Is our yard a system? If we define “system” as, “a way of doing things”, then it is. We have a way of doing things in our yard, which could be summarized as professional-level procrastination. (Sorry for the big words here.) The yard is bounded by a wood house and a wood fence. Our way of doing things in our yard doesn’t spill out into the neighbouring yards, unless you count the time I asked the neighbour if she would throw her lawn clippings over the fence and into my compost.
Birds visit our yard. They like the fact that we have bushes to hide in and tree branches to hang out in, and an uneven lawn just full of fat worms. Cats silently sneak into our yard - they like the birds and the little fish pond.
Prince Rupert is a small town set smack in the middle of a far-flung wilderness coastline. Deer roam the town virtually undisturbed. Those deer used to get into our yard before we put up the fence. For years now, we have had a way of doing things in our yard which does not involve deer. This has changed the system.
Our yard changed when deer and dogs could no longer get in. Some plants that had been over browsed got a second chance, but I have to admit that the lawn misses the deer manure. Our yard is a system, a way of doing things that exists, because we exist, our house exists, the fence around the yard exists, and the town of Prince Rupert exists. Take away any of these inner, outer, or perimeter things, and the yard would change, perhaps even disappear.
Systems are ways of doing things. They matter because they make it possible for us to exist. The solar system, for instance. If something significant were to happen to the solar system it might cause us to cease to exist. We really need to be part of that system!
Earth has the only life systems that we know of. Good thing we’re part of it; and I’d really like it if we could stay part of it; I know I’m going to die someday, but I mean that it would be good for humans to continue to exist, and it would be good for all the rest of living things to continue to exist.
If we see the universe as just made up of matter and energy, we are not really getting what’s significant. It is what things do that’s important. Living systems do two more things than non-living physical systems. Living systems maintain themselves and alter their environment. If life had not existed over billions of years, then the Earth’s atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen would not be there. Earth would be like Mars, with no water and a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
Think about it - nature needed billions of years to create humans because we could not have existed without oxygen and the ability to walk on two feet. Unlike all other forms of life, we alone are continually inquiring - to understand what’s out there, as well as what’s in there - that is, what makes us human.
Like humans, the social insects create “artificial systems”. They are called hives, nests, and mounds. But human systems are unique in living systems because they are rule-based ways of doing things. Plants, insects, and animals act more from instincts, or hormones or pheromones. They don’t follow, share, or teach rules. Animals don’t enforce rules, or punish rule-breakers. Only humans have normative systems that are based on following and enforcing rules.
When we talk about “Laws of Nature” and “Natural Law” we are actually projecting our way of doing things onto the rest of nature. Law, legal systems, systems of rules, are what differentiates us from the rest of nature, and suggesting that non-human nature is somehow law-abiding, is nothing more than an attempt to sneak us back into the garden. There’s a reason that the Biblical God kicked us out of there, and it was because we figured out how to be different from the rest of creation by creating our own rules.
In University I took a course in Metaphysics, and on the final exam, and after a night spent studying rather than sleeping I thought I was a goner. But then, out of the fog of fatigue and half-consciousness, “The Ship of Theseus” suddenly loomed into view as one of the exam questions. In my dreary dream-like state I somehow managed to dash off an instant interpretation that, seen in retrospect, seemed to have made a lot of sense. Thinking back on my answer, which I presently have no access to, other than in my memory, I realize that “The Ship of Theseus” is the perfect opportunity for elaborating a systems view of metaphysics.
“The Ship of Theseus” is a metaphysical problem concerning change and identity that was created and worked over by the ancient Greeks, but ever since has been a perennial philosophy favourite. I know the word “metaphysics” can scare off the reader, but take note, because you, the reader, have already been hoodwinked. That’s right, I’ve already sketched an outline of this very metaphysical problem when I described our yard.
The problem of identity is particularly important in both metaphysics and in systems theory. There are three reasons for this. Things change, systems change the way they function, and the identity of the system depends on our perspective. Once we get a grip on all three of these we have all the elements we need to construct a metaphysics of systems theory.
All systems have parts. A system can continue to be the same system, even if the parts change, as long as none of the new parts change the way the system functions. Or to put it another way - if things are still done the same way, then it is the same system.
When the ancient Greeks wrote about the ship of Theseus it was already a very old ship. So the question was, was the old ship the same ship as the original ship? Suppose one plank had become rotten and had to be replaced. We can easily see that it is still the same ship. And presumably it’s the same ship if some more planks were replaced. But what if all of the planks were replaced so that there is not one single bit of wood remaining from the original ship? Is it still the same ship? Or, what if someone had organized a multi-generational project for the massive job of collection, storage, and rebuilding, by saving every single discarded plank from the old ship, and rebuilding the ship with the exact original planking? Would that be the same ship?
Think of that ship, and everything else as systems. A system is a way of doing things. We each have our own systems, our own ways of doing things. If you can change the parts of a system without changing how it does things, it's still the same system. Replacing the planks in the ship doesn't change it into a different ship unless it changes its functioning. If the ship functions differently, if it can't carry as much cargo, if it can no longer sail quickly, if it founders and sinks, or if it is moored and converted into a seafood restaurant, then it is a different system.
Some systems work the way they do, entirely independently of humans. How, then, can one claim that identity is relative to perspective? What something is depends, in part, on what view we are taking of it. Looking at the yard again, we can see that the yard as a system is affected by bigger systems: town, country, climate system, biosystem, solar system. What is significant to our yard is when and how these other systems change what the yard can do. It won’t be the same yard if we die or move away. It won’t be the same yard if the town radically expanded or contracted. What makes a change significant is if it forces us to change what we do.
It's what a system does that is important. A change is not significant if it doesn't change what a system does. That is my solution to the problem of “The Ship of Theseus”. If we alter our physical environment too radically we might undermine our own ability to survive. It's important to know what the systems out there can do, as well as what the systems inside us can do. It is important to know what we are doing that can affect them. It is important to know the limits of all of our systems so that we avoid self-destruction. That is what's important about identity.
