SEVEN MILESTONES IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT
For quite a long time, I have been trying to locate original sources for
ideas that have gone into the development of Interactive Management, in
general; and for Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM), in particular.
This search has been made difficult by many things, not the least of which
is the relative lack of interest these days in what can be learned from
the past; along with a rather resolute determination to regard almost
everything that is being promoted as an original concept.
Now that this search has been going on for almost 30 years, I think it is
time to highlight seven milestones in the history of thought. The seven
have been chosen, in part, because there is a strong sequential linkage
among them which seems undeniable.
This linkage takes at least two forms. The first can be described as a
linkage of formalism; in the sense that they all reflect an ultimate aim
to make very precise the way that the products of thought are represented.
The second can be described as a linkage of dependency; because each
depends, in part, on its temporal antecedents.
The period of time involved is two and one-half millenia; therefore to
pinpoint exact dates seems to be largely irrelevant, so in presenting
these it is only the century that is used as a measure of the time, even
though some of the milestones may cut across parts of two centuries.
Where that occurs, I have chosen either the latest century, or the one in
which the most essential contribution seems to have been made.
Here is the tabulation of the seven milestones. Brief elaboration follows
the tabulation.
Milestone 1. Articulation of Categories and Syllogisms. (Aristotle,
Fourth Century, B. C.) in Categories and in the Prior Analytics.
Milestone 2. Abelard's Articulation of (but not naming of) Transitivity,
Antecedents, and Succedents. Twelfth Century, A. D. (described in
Bochenski's History of Formal Logic).
Milestone 3. Leibniz's Introduction of Graphical Symbolism to Portray
Reasoning. Eighteenth Century, A. D. (described in Bochenski's History of
Formal Logic).
Notably, Leibniz was using "Venn Diagrams" well over a century before Venn
(as was Euler).
Milestone 4. Boole's Propositional Calculus and DeMorgan's Theory of
Relations, Nineteenth Century, A. D. (key publications coming in the same
year, 1847, with Boole crediting DeMorgan as a source of inspiration).
Milestone 5. Peirce's connection of logic to science in general, his
recognition of DeMorgan's Theory of Relations, his popularization of the
importance of transitivity, his discovery of the necessity and sufficiency
of triadic relations to articulate all relationships, and his
clarification of flaws in previous philosophical writings. Nineteenth
Century, extending into the Twentieth. (His published and non-published
writings are today the subject of extensive analysis.)
Milestone 6. Harary's linkages among branches of mathematics, in which he
establishes permanently the connection between formal logic of
propositions, and graphical representations as digraphs. (Twentieth
Century in his co-authored work titled Structural Modeling: The Theory of
Directed Graphs).
Milestone 7. The articulation of ISM as the means of applying Harary's
mathematics to the development of Structural Models. Twentieth Century,
1974, in Warfield, J. N., Structuring Complex Systems, Columbus: Battelle
Memorial Institute Monograph No. 4, April, 1974.
The direct connection between Milestones 1 and 7 occurs through the
recognition that every Interpretive Structural Model is an array of linked
syllogisms. In other words, what ISM provides to groups of people is the
capacity to create and link syllogisms into consistent logic patterns.
The contribution of Milestone 2 is to articulate initially the
significance of transitivity and of antecedent and succedent concepts,
furnishing the statements which, when replaced in a one-to-one way with
symbols, fit perfectly into DeMorgan's Theory of Relations, and which
provide the basis for Harary's focus upon transitive relations.
Milestone 3 reflects the introduction of geometry into logic
representation.
Milestone 4 provided the formalisms needed to construct relational
statements, and to apply the formalities of Boolean algebra to their
manipulation and organization.
Milestone 5 put everything into perspective, facilitating the
interpretation of previous and future developments in a way consistent
with the best view of scientific thinking; divorcing such developments
from incorrect thinking propagated by adherents to philosophers such as
Bacon, Descartes, both Mills, and others.
Conclusions. What key conclusions can be drawn that reflect the seven
Milestones?
Drift Toward Formalism. First we can see the drift toward formalism,
occurring over a period of more than two millenia.
Enabling Applications. We can reflect on how this drift toward formalism
has slowly established the basis for computer help in organizing products
of human thought.
Pervasive Neglect. We can observe the pervasive neglect of these seven
Milestones in today's educational system, which remains largely content to
work with ideologically-based language, in spite of the power made
available through these Milestones; and which largely fails to make these
Milestones known to the students.
Breadth of Application. Because of the outstanding work already done and
continuing to be done by practitioners of Interactive Management, the
astonishing breadth of application of ISM is becoming steadily more
evident.
The Battle for Attention. Particularly in the realm of organizational
activity, the high consulting fees being obtained by all of today's
management gurus, and the high stakes involved in promoting alternative
concepts of complexity, makes clear that there is a battle for attention
in application communities. If visibility were the main criterion to see
who is winning this battle, it seems clear that IM is losing the battle
and that concepts espoused by the high-profile management gurus are
carrying the day.
But if concrete results and clear documentation of them and their benefits
is taken as the main criterion, it seems clear that these seven Milestones
are winning the battle, and that over time even the universities will have
to take note and begin to reshape their operations accordingly.
[Host's Note #2: John also sent me a short p.s., which I am appending
below. ...Rick]
I have proposed to GMU that the Provost sponsor a local project, in which
people send me a one-pager with a description of a Milestone in the
History of Thought, complete with origin, date (or century), reference,
brief description, and an assessment of impact. I doubt very much that
this proposal will be accepted, but if you would care to issue an
invitation to people on the LO list to make such contributions to me,
sending them to my gmu email at jwarfiel@gmu.edu, along with a copyright
permission to reproduce (giving them credit), I will eventually send a
summary copy to all contributors.
John
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>