Transcript

Episode 1

Saif: Hello everyone and welcome to the Knowledge Voyage podcast. This is Saif ElHendewy Just a brief introduction here. I studied pharmacology in Scotland and now I work in the pharmaceutical sector. 

Kim: And I'm Kimberli Jansen. I studied environmental biology in Canada and I'm an artist. 

Saif: So today we're going to be talking about system science and we had a bit of an idea that like this is the best topic to start with for our first episode because it could connect to many things. Kimberly is very interested in this topic and she's the one who got me into it. So Kimberly what got you first into it though? 

Kim: I actually had a class about ecosystems and the professor started introducing these ideas and I thought it was really cool. I went up to him after class and he gave me a list of books that were like, way too complicated for my understanding at the time. But I remained very interested and then I found different books and courses and new two videos. 

Saif: I can see like this is very compelling, rabbit hole to get into honestly, I can understand why you get into it. 

Kim: I think it also has a good bit of esotericness to it and the idea of it being like an alternative way of looking at things. I thought it was very meta, like you're not just studying something in science, you're looking at the way you study science and all the other fields as well. 

Saif: And also I feel like there's an appeal of being a bit rebellious just against the reductionist and thought of me thinking about the world. Yeah, exactly. Challenging to the world that many people have as well, I think. 

Definitely. I think there's a very human urge that we all have to like reduce stuff into neat little categories. It makes it easier to think about them and especially when thinking about daily stuff. But I think we have to go beyond that if we into the realms of like thinking about how things are connected together. That's really at the heart of systems thinking. Wouldn't   you say? 

Kim: Like a relational approach, sort of a more like objective approach, I guess. And when you say it's like it's a very human urge, it makes me think of like, is it human or is it language and culture? I guess, where do we draw the line or the boundary of the system? 

Saif: Yeah, and how much would you even say that like language and culture are like inhuman? 

Kim: Not inhuman, but I guess more mutable. Why don't you tell us what our hopes are for this podcast as we move forward into future episodes? 

Saif:   

My general aim is to cover topics ranging from philosophy to politics to psychology. Anything that really interests us. I guess we could go into more like specific scientific topics as well. But I was thinking of like remaining on some sort of like meta level of thinking. So it's perfect to start with this episode, I think. 

Kim: So we can connect everything back to a systems science perspective? 

Saif: Yeah, exactly. We want to like catch ourselves in the middle because I'm sure we're going to try and like get a bit reductionist sometimes. But it's important to keep in mind the connectedness of things. 

Kim: Yeah, exactly. I think it's really something to watch out for that you're not just using systems thinking as a buzzword or taking it out of its intended use and turning into another reductionist tool. 

Saif: Yeah, you don't want to be doing like the equivalent of greenwashing, but like system washing. 

Kim: But yeah, so if we're talking about like systems thinking we should really define what a system is and it seems at least like in English, system is the only word we really have for system. Sometimes you could use the word process. And so if we're talking about what makes a system a system, we could talk about the idea of emergence like swarm intelligence, for example. And also a system is going to be greater than the sum of its parts. There's between the chains of causes and effect in the system, you have this sort of interdependence, so they're all kind of relying on each other. And there's also like the way you draw your boundary in the system is going to affect how you interpret it. So when we say a boundary, it could be the point from where you look inwards, for example, in a mechanistic system. So you're defining what is not the system or point of relationship to what is outside of it, which would be like a non mechanistic- 

Saif: Could you give an example for that? Yeah. A boundary setting. 

Kim: So if you're thinking about your digestive system, for example, where would we put the boundary in our digestive system? So where would we say digestion begins? Does it begin with like this saliva in our mouth, like breaking down food or like mastication or chewing because it chops the food into little pieces? 

But what about when you cut your stick into tiny bites? Is that also like an extension of chewing? But also we know that we evolve cooking to make, I think carbohydrates more readily digestible. And so is our fire cooking part of our digestive system? Oh that is a- And now what about like... 

Saif: That's very interesting. This very cool kind of perspective. I like it. 

Kim: Yeah. And now what about like, do we stop there or do we start? Like, do we go to like the grocery store and like, is this also part of your digestive system? And like you could go even further, like to the farm, like what seeds do we grow? Are we then like also acting as part of the digestive system? 

So like, where do you draw the boundary? And you have to really realize what you're looking in at and what you're looking out at as well and how, what's inside your system and what's outside your pseudo-like system. Like, how do they relate to each other? Because like, systems can have very interesting characteristics. And for example, like how we talked /said   like cause and effect might be very distant and apparently unrelated to each other, which is different from a machine. And your, if you draw your boundary that crosses that like cause and effect between these unrelated or seemingly unrelated parts, you're not going to recognize this like, this like flow inside your system because it's not one side of your system and unrelated. Also, a thing in a system is like, there's not really hard stuff in your stem. Things are kind of in a state of arriving. What do you mean by hard stuff? 

I'm not going to have a gear and a lever that are like interrelated. Like if you think of the human body and how you constantly changing   your cells every seven years, you're a new person. Are you made up of the same things today as you were made up yesterday? And you could also, I think, talk about on like maybe like a social system. 

Saif: Like trying to define the sports team by, is it the uniform? If the uniform changes, is it a new team? What if the flag changes? What if the logo changes because it's used to offend indigenous people, for example. 

So now they have a more woke logo. Is that now a new team? All the team members are going to retire or even die. And now we have new team members with a new logo, with a new flag, with a new outfit and with new fans in a new stadium. What is left now of this old team? Yeah. Can you give us an example, another example of like how a system operates or what a system is? 

Kim: Yeah, sure. So there's a cool example that you could say is like Saif on his bike ride to work. So this is a system made up of a bicycle and human together. 

Saif: They form a, I would never, ever ride the bike just to be clear. I hate biking and I hate cycling. You may continue though. 

Kim: So together they form an unlikely transport system. So as they move from place to place there together, the bicycle now has the property of being able to move itself. But when Saif gets to his destination, somehow his bike is still there too. 

Much to his to chagrin though, probably. You could also think about an organization or a business as a flowing system. So you could call them like constantly evolving, interdependent, messy conversational entities. 

And they're mostly an exchange of people talking in various ways. And so also another part of systems that they seem to be nested inside each other. So we can say cells, make up tissues, make up organs, make up the digestive system, make up Saif make up ecological communities. 

These are really just categories. They aren't actually inside each other in the way we think about it. And in reality, it's really like a series of relationship and interdependencies and cause and effect and feedback loops. 

Saif: I think like the idea of feedback loops and studying systems that way, that's all the idea of system science, which is applying system thinking to scientific fields and to complex systems. So that's the definition of system science. But I think we dedicate the next episode to that where we examine some more of these ideas, basically. 

Kim: Yeah. And so why we need that system science is because if we look at it, maybe sort of the emerge emergence of like a scientific doctrine, we can trace it back to Galileo Galilei, who lived around the 1600s. He suggested that if we want to be effective in our natural philosophy and using math to describe nature, scientists should only study those properties of material bodies that like shapes, numbers and movement that can be easily measured and quantified. So properties that didn't fit that criteria like color, sound, taste, smell, maybe like feeling and affect. 

They were considered to be merely subjective mental projections, which should be excluded from the domain of science. So by excluding these qualities like color, sound, taste, touch, smell and more complex qualities still like beauty, health or ethical sensibility than emphasis and quantification, prevented scientists for several centuries from understanding when you have these like still essential, though differently measured qualities or properties rather of life. 

Saif: I think when you think about this idea of qualitative versus quantitative, you want to also think about the purpose of science, like science could be practical or pragmatic or applied. And this is usually the area that we want to use science of, like, I don't care how true science is, how much does it actually reach the truth in a philosophical sense? How much is it giving me like justified true belief in a knowledge or epistemological sense isn't really as relevant to like the everyday man as much as how/ what is the science of my car and how can I make it go faster or consume less fuel or run on bananas or whatever. So like the practical side of applied science is what you'd find a lot of people saying to God, this is why we shouldn't question science because look, science lets all these technologies. But the idea is that like we've developed technologies also based on scientific paradigms and the closer we are to scientific truth, the easier it is to develop technologies and every time we have a paradigm shift, it usually also corresponds to a technological shift. So the philosophy of science is very important and shouldn't   be avoided. 

Kim: Yeah, I think also like when I was thinking about like your sort of better car example, like maybe if we had more systems thinkers, we wouldn't have like, at least in North America, like this highway infrastructure system, we might have high speed rail instead of like car based cities, we might have like walking based cities and then like how     of different would that look, why did we decide that cars were a superior technology and is technology like what is defining I guess like something's better than something else and where's the room for quality. 

Saif: Yeah, because you want to be thinking about also like like the purpose of this technology and if the purpose of technology is to take me as fast as possible from point A to B, or also as fast as possible in the most amount of comfort. And like that you should define these characteristics themselves and and once you have this grasp of truth, then you could see how close these inventions or technologies go to realizing that truth. 

So this this idea of the predictability of science and its use is at the core of course of the philosophy of science and one of the great like thought experiments that I tend to enjoy personally goes: Imagine that you are thinking from the perspective of a chicken in a coop and that sees a- 

I often do. 

Kim: I often do. 

Saif: Yeah, I often like to think myself as a chicken, especially when I'm dancing. and you're a chicken and basically you have this farmer who is she's coming every day to feed you and take care of you and pet you and stuff and you start to develop a routine or habit of thinking where you- based on all the evidence so far, In my life of three years, this woman comes every day at 5am wakes me up and feeds me and then bathes me once a week and so on and so forth. So the science here would lead you to be like, I like this woman is a caretaker and their job is to take care of me. She's my servant or slave or whatever. 

Until on one day she abruptly decides to chop your head off. So as far as we know, and the sun or gravity or any of these bigger physical concepts could change in a matter of a second and these ideas of systems as well defined boundaries that like the idea that the gravity works. Like one day what if I put something down and gravity now works the opposite way so it's just a lot of perspective and where you're sitting in the system and and also the idea that like as far as we know, we don't know how how long these systems might last. 

Kim: That's one thing that I was thinking about. In regards to like really looking at time and what maybe the what really is time and the only thing they really trace to it is entropy, entropy increases. 

Saif: Entropy always increases yeah, within a system entropy always increases. 

Kim: But you can say you could adopt the perspective that entropy always increases in all the places that we've measured it. And so that like, you keep in mind that you're limited in your perspective and you're not omniscient and I think that leads you like you can argue whether that's useful or not but I think that gives you a certain like openness   that sort of implicit belief that there's not just one way of looking at this. Alright, so there's a quote I really like about systems thinking and so systems thinking begins when we see the world through the eyes of another. That kind of illustrates maybe the spirit behind systems thinking trying to look at something from as many different perspectives as possible. 

Saif: When you say perspectives, what are you-? What do you kind of mean by that? I was just thinking, I'm going to say something like a like biases world view and the combination of all your sensory perceptions and your assumptions about the world. 

Kim: I could answer that by not talking just about perspective but also talking about paradigm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we could we could say that History is dominated by two different paradigms so we have on one end reductionist and then on the other hand systemic. So when we say paradigm, I'm going to use Fritjof     Capra's definition and call it a set of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a community, which form a particular vision of reality that is the basis for the way the community organizes itself. Capra also goes on to suggest that history moves like a chaotic pendulum between these two sides. 

So what a chaotic pendulum is is a pendulum attached to the end of another pendulum and and the chaotic pendulum is incredibly dynamic and it's very sensitive to its initial conditions. 

Saif: Don't you think though that like the idea of reducing like all of history to like only two paradigms is reductionist on its own though? 

Kim: Yeah, definitely. But there's something to keep in mind is that systems thinking doesn't exclude reductionist thinking. It includes it. So it's a shift from either or into both and I see it's- as long as it's not the only perspective. It's just one of many. 

Saif: So I don't want to stop looking at the trees in the forest. I just want to see the forest, the trees, the relationship to each other, the whole everything involved. The birds and the moss. 

Yeah, exactly. It's very important to notice the moss and the lichen, something that like is also like been established through history that like you can see these trends through different like historical thoughts or different like historical paradigms that are similar to these ideas of like a system thinking versus reductionist thinking is that how like you would term it or you would term the- 

Kim: I think different periods would define these ideas in different ways. So you might call it the study of matter or the study of form. So here matter would be like quantities, their constituents and form would be patterns and relationships. So form would be here, of course systems thinking and the study of matter would be what we're saying is reductionist thinking. Mm hmm. 

Saif: I see that. Yeah. I see that. And then like also like system thinking with it would still includes the study of matter as like a subpart of it and also the relationship between matter and form I'm guessing. 

Yeah. Okay, then yeah, I could definitely trace how this connects to different like historical traditions. I could see like, for example, like ancient Chinese philosophies like Taoism with flow and constant change. That's a really quite systematic, nonlinear way of thinking about the world. 

Kim: Did you see the Yin Yang a part of that too? 

Saif: Yeah, like Yin Yang is definitely part of that ancient Chinese philosophy, not just Taoism in general, but like I think Taoism in particular emphasizes living in harmony with Dao or Tao, which is the impersonal universal process of transformation that underlies and transcends reality. So that's very much like the biggest, most similar aspect that we could have in Western thought is the idea of like the world of forms where you have a world of forms where it's like there's the ideal circle and then an apple or a ball is just a manifestation of that form. There's of course many different ways people have thought about forms and the world of forms across time, but I think in ancient Chinese philosophies like Taoism it's more that like this is the reality and everything else is trying to harmonize with that reality. So the political implication of this Taoism was mainly an opposition to authority, government coercion, and even to normal like socialization values. So there was the emphasis on like spontaneity that's contrasted with like subtle or overt indoctrination in any specific or social Dao. Okay. If that makes sense. I guess like sort of a breaking of the constraints. 

Kim: Yeah, breaking down constraints. But they would say they wouldn't use any like action based language because it's all about like non-resistance and inaction. You get me? So it's more about like- 

Not moving against the stream. 

Kim: Yeah, like because it implies like strain or work and this is more of flow. This is more of like something that happens to us where we're a part of nature. We're a part of nature's harmony. So to be part of nature's harmony, you're not resisting or breaking the laws of nature. You are nature. 

Kim: You know, you are- 

It's kind of incredible to imagine that, in contrast to the way we think now we're so separate. 

Saif: Yeah, this is the whole thing. I think that the categorization of reductionists is so like such a big part of the way we perceive the world that it's hard to imagine how actually radically different that way of viewing the world is. And this can be easily related to many ancient Greek ideas that like even existed before Plato's idea of the forms. I think like the most similar is probably that of Heraclitus, who was famous for saying no man ever steps in the same river twice. For  it's not the same river. and he's not the same man. You're familiar with that quote? 

Kim: I am familiar with it because of Pocahontas, but not because of Heraclitus. 

Saif: I don't remember from Pocahontas. But I think like how it emphasizes the idea of flux or constant change is interesting. And also like I think like in Taoism they would also use rivers to describe the idea of flow. 

And I think like when we think of flow in general, the flow of a river is the first thing to come to mind. So it's interesting to see like how these really like separate distant philosophies have this similarity in common in their line of thinking. But it's particularly interesting to compare Heraclitus and Taoism due to another idea and that's the idea of the unity of opposites. 

So Heraclitus states that the sea is the purest and most polluted water for fish drinkable and healthy, for men, undrinkable and harmful. And I think this is a very interesting quote   even more than the stepping in the river one. Just because of the idea of like how we really get this dualism to be united. Like the idea that like everything could be thought of as opposites could also be united. That like water is not just a symbol of life, but it could also be a symbol of pollution and unhealthiness. So I don't know how does that make you feel? 

Kim: I feel like it's really interesting the water being the symbol of unhealthiness because it's different from how I imagine water is always so like sparkling   and pure. But as you were saying that I was thinking about negative theology. Could that also be related to this? 

Saif: Yeah, the negative theology is basically like negating the theos or the theosophistic aspects of the defined reality somehow. So that like instead of saying something like God is great, you would go about saying God is not not great. And this might seem like a bit of mundane or kind of redundant exercise, but for a lot of like negative theologians and they're present in many different philosophies, not just in the western frame of mind. And a lot of them they focus for this exercise is to establish a kind of connection that the divine reality is transcendent and beyond the way we think about things. So they're not just being, but they're also the absence of being and the nothingness. And they're also the being and the unbeing at the same time. 

Which is very interesting. And like it seems like just like a bit like a tad too philosophical and like a bit too like intellectually   unnecessary kind of but like if you think about it from the idea of heraclitus saying that like this applies to something like the sea, then it feels more tangible. Like we could use this frame of mind or framework to apply to like material world as well. 

Kim: I feel like it's a cool perspective because it really brings to like the forefront of your mind, the labels you put on things and how that how those labels will mask the reality of what it is. 

Saif: Another heraclitus quote that I really like is he goes collections, they're wholes and not wholes brought together, pulled apart, sung in unison, sung in conflict, from all things one and from one all things. That's a bit more out there than his other quotes, but I think it really points out the fact that one should not limit themselves to one view. He's not simply advocating reductionism as opposed to holism or dualism as opposed to monism. He just sees all these systems and views as interconnected and interchangeable that basically everything is worth thinking about. Yeah. Not the wholes on their own and not the not wholes. It's just you need to think about the forest, the trees and the moss and the lichen. 

Kim: It also makes me think about metaphors and how the metaphors we use will clarify certain characteristics and hide others at the same time. And so like you can say the binoculars you use decide which kind of bird or moth you observe. Like you find what you look for. I like that. 

Saif: Especially if your binoculars are all smogged up or you're not cleaning them properly. 

Kim: But also like our language itself is so soaked in these metaphors that it can be very tricky to detangle what you're looking at from the way we look at it. And even the idea that we're saying like, oh looking at something like the idea that there's a thing in itself, something that exists independent of me is also a perspective and it's objective and materialistic. Because there's also another way that we could look at things like if we think about it in terms of its relationship to us. 

Like there's a short story by Jorge Borges, which you could find on the show notes where he describes the culture who believe they don't believe in objects, they only see process and transformation. And so the language of this alien race, they have no nouns. So for example, instead of saying the moon shines between the clouds, these people would say it moons between the cloudings. So it's kind of like a really cool and very different way of looking at things and you can see it right in language itself. 

Saif: I'm guessing also mooning could mean something very different to them than to us. 

Kim: Yeah, it depends on the context I think. 

Saif: Would they still have like nouns, like proper nouns, like for names? 

Kim: I think it might be like Saifing 

Yeah, I like that. 

Saif: I tend to think of myself also as like more of a Saifing a dynamic process. 

Kim: Even just a simple twist of language, like even thinking of you as a Saifing it really shifts the way I look at you because then it automatically implies that dynamism. 

Saif: Yeah, exactly. It's the difference between something static and something dynamic. It's just how much you think of it as a process compared to how much you're thinking of it as an object. And that's the whole problem with objectification right there. 

Kim: Also, okay, so we see this like disbelief in objects existing independently and we can call it also a lack of objectivity. Or we can see this idea in existentialist philosophy and the study of phenomenology. Do you want to tell me more about that? 

Saif: Yeah, I'm not going to try and repeat the words. They're difficult enough, glad you're the one who had to pronounce them. Basically, like I would say that phenomenology is more focused on the idea of being in the form of phenomena, which is you could think about from the name. And what it means to think about phenomena is that like you would think about something like an earthquake, for example, would be a phenomena, it's something that is defined by a period of time. So a phenomena is something that exists within time and within a framework of time. And this is relevant when you start to think about being/ existence in general as something that exists within time. 

So what that implies is that like as opposed to the something static, like an object, like a solid ball existing in a room. If you just put an end date and a beginning, then it's now become a phenomenon. Its existence has become now a phenomenon. So it starts somewhere and ends somewhere. And this really like makes you think about how time is defined through our perspectives. So what makes us start the recording of that ball in the room at a specific time and who decides that and thus implied in the system of phenomenological phenomenon. Phenomenological thinking is obviously the idea of subjectivity as opposed to objectivity because it's implied that it's within the time frame or view of the person. 

Kim: So would you say that phenomenology emphasizes like the temporality and also the subjectivity? 

Saif: Yeah, exactly. I think these are the most aspects that I would take like relatable aspects that I would take from them. But like obviously these are like very deep topics that we could revisit in the future. Like tons of books have been written about just the phenomenology from like the time perspective, for example. But like that you could examine it from other perspectives as well. But I think like that's the most relevant and easily relatable one. 

Kim: Yeah, like you can say the phenomenology is the philosophy of experience, right? 

Saif: Yeah, I think that that's a good way to sum it up. That's what the phenomenologists wouldn't like us to do, I'm guessing though. For existence and the idea of existentialism that it was more focused on the human beings themselves as a phenomena and how it relates to meaning. So that sounds a bit like fancy as well. But if you boil it down, it's actually quite simple. What they believe is that as opposed to essentialism, they believe that everything that exists does not exist for a specific reason or a defined purpose or it does not have its meaning inherent in it or essential to it. So what that implies for humans is that like you are not created for a purpose, you have no intended purpose, you have no defined path or journey or destiny or anything like that. You get to create that for yourself and it's artificial basically if you create a purpose, it's something that you're choosing to do. So the implication for it obviously is very, very different because a lot of the ancient philosophies and religions would really like focus on the essentialism, not just of humans, but like objects and the world itself, the world is created for a purpose. Everything exists for a reason and it's part of a bigger plan or a defined purpose. 

Kim: Could you apply this dynamic, sort of ever evolving purpose to also like to God or how would you think about that? 

Saif: Yeah, I think most of the existentialists were atheistic for a reason because they saw it as like, if I remove the divine purpose, if I'm removing the purpose from everything, then I don't really need a God to explain things. Because I'm denying the essence of things. So I don't need a God to justify the essence of creation or why we exist. I'm not focusing on why we exist I'm focusing instead on that we exist. That's an axiomatic start. Let's go from there. 

Let's see what this existence implies and I get to choose what my existence means rather than it being told to me through revelation or through some other form. Even though essentially they're saying, like, do this and do that. So are they defining the purpose? That's kind of like one of the critiques of existentialism that is somewhat not valid in my opinion because it detracts from their main point. 

Kim: So you think the main point is just we exist and that's enough? Exactly. 

Saif: I think like the celebrating existence for its own sake and like focusing on the freedom that that entails was the main aim of the existentialists. And I don't think like you have to take all their assumptions or take all the conclusions to use that philosophy. So I think like you could you could still believe in a spirituality. 

You could still believe in a divine purpose if you want, but still celebrate that freedom. Well, what I think is interesting about it then is relatable to the system's thinking topic is how it focuses on subjectivism and the importance of freedom in the worldview. So it's really focusing on the fact that there's no universal law or universal purpose that we can all connect to and we can all just like analyze any any part of a whole or any part of the system the way we like it. And that's we're free to do so based on whatever path we choose. 

So the subjectivity is what's relatable here. I see.

To be continued...

[Piano flourish]

Episode 2

So I think like to understand what is meant by Holism. We need to go back to the history and examine the idea where was the first used where we coined it and I think the first recorded use of like the English word Holism was by someone called Shahn Smuts. He used it to describe evolutionary change. And a now kind of discarded natural selection view that that went against the Darwinian concept of natural selection genetic variation that kind of is the foundation of the current evolutionary system. But there are virologists now who are going back and examining Smuts arguments and seeing some validity in some parts of it. Smuts used Holism to explain the concrete nature of the universe in general not just evolution. So in his words he would say Holism is the ultimate synthetic, ordering, organizing, regulative activity in the universe which accounts for all the structural groupings and syntheses in it. And this is very like you could almost copy paste this into a system thinking description, you know. 

Kim: So what time period was around 

Saif: the book titled Holism evolution was published in 1926. But of course like I think we could go like way back like to ancient Greek philosophy or Muslim philosophers Christian theologians and philosophers, eastern philosophers like Tao and Confucius philosophers and so on and where they would have like holistic ideas even if they didn't use that word to describe themselves. So the idea that that whole is greater than the sum of its parts is typically attributed to Aristotle for example. 

Kim: But like you're talking about Holism as one of one of the iterations of systems   thinking in the past. 

Saif: Yeah, you could come in here   and say that like   system thinking is more than just Holism as well. Right. I would say that if you if you're trying to say that system thinking is beyond just Holism. It's also looking at their relationships between things and also looking at systems and how they change over time. 

And you're looking at the complex systems without trying to reduce them just like maintaining them as complex. So I would say that most philosophies over time did use that approach like the idea of reductionism is actually harder to trace back just because most philosophers didn't like specializing the way that we do today. The ancient Greeks for example are famous for having gone like a Plato's Academy when you go and you can't go in if you don't do geometry or learn geometry first before you come here or something like that. So basically, even though we think of philosophy as something like very different than geometry, they would really for them like consider it the same. And the idea of like science and like fields of science being like so diverse now and people so specialized that like like he's a biologist he's- no they thought of themselves more like for the greater part of history in the West they would think of themselves as natural philosophers. So philosophy just means like the love of knowledge or the love of wisdom more specifically. So they didn't really think about the philosophers as just people who do the theory of knowledge or philosophize in the way we use the term today. And yeah, and not not just like to the like like an astronomer wouldn't like just be an astronomer. 

He would be also writing poetry he would be thinking about the perception and like how my eyes could help me see the stars he would he would just think about the environment and and the gods like like when would they wouldn't think about physics without thinking about metaphysics. Like what are the reasons for they wouldn't think about biology without thinking about creation. So like these things are all integrated for them and like the idea that you could reduce and just like look at one aspect on their own would would strike them as very weird. 

Kim: So you could say they had more a systemic approach to learning in general. 

Saif: I think I think there is an there is an aspect of system thinking that is multi disciplinary. Like, like I think like if like that's not just the definition of system thinking like system thinking can't be just like I'm trying to bridge all the disciplines together. 

But definitely like most systems, especially complex ones. If you approach them from one side only from one discipline only, then you are using kind of a reductionist view, wouldn't you say. 

Kim: Yeah, I think that sort of grand unified theories, like kind of what systems thinking is sort of systems thinking is trying to get away from. Yeah. Is there more you want to expand on the history of history of that shifting between reductionism and systems thinking? 

Saif: I think yeah, like I think the ideas of holism and ideas of subjectivity and objectivity also come in. So I don't want to just like see the history of systems thinking in the sense of holism, but also the idea of objectivity and subjectivity of the thinker himself or scientist or philosopher or whatever you want to call him. So the question of subjectivity and objectivity, at least the way that I look about it is easiest to think about when you're thinking about the field of history itself. So there was a big argument in the 1800s, kind of continued into the 1900s discussing what is the role of the historian and how much could we have objective history, as opposed to like history being done in the past in a more subjective way. So like these, let's call them objectivists would say that like being trying as much as you can to be neutral, trying to present both sides and trying to not just write down the history that the government wants you to write kind of thing would make you objective. There is someone historian and theorist called E.H. Carr, who wrote the book called What is History 

I really enjoyed reading that book because he's saying he's basically talking about like objectivity, no matter how much of an aim it is, it's not something that we can actually immediately grasp, because you can't escape subjectivity as a thinker as a whole. No matter what, because even if you have like the most objective facts, how you group these facts, how you write them down, the narrative you construct is really based on the context that you examine. Like choosing to study a history is always has to do with the environment that you're in. 

Kim: Would you say that it might be part of systems thinking to approaching a objective view of history is to adopt as many subjectivities as possible. 

Saif: Yeah, so like I'm also acknowledging that like to have objectivity as the aim is okay, but you should also acknowledge your own subjective biases, your own assumptions, what are you bringing to the table, rather than saying like no, my intent is objective and my intent is neutral. So it's impossible for me to be subjective. And that this is truth or more truthful than the historians who are subjective. 

I think actually like being subjective on purpose and taking one subjective view, although that is reductionist is really fine and better than someone who's fooling himself into thinking he's being objective, you know? because writing a history, and you're saying like 'the history of Islam from the perspective of a muslim' is more honest than someone who's saying 'the history with Islam' period. and he just thinks that he is not bringing anything to that table from his own assumptions or his own perspective. 

Kim: That makes sense. I was thinking about in systems thinking how you really need to examine your own biases and your position relative to that system that you're looking at. So that's kind of the same here. 

Saif: Yeah, exactly. Like are you are you part of that system? Are you an outsider looking at it? It really makes sense when you think about like the earth as a system, for example, or like the biological and natural world. We are a part of it, but we are also observing it. And if you think of yourself as like, like everything that has to do with humans is artificial, everything that has to do with nature is natural. So anything that is not us is nature. And this kind of definition is problematic because it makes us think of like, for example, chemicals as something synthetic, even though chemicals make up also all of nature. 

So like it just leads to fear of like vaccines, for example, even though vaccines are as natural as the natural immune responses to natural components, which are viruses as well, you know, like bacteria or whatever. Yeah. 

Kim: We can think about the way our metaphors changed in time along with our technology. So you have someone like Descartes who's trying to present his dualism using the metaphor of the mind and the body is like a ship. He says, I'm not merely present to my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but I'm very closely joined as it were intermingled with it so that I and the body form a unit. So he means something a bit like more intimate than   sailors in their ship. So he's using the technology of sailing ships at the time. So this is an example of how we relate to modern technology and personify it. And in that process, maybe technologify ourselves. 

Saif: So I think like it doesn't have to be just the wording that impacts the way we see and think even now you could say I'm using the metaphor see or sight in place of perception. So the language here is very important. And I think here comes the idea of linearity of language. Wouldn't   you say. 

Kim: Yeah, so we can think about writing as a technology and how that maybe modified our perception with the invention of the technology of writing. We started to take in information going from left to right or up to down or right to left. Maybe that gave us or emphasized a perspective of linearity in our perception of like our own lives, like from birth to death. But if we can imagine we had a system of writing that like a logogram, is that the right word Saif? 

Saif: Yeah, that's the right word. Like where you have pictures and the pictures signify concepts or words as a whole instantly. 

Kim: Yeah, there's a short story by Ted Chiang called Story of Your Life and there's this alien race that writes in like a complex logogram, which could be like more simple as in one word or more complex like very detailed and for like the multiple paragraphs or something. But the point is that you take in all the information at once and these aliens, in their worldview, they perceived all of time as happening in one single instant, which was reflected in their writing as well. 

And Ted Chiang goes further into depth about how the aliens relate their body structure to their writing. Like you could even think about this if you could imagine you were say like a dragonfly   and you live part of your life underwater and then in the air and you had maybe like 360 degree vision. How could that change the ways we like perceive the world and would our myths have a lot more like metamorphosis or you know. 

Saif: Yeah, like how we see the world different before puberty and after puberty. 

Kim: Yeah, exactly. And we could also think about like if we go further into writing like maybe taking a more systemic view of it, we would include like thinking about how once something is written down, it becomes immutable as writing replaces like oral tradition, then now you'll have right and you have wrong because we can know like this thing happened for a fact, no matter like how subjective or objective it was at the time but but because you have that fact you have one you have the potential to be wrong. So if we look at something like land claims, which is like exemplified in the short story, the truth of fact, the truth of feeling also by Ted Chiang he explores the idea that once I can be actually justified in like a land claim and that eliminates the possibility of consensus and collaboration and like maybe living in harmony because now you have one tribe who who beyond a doubt are certain that they have a right to this land and that the other tribe doesn't. 

Whereas in the past of like oral tradition, they might not be so certain and and they might that might lead them to work together as like two different peoples and find the consensus that works for everyone. So this like technology, maybe has a dark side as well. And we could see like writing as giving like a legacy of inflexibility, we usually see writing as a sign of progress but you can also think about the harm it causes as well and maybe like the loss of certain values like harmony and maybe consensus. So we can see this the writing as the source of this inflexibility or rigidity but we could also look at it from a different perspective like the concept of private property or land ownership can also be responsible here you could take many different lens to look at the same issue. And so if you're taking a full picture view or a systems thinking approach, you'd try to include all the different angles and it can be like practically relevant today like if you're in the context of oral history again, like some universities in Canada they'll allow indigenous students to submit an oral recording of an essay assignment. 

It could look like a good policy for indigenous students that's trying to honor that culture, but I think it like I think it can be a little shallow and I think it takes also oral history out of its context because if you're recording an assignment instead of presenting it orally like live, I don't see much difference between the recording and the writing in terms of now this recording is finished it's set in stone and it's immutable. The presentation is live and it's more transient and more adaptable as like maybe you think about it after or in your. 

Saif: Yeah, like I can see that this is just like a change of aesthetic without actually adding anything. 

Kim: It's kind of an example of a reductionist paradigm missing the point and we could also look at this and something like the plastic straw ban or like Che Guevara t-shirts. But then also this could lead us in the direction of the lens of the society and the spectacle, which we hopefully will talk about in another episode. 

Saif: Can you quickly say what you mean by a plastic what's the problem with like a plastic ban or Che Guevara t-shirts. 

Kim: So the problem with plastic straw bans is that it sort of misdirects your efforts and when you think about environmentalism, you think, okay, if I if I just use paper straw instead of plastic, then I'm going to be killing less sea turtles or whatever. 

But the reality is like, I think, I don't know about straws, but for plastic bags on like a single use basis, plastic bags have less of an environmental impact if you just using a paper bag once comparatively or cloth bag once comparatively. So it's really like a shallow and superficial   view to assume that if your economic system is based on endless growth, you could be sustainable and maintain that system by switching the resources you're using. Because you're ignoring the fact that these are contradictions, sustainability and endless resource use. 

Saif: Yeah, I would also like think that like maybe like focusing on, for example, plastics and how prominent they are in the oceans or something like micro plastics. They're just one act of environmentalism. So you could define that as environmentalism, but you could also define deforestation or climate change or all these other things that we're trying to tackle. So trying to tackle, for example, something like micro plastics, but adopting something that uses paper straws. So now we're removing entire forests to produce enough paper replacements of straws and cups and stuff like that. We've really shifted the problem to another area, but we haven't actually solved it. Yeah, we've just shifted it to another part of the system. So of course, thinking in a systems kind of way, we do what you're saying where we're looking at the fundamental or root causes that are tied to all these problems. So what is common between deforestation and micro plastics and all these things. So that idea of endless growth like you're saying. Definitely. 

Kim: So maybe Saif you could talk more about the Che     Guevara t-shirts and why it's problematic or why it's reductionist. 

Saif: I think like the idea that in general, like you want to celebrate someone like Che   Guevara because of his anti capitalistic tendencies and worker rights and like all the things that he stood for are kind of like go against the idea of fast fashion and go   against the idea of sweatshops that produce these very shirts and goes against the idea of a rich capitalist profiting off his symbol and his icon. So this is really at the heart of like the idea of having a spectacle that literally like undermines the actual cause  or the original systemic kind of view and reduces it to a mere product that is easily marketed and commodified. So I wouldn't just put this in Che Guevara   shirts, but like buying like an anarchy flag or or buying like like a like essentially buying like a product that is supposed to symbolize something that is revolutionary, but the process of buying it itself kind of undermines the revolution in a certain extent. 

Kim: So for example, like if I bought a 50% recycled water bottle so I could help the environmental cause. 

Saif: Yeah, that would be like one one way to think about it. Other than of course the whole problematic idea of individual responsibility, which is a whole nother like a bag of beans is what they say right. I think it's can of beans. It's can of beans. A whole nother can of beans. 

Kim: No, it's can of worms. It's can of worms. 

Saif: can of worms. Honestly, no one has can  of worms I feel like I don't know where that metaphor comes from. 

Kim: I think you're mingling with the wrong crowds. Okay, so more about like how technology modifies our perspectives as like we modify technology. Think about it maybe around the time of the industrial revolution like the mind is like an industrial machine metaphor. So like I'm steaming and fuming this grinds my gears. 

Saif: I'm having a train of thought. 

Kim: Yeah, and the train of thought just went off track. Yeah. It went like clockwork. And then I could also think about the like the mind is like a computer. So as computer computational technology evolved. I wish I could delete that memory or I can't compute that or this guy's overpowered. Yeah. Or like I'm starting to shut down. 

Saif: Yeah, I just want to go home and shut down because of all the burnout that I've been having this week. 

Kim: Yeah, and burn out as well. Hey, I didn't think of that one. Yeah. We could also look at the internet and networks. We can think of ourselves as like out of sync or like my mind's like lagging. 

I'm like I'm still it's the morning so still loading. Yeah. And then we see that so clearly in science where you have something like the cells is a machine. I mean, we all know like the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. 

It's just a left over of like a factory metaphor. For the cell specifically, it's kind of crazy because if you look at protein function, these proteins are not just powerhouses. Proteins serve many different purposes in the cell. And if you try to pin them down to one function, you're really like hiding that. 

And so now they've like labeled as they discovered that proteins do so many different, like hundreds of other purposes possibly they call them promiscuous proteins, which is also interesting because it makes it seem like they have like maybe loyalty to one function, but then they have other like cellular functions as like side pieces that 

Saif: they're replacing one problematic metaphor with another problematic metaphor, which really brings out the question of like, can you ever like escape the metaphor cycle completely and just speak directly about things. I think to probably a certain extent, we're going to have to adopt the view that I was talking about earlier with history where we have to accept our subjectivity, but just define it and be aware of it and try to approach from different subjectivities. Yeah. 

Kim: But do you think that like not all metaphors are created equally? Like if you, for example, if you use like like remember in the book, the music of life, like you have that musical metaphor, which includes temporality and many other aspects. Yeah. 

Saif: Yeah, I think like that. Definitely, I would say that there are metaphors that serve better functions or are more pragmatic or are easier to understand or can are faster. Like there's many ways to judge how efficient or effective a metaphor is at communicating something or being a useful tool for understanding. And I think there's also like metaphors that could diminish understanding or cause problematic understanding. So like the idea of the selfish gene, for example, is kind of problematic because it reduces all of heredity and like all the idea of genetics basically to the gene, even though that's not the only thing that we're inheriting from our parents. 

Right. Like you're inheriting also a microbiome. You're inheriting the social and environmental factors and the placenta itself has like a part of it that is tied to you. You're much more than just a DNA. Like there's like a series of proteins that come from that, you know, so Richard Dawkins himself wouldn't ascribe the idea of like the selfish gene as something like that. It's just like later became problematic because people like took the metaphor too far or misunderstood it, you know. 

Kim: Do you think it's like a blanket statement you couldn't say that like natural metaphors are more or like superior to what we might say are artificial metaphors? 

Saif: I don't think so necessarily. Like proteins are streaming. I think like any blanket statement would be reductionist in the sense of trying to have like a universal objectivity that, you know, I could see like different areas, not necessarily the body, but like different areas where like naturalistic metaphors could be problematic. Like the idea of like talking about the economy as something that grows and that we should celebrate this growth or, you know, like there's really many ways that you could use naturalistic metaphors in ways that are problematic. 

Kim: Yeah. 

To be continued...

[Piano flourish]

Episode 3

Kim: So like also we can think about how we're projecting often our life, our ways of living on to the world around us. Like if you think about ornithologists and when they were sort of classifying and describing all these different bird species they came across, they would, the norm was without these birds to be monogamous. And so the ornithologists who themselves were monogamous projected their values on to these birds who we know today are mostly pansexual. And this is an example of what I'm going to call the they are just like me bias. 

Saif: Yeah, I like that. They're just like me bias. It's an easy one to fall into. It's really makes me think about the idea of zoro astrianism and they think about like the idea of a lie or a parasite. So firstly, for people who are not that familiar with zoro astrianism I think like the people the thing that we think of as this is some sort of dualistic religion of good versus evil that has something to do with fire. Maybe if you know more about it, you'd know that like, they created the word magic and they had Majis   who had something to do with the with Christ or something like that. And this is really as far as the knowledge of this goes. But academically, some scholars now denied the dualism of zoro astrianism completely others try to reaffirm the   a monotheistic tendencies     of their religion, but without getting too much into that the relevant idea here is that the understanding that we have of Zoroastrianism itself is based by the first people who studied it in the 17th century and 16th century describing it to us. 

And then we're building on it rather than going into the tradition itself. So what kind of people were those? They were Christian theologians and thinkers. So for them, they wanted to present it as like Christianity has evolved from and past Zoroastrianism, which was dualistic and too simplistic, basically. But the idea, of course, is that it's much more complicated than that with what the way of beliefs and subsets that are dynamic and dependent on the time period one observe and studies, just like any tradition or religion it evolves and has like different cults and subparts within it and different traditions that thought about different things at different times. So when it comes to dualism, particularly this notion of good versus evil, the view that they had is that evil originates neither from God nor from his creatures, but from a holy other source personified as Angra Manu or the hostile spirit whose existence was   ritually and doctrinally rejected as being pretended and parasitic. 

His real existence is solely the domain of Ahura Mazda and his creation, Angra Manu and his demons are actually just states of negativity, denial or as the religion would put it, the lie. The charge that the religion is so 

Kim: it's what takes you away from God kind of thing. 

Saif: Yeah, I was going to explain it a bit more. Don't worry, Kim. Okay, go ahead. So this Angra Manu, the hostile spirit, these Christian philosophers, it was easier for them to think of him as just like an equivalent of the devil but taken to his extreme. And so they thought of it as a dualistic religion that has basically two divine figures, like a Zeus and a Hades a devil and a god, but the devil just has more powers. When in reality, they thought of him as just a lie or illusion, like the realm of non existence, the realm of that we're trying to subdue and by discovering the actual existence, which is very similar to other Eastern traditions that say like, like, we have to defeat the ego and understand true reality and this would be reaching the state of Nirvana, for example, or Christian mystics who would say that like, we want to transcend our current reality of the world by reuniting with God and the Holy Trinity and afterlife and this is the whole purpose of life kind of thing. So in that sense, the idea of the lie manifests as something that is illusory that we're trying to fight, not as a dualistic evil that is kind of like the bad guy that we're kicking his butt by praying for the good God, you know. 

Yeah. Thus the charge that the religion is ontologically dualistic is no more true than it is of other systems which conceive of good and evil as being in fundamental opposition. Equally the allegation that it's theology is ditheistic or polytheistic is a misunderstanding of the Zoroastrian theological and ritual tradition. So the best way as someone, an academic put it, you can think of it as monotheism itself in two opposites and contrary aspects, although this definition cannot be applied to every dualistic religious conception. But I think it fits most of the ones that we come across like Christianity or Zoroastrianism in this case. 

Just the idea of like dualism and monism and trying to like you could think of any dualistic structure as a monistic structure if you're inclined, which just shows you how powerful the idea of a worldview is and subjectivity. So an example of that would be like, I don't have to have a word for shadows, because shadows is just the absence of light. So I could just say light and not light. And it could and thus like removing the dualism of like light and darkness, there's just light and then there's the absence of light. 

And instead of thinking good and evil, there's just good and evil is the absence of good. So like you could apply it to different ideas that are like seem dualistic, you can make them seem monistic or singular in that sense. This is really present in Islamic philosophy, especially within Sufi tradition. Some people define Sufi tradition as mystical Islam, but that's a whole nother idea that we could get into later in another episode. Anyway, the idea of unity of being is very important in that Sufi tradition. 

There are many concepts of oneness in Islam in general, the idea of Wahd or Wahda. And there's also the idea of Tawheed, which is a verb and thus associated with a process, not a static object. And Tawheed is more like unifying or I would even describe it as like oneing like making something into a one or into a unit rather than combining it in that sense. So it's very different from the idea of synthesis, because synthesis assumes an antithesis and the thesis that you're combining to form a thesis, which is something new. Tawheed is more like combining things in a way that eradicates one completely. 

That would also be included. So you're removing the thesis, for example, and only accepting the antithesis. Or you have the synthesis, but you also are still looking at the thesis and the antithesis. Like Tawheed could apply to any of these concepts. Arguably, like Islam is one of the religions that is most focused on these ideas of unity. And because monotheism     is very like explicit in the Quran, where they state like explicitly multiple times that shirk or believing in another deity or associating 

Anything with the divine is one of the worst sins possible. So some take this idea further and interpret these verses as affirming God's unity and denying the existence of or being of anything other than Him in the sense that everything else is not being because it doesn't actually exist. So a good way to think about this is like you could deny the existence of light because light is just emanating from the sun, for example. So like the rays of the sun don't actually exist because they extend their being from an actual existence, which is the sun itself. So this, of course, is not a perfect analogy in this sense, but it's a good way to think about how they thought about the divine and the universe as a whole because they... 

Kim: Like God is light shining through the prism and we're the projection of the colors on the screen. 

Saif: Oh yeah. There's many ways to think about that. I think like the idea in general though is the difference between the holistic view and the mental exercise of seeing the unity between things while denying it simultaneously can seem impossible to a reductionist who does not want to think in terms of systems. So this is why like when you're examining these different historical traditions or philosophies, it can seem sometimes like they're paradoxical, but for the people at the time, they wouldn't think there's a paradox that they need to resolve because for them the idea that you can take parts of a system, you can take the system as a whole and you can take opposites and unify all these into one bigger picture seemed like so apparent and they took it that for granted in a certain kind of way. 

Kim: Yeah, I think it's interesting this idea of like what happens in the space between the opposites. 

Saif: I think this is really also like reminds me of the concept of Yin Yang just because I feel like Yin Yang is a really good symbol that like communicates so much with so little. 

I think like I don't have to explain how the symbol looks because everyone is familiar with it at this point, but just the surface level understanding of the concept presented in this emblematic icon of the Yin and Yang can show this, but another similarity   arises   that it's not as popular or a bit more subtle, which as Chang-Zu claims. I'm not sure about how to pronounnce his name honestly, but he claims that Yin in it's highest form is freezing while Yang in it's highest form is boiling. The chilliness comes from heaven while the warmness comes from the earth. The interaction of these two establishes He which we would call harmony. 

So it gives birth to things. Perhaps this is the law of everything yet there is no form being seen. So in this conception he's saying that Yin and Yang is not like a static system of observation, but a dynamic one of flux and continuous change towards hymerization. 

And you could see that like the symbol of just having that little dot and like little white dot in a bigger black space and the little black dot in a bigger white space. It just like implies the idea of conservation of opposites. The same as Heraclitus when he was talking about the sea is the purest and most polluted water. I think like definitely Chang-Zu and Heraclitus would have been buddies wouldn't you say? 

Kim: I also heard that in Hinduism of course there's like many different schools of thought, but like that even though their generally like portrayed as being polytheistic, there are like some prominent groups who believe they're also monistic. 

Saif: Yeah, there is definitely like I think the idea that Hinduism is a new conception. Like they never thought would have thought of themselves or called themselves as Hindus like only the British. 

More like   Shivites. Yeah, exactly. Or like Vedanta they would just choose a specific deity and focus on it or even if there are polytheistic tendencies into some of the traditions, but they wouldn't think of like all of these people in the subcontinent have one religion. We're going to call it Hinduism. That's more of a British thing that later like when they're studying their religions of these people. And it's the same for Zoroastrianism as well or even to a certain extent Christianity. 

When   you're thinking about it from an Eastern perspective. So living, for example, in the east, a lot of people would think of Christianity as a simple form of Trinity and that all people believe in the Trinity equally and that the Trinity is some form of avatar and that this really just shows that they haven't met all the different types of Christians out there. Not just historically, but even now there are non-trinitarian Christians. 

There's also Christians who would think about the Trinity as just different avatars for the same father God or they would think about Jesus as the primary figure and the father God is the manifestation. 

Kim: Or also that they're all emanations of the same source as well? 

Saif: Yeah, but like also emanation of the same source and which one is has primacy. Is it the father or the son or the Holy Spirit? And there's some people who would be like a more focused on the spirit and saying that we live now in the age of the spirit as before we used to live in the age of the son or the father or whatever. 

Kim: Actually, when we're talking about Christianity, like if we think about the history of it, even up to the medieval times, then the way that Christians viewed the world and even the entire cosmos was a lot more systematic. Like they saw man as centered in the divine and Christ was not just connected to man, but also to every aspect of nature and society. And the church wasn't like an institution in the way that we think about it today, but it was more like a complex chain with different links to different parts of the human world and to the divine. 

Saif: Yeah, definitely. I would say that like this approach applies to any field of knowledge that you're thinking about. So, there reductionism in religion that leads to a rigid fundamentalism and the entrenching of a dogmatic orthodoxy that really is focused on like a moralizing urge and like establishing a certain kind of authority. You can easily see it in religion and it might be harder to see it in other worldviews, but it's problematic in all worldviews. 

Like you can be fundamentalist, not just in religion, but you could be fundamentalist for a scientific theory, for example, and fail to see like how this theory has problems with it until a new paradigm happens. So like we can think of the Newtonian paradigm and how stuck we were in that until our notion of time, our notion of space, our notion of planetary motion all changed with Einstein. Or we could think of atomic theory and how it's really different now with the idea of quantum science and how fundamental that change was. And there was really times where the scientific community would think of something like quantum theory or Einstein's general relativity as almost heretical and it would be approached in that sense of like rigid dogmatism that like what is being said is pseudo science. And there's also like ideas that like were dismissed as pseudoscience and were problematic that we have now transgressed like the idea of a global ether exists, which sound waves teleport through or the idea in biology of, I think they called it vitality or like the vital impetus, which is what makes people alive. And it was some sort of like fiery substance that leaves the person when they die kind of thing. 

Kim: But I wonder if there are things like the ether and stuff like you can say like, oh yeah, like that was wrong. But still, is it better to say like we have dark matter or like dark anti matter? Like, you know, like we feel like I feel like sometimes we just rebrand these things. 

Saif: Yeah, not necessarily, not not necessarily better or worse. It's just the idea that like it evolves and changes. And right now we would think as this is the whole idea that we don't want to develop a rigid dogmatism for the new thing, just because it's newer either, we just weren't able to prove the using like scientific experimentation and the method, scientific method, we were able to   disprove the ether and we were able to at least not find like any reason to have that system. 

While dark matter, like there are experiments that prove prove it to a certain extent that show like it does it is part of a greater system and it serves a role. Maybe as we understand it more, we get to understand that it's actually made up of different several things. We come to define it better. We come to understand that there's something completely different and the paradigm could change. But, but for now it serves a function within the current understanding of the system. You can think of it as having like a formula and having an unknown variable that we are defining as an X, you know, until we discover that actually we don't need, we don't need that X at all. We could re-change the formula or we could discover that, like the x has a defined value and we start to define it with another formula, for example.  

I 

Kim: guess the point of the system thinking is just like, it's not to say screw you reductionist. We should only see everything from like a scale of like up in the clouds or whatever X like scale you want to look at. For example, like if you were looking at cells or tissues or organs or people or society, whatever, but systems science is saying that we should include all layers all angles and one of which is reductionist one of which is the cell as a machine and all these things are just they're okay as long as it's not the only story that we're telling our kids at night. 

Saif: Yeah, like, also I would say that like when it comes to the relationship between system thinking and system science, I think like it's important to see that like there's many approaches to do science and they build on each other. 

So reductionism still serves a big purpose. For example, like, I want to know what species live in these forests. I am defining the species as different from this species using these morphological features or using this taxonomic approach. And so the bracket that is based on DNA   phylogeny for example, this is this is an important thing so that we like we shouldn't stop putting things in categories or trying to classify things because classification does serve a role within science and it makes the the like complex system reducible to something that we can like digest and understand and analyze. Yes, it's just we need to also think about the interspecies relationships, we need to constantly question the assumptions of why are we defining the species using morphology rather than DNA or should we use a mix of both. We should have like a meta taxonomy. We're analyzing taxonomic systems and the reasons that we even use them and how they relate to other ecological fields. So, I think the ideas of meta science and system science and complex systems all deserve like an episode of their own. Wouldn't   you say? 

Kim: Yeah, definitely. And I was also thinking like, when you're talking about the importance of classification, it was spoken like a true lumper. There's an idea in taxonomy and classification that you're either like a lumper   so you want to group things into less categories or you're a splitter and Saif is more of a lumper and I'm more of a splitter. I'd rather have many different, many different categories that 

Saif: I always feel like lumper is  such a bad word though. It feels like, don't call me a lumper. 

Kim: Sorry, yeah, so the idea is like, it's not system science versus reductionism. It's just both and, and systems thinking is something to transcend like reductionism, while also including it. And so just as like reductionism isn't the whole picture, systems thinking without reductionism is not really systems thinking. And the last thing we want to do is use systems thinking as a tool and for reductionist or mechanism or whatever, which I think kind of is a problem because systems thinking can also be like really a buzzword. And I think it's maybe also an ideal to strive for while recognizing that like maybe never going to be completely systemic in your thinking. 

Saif: Yeah, you don't want to system wash stuff as well. Like, look, this is more valid because it takes the system as a whole. But it's just like filled with bullshit. No, like, like there might be sometimes more useful ways to to look at a system and there might be valid reasons for reducing it or for looking holistically at it. Definitely you don't want to establish a new orthodoxy that replaces the old orthodoxy than you haven't gained anything at all really. 

Kim: I guess you could think of systems thinking as something that should also be constantly evolving. Yeah, exactly. And never like codified. And I think that's like a big part of like systems thinking is that you're really open to learning and to different ways of knowing. For example, like, we don't just have to learn from experts and why also when I write an essay, I only have to write in third person and why is it so preposterous to say that I think that blah, blah, blah. Also, like, it makes us really consider how do we know we know things and we do learn from experience and intuition and feelings and spirituality do guide us. And we have many unconscious going on going ons that are a part of our human experience, which are really de-emphasized in our current like modernity. And I think also systems thinking comes with it, like, a big curiosity and you really do want to know you're not just trying to like publish as many papers as possible, but you actually do want to know and find more questions. But like, you have to start being more comfortable with uncertainty because like things emerge and unexpected things happen. The future isn't random, but it is unknown and it is uncertain. So you've got to bring with you that sense of curiosity and   reflectivity and this sort of passion for inquiry. 

Saif: You've got to also be ready for someone to chop off your nice little chicken head. 

Kim: But also an idea in systems thinking is that you're working towards solutions rather than away from problems. And so you're also continually questioning like your approach and you're like, is this worthwhile? 

Are you continuously adapting to the present or are you operating based on like grant submissions and you're denying like how reality is changing around you? Maybe you're aware that right now we think this way and this serves us, it's useful, but it might not always be so useful. And when it stops helping us, we can let it go rather than assuming this is the one true place and we should never let it go. So I guess like as you grow in your systems thinking you become more comfortable with plurality and embracing the different dimensions of things. And you're also sensing that interconnectedness of the parts to the whole that make up its complexity. 

And that's just it's not either or one or the other, but it's both and. And then another like maybe a final point about systems thinking that I have is that you are at the center of every system you look at. And with every system that you choose to engage with, that system will engage back at you. And there's really no place to work from other than what is the system doing for me or the collective mes. 

Saif: So how would you say you could apply systems thinking to every everyday life, like something like cooking or buying groceries or whatever. 

Kim: An example of like how you can apply this in your everyday life is like just by like starting small. Open yourself to learning from everywhere. Let go of your need to be right and just keep your eyes open and think about how could I look at this in a different way. 

Saif: And also like what is this a part of is this part of a bigger system. So is this the full picture that I'm looking at or I'm just looking   at a subpart of it is my reduction here serving a function that or should I also think of other parts as well. Yeah, just the sort of curious awareness and reflectivity 

Kim: reflecting on how you think, why you think what you're thinking about, why you're thinking about that. So, so if I know you're telling me some you're telling me about root cause and analysis and how that can tie into systems thinking. 

Saif: So yeah, like very much when the pharmaceutical industry specifically when we have a problem with the production line for example or we where we discover like contamination has occurred in a certain batch. 

You want to you want to examine the root cause so that you prevent this problem from recurring again. The reductionist approach in this way would be just looking at the immediate cause and resolving that so this batch got contaminated. If I find out that, for example, the active material from the supplier was had like a microbial growth on it. Then I've already discovered the source and let's move on in the future. I'll check all the active suppliers when they come that they this microbial growth doesn't happen again. 

This would be a limited way of thinking about it A root cause analysis perspective you would go about your purchasing and supply chain. How did you transport this from the airport? Where at which stage exactly did it go bad and is your storage condition the factor or did it come this way. And when do you do your quality testing? Did you do it earlier on when you first arrived or do you do it after the finished product has been produced? 

These are all things and questions to answer. So you might get at the root that the problem actually had to do with the storage condition. So did you have a rule for the storage condition? 

Why didn't the worker and the inventory management or warehouse process that   storage condition standard operating procedure? Is it because he doesn't understand the procedure? Maybe then you should have a training program for him. 

Or you could branch into that he actually understands the procedure, but something prevented him from doing it. Like for example, there was a problem with the HVAC system and you couldn't have the proper storage temperatures. For example, then you need to go to the HVAC system and see why that problem happened there. 

If there is maintenance that needs to be done and you should put like what we call a CAPA, which is corrective action preventative action that is focused on the roots of the problem. So this is how I'd apply it to like a specific problem in the pharmaceutical industry, but you could apply it to many different industries. There's lots of different methods of root cause analysis, but if I'm going to decompose them into simple steps, I would say first identify and describe the problem clearly. Second, establish a timeline from the normal situation until the problem occurs. Third, distinguish between the root cause and other causal factors using what we would call event correlation. And fourth, establish a causal graph between the root cause and the problem as in how we got from the from that root cause to the problem. If you can't establish that then you might not be looking at the root cause and there's different methods to get this kind of graph. 

There's techniques called the five Why's where you tell me like the batch is contaminated and I'll ask you why and you'd be like because it was not stored properly and I'd ask you why it wasn't stored properly and go on from there. You don't actually have to go to five like five is an arbitrary number. You could solve it as six or four or keep going beyond that. It's just sometimes you have to set a limit so that you're directly focusing on the cause rather than keep going on and on and on. And there's a fault tree analysis and   Pareto analysis. 

There's failure more than effects analysis. Burrito. Pareto not burrito. 

Pareto principle. I'm sure you're familiar with this idea that like 80% of 80% of causes are can be attributed to 20% of events you know, the 80-20 principle. It's just like easy to think about if you have like     if you are in a call center and you have like several complaints about your faulty Wi-Fi. You can see like most of the problems that come in or complaints are about, for example, lagging, ping discrepancies, blackouts. 

You could have like a list of complaints and categorize these complaints and then you'd apply the Pareto analysis by taking what are the most common complaints and can I put this into a category of these complaints, like 20% of these complaints. Come from this, for example. So if I solve 20% of these complaints, I've addressed actually 80% of the call. And also, also I think like you could, you could like really link root cause analysis to a lot of things. 

So that will be more interest of you. So like, for example, now that after I described it the root cause analysis to you, how would you say you could describe root cause analysis applied to psychology, for example. 

Kim: I guess like you could look at the. 

Saif: How would you apply root cause analysis to thinking about your anxiety or someone's anxiety. 

Kim: I would like think about it and how you could relate it to root cause analysis is like. 

Saif: I don't know why you why like when when we're like podcast thing you turn into like podcast Kim. Me and safer gonna talk to you we're not in a cooking show. We could be. 

Kim: So if we did an example of root cause analysis,   using my social anxiety. How would that look? I think I'd ask you. 

Saif: Why are you feeling socially anxious. I'm afraid I did the wrong thing. I'd be like, why do you think you did the right wrong thing. 

Kim: Because the reaction of the other person who gave me indications that they didn't like me. 

Saif: And why is it important that they like you? 

Kim: because if they don't like me. 

I don't like me. 

Saif: Have we- Is this necessarily the root cause not necessarily but I think like we're closer to understanding the heart of your insecurity, which is that you don't want to present the version of yourself that you don't like. And that you are afraid of making mistakes that people will judge you for and thus establish you as a person that they're not going to like. For example, we could take different conclusions. 

A good root cause analyst wouldn't stop right there. They would keep going with other root cause analysis methods like the   Ishikawa diagram or fishbone diagram would have different categories. Of, for example, social anxiety, insecurity, social belonging and conformity. And I would examine it from all these different perspectives and see the causes rooted   in each and then from there identify, see if there's any similarities or identifiable root cause that is connected to all of them. So you could really apply this kind of system thinking approach to to any system or to any problem where you want to find the root cause rather than a reductionist attempt to look at the immediate cause. 

Kim: I think I could see that root cause could be clarified in the example of social anxiety because you could see it as like, if you don't like yourself then you're constantly having to obtain approval from other people, which is insecure, because they might give it to you and they might not. And so you're constantly fluctuating between I like me, I don't like me, and then it puts you in that sort of anxious state where you're not really settled on   either outcome. 

Saif: Yeah, I think like there's a there's an interesting and well known Thought experiment or metaphor or whatever where people like they have like several scientists in a room and the room is dark and has an elephant in it, but they're all like, groping different parts of the elephant. Not because they're weirdos just because like they're trying to understand what is in the room with them and someone grabs his ear and he's like a, I think this is a fan, someone grabs the leg and he's like I think this is stump, and someone grabs a tail and he's like I think this is the end of a brush, and you open the light and they discover it's an elephant. 

And I think like system thinking kind of approach for- would grab all these different subjective interpretations and try to group you group them together to think of the system as a whole and if these scientists collaborated together and groped the elephant in different parts until they combine these different parts together, they wouldn't really understand that it's an elephant. This combination and this understanding, if it doesn't take you to the root cause if it doesn't take you to the, the fundamental thing in the end, that's okay because at the end of the day, you are aware that you are not having the whole thing that you are just looking at a part. 

So I think like when it comes to social anxiety, for example, just focusing on like the elephants ear, here would be just saying like my social anxiety is because I'm weird and stopping right there and not analyzing why do you think you're weird and what's wrong with being weird, where does social cohesion come from? Why is it important to fit in? What are the consequences of not fitting in? How do people treat shy people? These are all like interesting questions that like one should look at and not just give into the anxious thought of and like let it debilitate you although that can be easier- like I'm a freak- yeah exactly, and stop right there, you know. 

Yeah. basically the episode ends right there with us saying that don't stop groping the elephant until you have groped all of it. That's me and my Kim's advice, right Kim? 

Kim: Yeah

[Piano flourish]