ;n the Universities bring on another
Dark Age? Will permithng men and women everyvlhere

•or course not.

85
 6

the freedorn to cho e tltelr 0\\ n \\'.IY of life and to make

the1r O\\ n de s1on I . d to better world'! or uch q ues-
APP NDIX I:
h n our run-of. the-J 1ill --xpert 1 of no value. What is
ANNOTATED COMPENDIUM OF BASIC
r qu 1 d i a spech J, du~1v talent, really an ir1t utt1un-a
SYSTEMS-AXIOMS, THEOREMS,
fed for the '" Id, cird, \VOnderful, and paradoxical \\'ay COROLLARIES, ETC.
of lar e y. rern . e oft'" r no formula for rccogniztng or
cu1ttvattng uch a ta] 11t But \Ve uggest that It po e ors
\\ tH, rnore li *el thar n t, have cut their eycte th on the
A iom of Gcn ra] y ternan tic .

For convenience and ready referenct: of both scholar and

casual reader, we here sumrnarize the resuHs of our res
·ean.:hes on General Sy ten1antics in one condense-d,.
synoptic tabu Iation. Thi is by no means to be considered
as a comprehen 'ive or all-tnclusive listing of all possible
Sy tern -proposition . Only the n1ost basic are included.
ow t ha t the trail ha been blazed readers will urely find
numerous additional form u lations in every field of cience,.
industry, and human affairs. An undertaking of special
int~ere t to some wilJ be that of translating cert ain well-
known [Link] in various fields into their completely general
Systems~formulations . You, he reader, are in vi t ed to
share with us your own findings (see Readers' Tear-Out
Feedback Sheet. Appendix III).
Annotated Compendium
1. The Primal Scenario or Basic Datum of Experience:
SYST MS I GENERAL WORK POOR Y OR
NO AT ALL.
Alternative form ulations:
NOTHING COMPLICATED WORKS.
COMPLI~C A TED SYSTEMS SELDOM EXCEED 5
ERCENT EFFIClE CY.
(There is al way a fty in the ointment.)*

*Ex pre sions in parentheses represent popular sa yin , pro-

verbs, o r vulgar fom1s of the .~xioms.

87
 P 1 DIX I
APPE DIX I 89

A LA GE SYSTEM, PRO UCED BY XPA D-

E PROBLEMS. 1 G THE DIME SIO S OF A S ALLER YSa
TEM, DO S NOT B HAVE LIK THE SMALLER
S ' STEM.
CESSARILY
6. Le Chatelier's Princ1ple:
COMPL X SYS MS TE D 0 OPPOS HEIR
OW PROP R FU CTION.
Alternative forn1ulation ;
oroUary: SYS EMS GET THE WAY.
Y ~ ~ 0 ERA"'' BY REDI TRrBIJ'" lNG AN- THE SYST M ALWAYS KICKS BACK.
ER Y I '1 0 DIFF R ~ T FORMS AND INTO
1 Corollary:
ACCUM IONS OF DIFF RENT SIZES.
J
POSITIVE FEEDBACK TS DA tGEROUS.

4. aw " of Growth : 7. Functionary's Falsity:

S TE TE D 0 GRO , A D A HEY PEOPLE IN SYSTEMS DO OT DO WHAT THE
GRO\V, T -EY : CROACH. SYS EM SAYS HEY A DOl G.
lternative Form- The Big-Bang .-fheoren1 of Systems-
Co n1ology: 8. The Operational Fallacy:
SYS EMS TE D 0 EXPA D TO FJ L THE THE SYSTEM ITSELF DOES NOT DO WHAT IT
K OW UNlvTE SE. SAYS IT IS DOING.
A more conservative formulation of the san1e principle is Long Form of the Operational Fallacy:
known as Parkin on~ Exte ded Law; THE FU CTION PERFORM D BY A SYSTEM IS
THE SYST MIT ELF TENDS TO EXPA D AT NOT OPERATIONALLY IDENTICAL TO THE
5-6 P RCEJ\TT P R A ' NUM. FUNCTIO OF THE SAME NAME PERFORMED
BY A MAN. In general: A FUNCTION PERW
5. The Generalized Uncertainty Principle: FORMED BY A LARGER SYSTEM IS OT OPER-
SYSTEMS DISP A Y A TICS. A TIO ALLY IDENTICAL TO THE FU CTIO
Ahernati' e forn1ulations: 0 l'HE SAME NAME PERFORMED BY A
SMALLER SYSTEM.
COMPLICATED SYST MS PROD CE U EX-
ECT D OUTCOM S.
9. The Fundamental Law of Administrativ Workings
TH TOTAL BEHAVIOR OF LARGE SYSTEMS
( .L.A.W.):
CAN 0 BE PRED CTED.
THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE REPOR ED TO
n Y tems war·, you never kno"'' where you are.)
BE.
Corollary: The on-Additivity Theorem of Systems-
.havior (Climax Design Theorem): THE REA WORLD IS WHATl VER IS RE-
PORTED TO THE SYSTEM.
 90 APP APPENDIX I 91

dJ n 1 happen l
16. A COMPL~X YST ·M DESIGNED FRO M
n1ohiJe.) 'CRATCH NEVER \VORKS A D CA OT BE
P TCH ~D UP 0 M E lT \VORK. YOU HAVE
R IA TOS'1ARTOV R.B ~ NNI TGW J1HAWORK -
l G SI PL SYST
Tran lation for Cornpu er-Programmer.. :
PROGR MS VER R I THE FIRST TIM .
1
0MP EX PROGRA S EVER R N.
10 SA RA L ~. (Anything worth doing on \Vill probably have to be done
t\vice.)
N ~ Y T M, THER.; IS A
Y) OFPER APT .. 0 TO HRIV ON IT 17. The Functional ndetern1inacy Theoren1 (F.J.T.):
OR I 1 . IN COMPLEX SY EMS. MA FUNCTIO A D
EVE OTAL Nl) FU C110 MAY OT BE T

0 TECTABLE FOR LO G PERIODS, IF EVER.*

18. The Kantian Hypothesi (Knov.'- ~rothing Theorem):

LA GE COMPLEX SYSTE S ARE EYO D
12. A c MP ~x SY EM CA ' NO'T B ~
F .. ADE" H
HUMA CAPACITY TO VALUATE.
0 OR I ~ ITH W R " OR ] DOESN'T.
CoroJ1ary (Adnllnistrator's Anxiety): 19. The Newtonian aw of Systems- nertia:
p SHTNG 0 1. I-1 . ''TEM DOESNIT HELP. , ~ A SYSTEM T HAT PER ORMS A C RTAIN
J J MAKES T I GS WORS ~. FUNCTIO OR OPERATES I A C . TAIN "Y.7A Y
WILL CO TINUE 0 OPERATE I THA WAY
13. SI PLE S"t' T , D G ED FROM R GARDLESS OF THE EED OR OF CHA GED
S RA CI . (JM , lM S WORKS. CONDITIONS.
A lternath ely: Alternatively:
~ SIMP E S'YS'TEM A Y 0 MAY NOT WORK. A SYSTEM CO TI UES TO DO ITS THI G R -
GARDLESS OF NEED.
1 SOM- COMP EX SYSTEM ACTUALLY
WORK
ule Of Thumb: 20. SYSTEMS DEVELOP GOALS OF TH IR OWN
TH INSTANT THEY COME INTO BEIN .
IF SYSTEM I OR KING, LEAVE IT ALONE.

15 COMPI'..:~ SYSTEM THAT WORKS IS IN-

VAR AB Y ":;'Q ND TO HAVE EVO VED FROM
cJ
*Such sy terns n1ay. however, per ist indefinitely or even expand
SIMP vs M T AT WORKS. (see Lan·~ of Growth, above).
 PJ> I I 1 93
JI 29 UCE
) ()

11 J I
I ysten1 :
. R \\' EN TO
RU -IlL
oroll ry :
y AN M TVA-
I IM .. 0 K.
y v WORK
I \
p

32. LOO 't' TEM LA 1" .., G .. R K

B ..: R.
Corollary:
F ICI- T RE DANG . R TO
THEM v OOT ER .

Advanced terns The )fY

The following four propo iti Jns. hich app ar to the
uthor to be incapable of formal proof, arc r nt d
undamen tal Po tulat s upon "'hich the ntire up r~
tructurc of Genera 1 y tern ntic th A iom in-
cluded, is based. Additional nomination !or this cate-
gory are . oHcited ( e Appendi Ill).
1. EVERY ING IS A SYSTE .
L, AlL 2. ER Y H G I T OF L G SY -
TEM.
3. THE I FINITE
I I

APP DIX II·

FIRST IENNIAL EADERS'
S LF-EV LUA ION QUIZ* OR TEST! G
STERY OF BASIC GENERAL
SYS EM NTICS

qu~z cons• t of n t brief exam pie. ~uu trating

princtple of th p rati n of la ~ge .. y te IS. 'ou are
a k to read each e < n1pl an then to 1ndicate (in the
pace provided many ~ p l.,sible of th b sic Sy tems-
xionls rhich apply. ( d anc d . tudents n ay indicate
the i rn by nun1b r r ther than by nam .)
l . You dtal the t lephone nurn her of a friend in a nearby
suburb. A recorde.d voic comes n the line informing you
that you have dialed incorrectly 'nd instructing you to
r read the ir . . ctions in the front of the telephone book.
Resi ting the urge to nswer back, you mutter to yourself:
''Axi m number , and , al o._ __
nd "
2. The . itanic, designed to be unsinkable, had twenty-
four bulkhead,, each of which ran the full idth of the
h1p. hen he grazed an iceherg, however, the rent in the
h H ran fuU length, breaching all twenty-five c nlpart-
nten . Axioms number , , and _ __
3. 'ou are taking an examination in Colleg "Onom..
1 . The r t que tion read : Was Presid nt r nklin
oo evelt' Gold Policy a succes or a failure? ys-
t n1s- tudent, you 1mmedi tel think of A iom umber
~--~ and p rh p l o _ ___

* pen-boo , of cou

95
 6 APP D X II APPENDIX I 97

4 On a bnghr priJ morning you receive! a Chnstn1as "Say Questions (Advanced Student Only)
card in the mail. It 1 post1narked Deccn1ber 20, two years 1. Discus. the impact f television on the design of
ago. Before h3ndtng tt t yon, the n1ailman den1ands t \YO municipal se\vage ys ems.
cent [Link] due, b cause the pncc of a stan1p ha~ gone 2. The development of the Peruvian fishing indu try
up SJnc 1t \Va rnailed. A 'H m number _ __ may have resulted in le s protein than before for the un-
and _ __
dcrnouri hed children of Peru. Explain.
5. A child psychiatrist, v.'ishtng to be both modern and 3. Discuss. from the Systetn - tandpoint.. the foJJowi ng
efficient, a \\'ell a to gather r<!search data on his practice, . tatement: Pr1 on contain tho e \Vho are not deterred
develops a questionnatre for parents to fill out. It include frotn crbne by the threat of imprisonment.
questions on the nicknames, hobbies, and personal idi- 4. Exp1ain.
o yn~rasics of relative out to the level of third cousin. He (a) v.:hy no major org,:~nization hru ever voluntarily dis-
presents the qucstjonnaire to Mrs. Ept, whose s;on, Ne\v- banded 1tsclf;
ron ., has been havh1g trouble in school. When con- (b) why maJor doctrinal advances are rarely made by the
fronted with the questionnairet Mrs. pt refuses to fill it chief officer of a religion, philo ophy, or political party;
out, announces that tht: doctor is an idiot, and takt: her (c) why con1pany pre idents rarel) if eve!r introduce a
child home. • The p ychiatrist has failed to abide by Axi- major change in the function or product of the company.
oms number , and .
6. A computerized study of funds managed by institu-
tional in vestment counselors over the past thirty years
demonstrates that su<.:h fund have gro\\'n (and shrunk) at
prcctsely the rate predicted on the hasis of rando1n deci-
sions to buy and seH stocks. A xi oms n un1bcr _ __
_ _ _ ,and _ _ _
7. Graduate school train people for intellectual leader-
hip by keeping them in the roJe of ubmissi ve students
until middle age. Axioms number , and

8. Medical students. many of whon1 are destined to

become family doctors, are trained in great centers of
tertiary-level n1edical care, \\'here comrr1 on ailments are
rare and rare entities are con1mon. They learn to treat
a1mo t everything that they \\'ill never see aga· n. They do
not learn to treat what they wil1 encounter every day.
Ax10n1 nun1 er ; and _ __

* h bo} later became a Rhodes scholar.

 APPENDIX III:
APPENDIX IV:
READERS T -~AR-OUT FEEDBACK SHEET
1

ANNUAL \\AUNTY" AWARDS

FOR
SYSTEMS ANTICS OF THE YEAR
AND
WHOLE SYSTEMS CATALOG
indicated above this catalog represents only a prclin1i- OF OUTSTANDING EXAMPLES OF THE
nary Ji ting of the most basic and immediatcdy obvious of OPERATION
the y tern -Axion1s. You, the reader, n1ay well be cl\vare OF THE LAWS OF GENERAL
of one or more Sy:sten1s-Axiom · that have been omitted,
or perhaps this' ork has stimulated you to think up son1e
SYST MANTICS
of your own.
Please u. e the space bclo\\' to state it (them) in the
bnet; t forrn comn1ensuratc \Vith ready understandability.
e\v Axioms thus acquired win be ubmitted to a panel
of impartial judge (the author plu. anyone nearby at the
time) and the best of them \\'ill be juried in for inclusion Fir t Prize
in "'ucceeding editions (if any) of thi work. Here is your First prize in the current cyc]e goes to the ixon White
chance to achieve immortality, cvt=n if anonymously! House £or a beautifully coordinated series of exam pies o f
the operation of Syst~cms-Laws dating back to \968 and
Axiom #1: even earlier. The Prize is a\\'arded pecifically for a truly
classic demonstration of Axiom Number 19, the e\\'-
tonian Law of System ~Inertia . When the Watergate tory
Axiom #2: began to come out, the authors of the cover-up procee~ed
to try to cover up the cover-up, thereby dernonstratlng
that:

A Systen1 Continue. To o 1ts Thing, Regar les

Of Circumstances.

99
 100 APPENDIX IV
APPENDI -· V
101
... t:::ond Prize
ot quite 1n the san1e league a~ our First-prize
winners, rhe runner -up proved that they are ready
to provide keen cnn1petition to all contenders with
the following specin1en of Sy ·tem-hehavior.
The Kennedy Foundation, e tahlished to advance
new idea(j in the fieJd of n1edical ethics, announced
that its .first official act \\'ould be to fund a grandiose
p1an for cotnputerized retrieval of all the old, dead
ideas on the ubjcct embalmed in the medical Ii tera-
ture.
\Vhlle demonstrating the truth of the old pro erb
(\vhich is not a Systems-Axiom) that a Tool is no
Wiser t han its Wie1der1 the Foundation ha also
made it clear that System!S, a las, ever Quite Man-
age to Do What We Really Wanted-a touching
reaffirmation of the ubiquitous Operational Fallacy,
A iom umber 8. Special A \Vard
A Special A v: a rd go s to the d 1gners, builders,
and operators of upertankerst tho e gargantuan ve.. -
sds that carry as much as half a million tons of oil
First Honorable Mention around the t]p of Africa to Europe and America.
TJ1e j udges " 'ere unanimous in awarding First Supertankers exhibit many features of interest to the
Honorable Mention jointly to the United States Systems- tudent. For exan1ple, they have a d raft of
Coast Guard a nd the Canadian Environmental Pro- up to sixty feet-too deep for mo. t of the port~ at
tection ervice for th eir Operation Preparedness, a which they call, and indeed too deep for safe nav1 a-
proposal to . tudy the effects of a n oil spill upon the tion of the English Channel and the orth Sea.
ecology of Lake Saint Clair (abo e Lake Erie) by To ave money, their operators deliberately end
actually dumping fiv~ hundred gaJJons of jet fue l into then1 tn to t he \vildest water on ~earth~ orne t\venty
the Jake. (Advanced student~ should find at least n1iles off the Cape of Good Hope. Here they are
three appJicab]e Axioms.) battered bv 80-foot waves. Too rna sive to ri de \Vit h
the \\'a es: they tak~e the full force of mountainou
ca!; on their bows. But the captain~ isolated on th
bridge a thou and feet astern, cannot "ee the b '"' of
hi· oVt'n hip. Even if h e ~hould u pect dan1a e, he
can do nothi ng, as there i no \\'ay to get for\ ard n
bad wcathe -there i no belo~ ·-decks pa ag
Supertanker arc equipped \Vith only one
 APPENDJX IV
10...

nd ne ere\\ If e'thcr fa1l , the shlp drifts at the APPENDIX V:

n1crc) of \\ tnd and \\'3\i e. The nc boiler prO\ ides ANTICS ENTRY BLANK
elect! 1 it r hghts, radiot and radar. 'I his e an1 p1e
of Bottleneck )estgn guarante~s that the sligh test
n1alfunction c n e arnpl!ficd into tl n1ajor di aster.
If the boil~r fail • aU htpboard functi n g dead
\dthin t\\'e t} nnnute . An alarrn ystem igna ls a
n1alfunc ion, but d e not indtcate where the problern
l he pace belo\v i ·et a i e to provide an opportunity to
I .
But tht:. e fea ure o upertankers, [Link] lnterest- Systems-students of ever.. discipline to register their own
conte:nders for the Annual HAunt:(' Award Contest. The
ing, have litt1e fund<Jmenta1 stgnificance for General
ystemantics n ce the defect of design and errors rules are imple: de cribe (as briefly as pos5ib1e) your Hor-
, f operation c:t 1·e gl anngly obvi(lU . Simp]e; greed is rible Example. Provide docurncntation or enclose the orig-
not, per se, a .. ] . terns-fu nct1 on . The ~pecific ,.ffecr for
inal report Indicate \vhich Axion1s (in your opinion) are
which the pec1al A\ 'ard i gl\ en is the foliO\\ ing: involved. Vlritc in your narne and addrcs . Then mail this
upertanker c ~ hibtt ,. n une p cted tendency to page to us.
plode and ink on the high seas-not [Link] loaded
1th oil, but hen ~ turning rnpty to thetr home Horrible Example:
port.
The cau c i not \VeJJ und ~r tood but may be
related to ·pontant:!OUS electrical di harges occur-
rin i the oil-soake atn1ospherc of the cavernous
J
Reference or other documentation~
hold.
In he opiniou of the judge , this i the year\s best
exan1ple of th on-Additi ity (Clima Design) Axiom involved:
Theorem
Your name and address:

You may submit as many entr~es as you like, u in g for

each a format similar to the above.

103
 APPENDIX VI 105

the art of recognizing simple systen1 . Often enough, the

APPEN IX VI: creative act con ·ists f recognizing the imple system
G LOSSARY buried in the messy problem, i.e.~ of re tat1 ng an existing
problem in such form that it can be solved.
Obviously, system ~ cannot restate the problems they
" 'ere designed to deal \Vhh~ nor can a system recognize
sin1ple systen1s. Only people can do that. In fact, despite
appearances to the contrary\ sy terns cannot think at all.
[Link]. Before one can c tim ate efficiency, one must
Anergy. The n gative of cr ergy. In biological y ten1s, first decide the function of the system. Since most large
torpor. The amount of energy 1t \VOuld take to clean up systems have n1ultiple function , many of which are not
orne ituation you don t like. Anergy re tde within apparent on casual inspection, true efficiency is exceed-
me sy ituations a energy res des within a coiJcd spring. ingly difficuh to estimate.
A co1led sprini)' is full of energy. When fully uncoiled, it Efficiency Expert. Someone who thinks he knows what
i full o anergy. a system L or hou ld be doing and who therefore fee~s he
Axi<nn, Axiomatic Method. The logical and nee- ssary is in a position to pass judgment on ho\v well the system
approach to de\ c) oping the science of General Systeman- is doing it. At best a nuisance. at worst a menace.
t' c ~. he traditional approach~ of Objer~·ation or of Ex- Evaluation. The process by which the System ascertain
penmen/ are clc· rly inadequate; the forn1er becau e prog- that the work it has done is genuine]y good. Compare
re s bogs do\\'n in Impenetrable; SY.'an1ps of data. the Jatter Genesis 1:31 . Advanced Systems periodically review and
becau. e :p~r· mer t upon systems invariably distort them evaluate their own eva~uation procedure . This produces
bey nd recognition. an infinite regression or incestuous process, but no one
The correc approach is to enunciate the Axioms from pays any att~ention to that.
th t rt and then to .. hO\\' that they apply univer ally with Expert. A person who knows all the facts except those
on] apparent exceptions. AH that is necessary is to think necessary to ensure the successful functioning of the sys-
very clearly a the mo"t fundamental level and then to tem.
tate one's lear thoughts in the briefest po sible way. This Function. In large systemst an intangible attribute not
a v end[ .. bother. he res uJt is an Axiom, and it will uscep ible to easy definition. Often equivalent to what
found to be at least a ac~urate a~ any generalization you thin k the system is doing, or whether you think it is
achieved in more conventional ways. Euclid used the doing it.
rnethod to advan ge; so can we. And everyone knows Garbage. A product of a system, for which no immedi-
how successful it \\'as in the hands of Descartes, who ate use is apparent. T he point to remember about garbage
looked within himself and saw very cleady that he was is that one system's garbage is another system, precious
thinking. 'fhe r ·ulting Axiom: "I think; therefore I am" raw materiaL C1ear1y. garbage, like beauty. is in the eye
emerged with di ·arming ease and spontaneity. of th e beholder, and the amount of garbage in the world
Crearivity, Scientiji~ The art of finding problems that is a function of the vie\ver's imagination and tngenuity.
can be solved (Warburg). In General Systemantic theory: Goal What you want the system to do. The important

104
 10 APPE 1)1 VI
AP P D XV 107
thutg to remen t r 1 that th de~tgncd-in functiOn of the
calJed General Systcn1 'I heory. * Devotees of General Sys-
) rern b probabl} rn ;>thing very diffcn::nt. tem Theory attrabutc the founding of their ·ciencc to Pro-
Objective. lc r goal, greater than a Sub-objective but f~ sor Lud \\'i? von Hertalanffy. ** who noted, in the earty
n t u fficrr?ntJ) grand to b an En d-in-itself. A 1ogical decade. of thts century, that scientists; had overlooked the
fra t 1011 of a tal Gc a~ xarnple: If the Goal i. to rc o!ve establi shn1c~1t of a Sc~ence of Anytlung and Everything
the tructure f 1A, an bjt;ctive might be tore olve the
and \\·ho, w1th Teutonac the r ughnes.. , Tnad t! up the over-
left end of t h rno~ecule. ~paratc team of \'orkcrs
ight.***
\VOuld lOt!lcall b signed to that C>bjective.
Prob/ m. \\'hen spell d with a capital Jetter, the Proh-
1 n1 i a tatern nt f hov.' the . tern conceptualizes the
real-v-'orld pro em. Real-we rid problcn1. cannot he
O]Ved by y tenlS, becau t.! the function c f the ystem is
lin1itt:d lo au alreddy e i t1ng concept u aliz~ lion and real-
\VOrJd problem's ·tre r · oJ ed by radical innovation, n ot by
ne\, cotnbination of ld 1dcas. Cornpare the ue{her · prob~
len1 that plagued runeteenth-century phy ics or the
4
phlogi ton" pr blem hat lx~dcvilled eighteenth-century
chen1i try .
.ystenz. A ~et parts coordinated to accon1pl1sh a et
H

ofg al'.'" Anemine1 t y t m .. - udent,• after offering this

a a definition that all ,,,i)] agre ! upon, then devot~s an
entire chapter t the question, H\\'hat L a systcmT'
C1ea r1 a dict1Jnary d<: n i tion is not enough. H is own
defirutton of a .. "'Y tern· approach" to a probletn is 'the
;vhole s t of sub ' terns and their plans and ntea ures of
pertormance. ,,
May \ re " 1C1ude that a y tem is a ..\et of sub y~~;tems
coordtnated in son1e wa for the ach[evem ent of some
purpo e? If .. o, what is a ubsystem? Are Systcn1s and •While denying, on principle, that such i the cas , we adrnit to
ubs tern~ infin itely divisible both upward and d own certain parallelisms in development of the two field~.
ard? **The name is genuine.
We ~eave this deep metaphy ical question for the reader * ••The twentieth century has seen a g od deal of this ki nd of
o ponder at his ldsure. intellectual tidying~up. In b~ologyt Professor Han ely under-
Systems-J"Ju:ury. There arc some \Vho as er t t hat Gen- took to elucidate the pathology of the di ea e l·aUed Life. In
Philosophy, Count Korzybski founde~ the Sdt!n~e of Meanings.
eral Sy teme1ntic. i a . poof of a serio u scientific subject
Modern Phy ics "eems to be devoted to the inves tigation f Less
and ess; and in Mathemat ic.~, vigorous attack~ are eing ade
Churchn1an., op. ctt., p. 29. upon the Knowledge of A b. o lutely othing.
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