Recently Gemma Smith and I submitted a paper to an academic journal, and it was returned as the reviewers felt that revisions were needed.  That is part of the academic process, accepting that is an essential element of the quality control, and therefore necessary.  It also explains why a number of “experts” are happy to express opinions on social media and through self-publishing, as they do not want their work put under a microscope.

Anyway, the process of publishing in academic journals is not what this article about, it simple leads me into explaining how I got sidetracked into considering frogs and perception/perspective within systems thinking.  One of the comments was that we needed to revisit our references to “Systems Thinkers” by Magnus Ramage and Karen Shipp, as we had used the first edition rather than the latest version, and the changes impacted on how we had developed and documented our work.  The book was a core text for the Open Universities, Systems Thinking in Practice (STIP) M.Sc. and I presume it still is (Facebook generously reminded me that it was 4 years ago yesterday that I had successfully completed my M.Sc. in STIP). 

Anyway, after I had read the relevant updates, I got distracted (sorry Roberto) by reading about Humberto Maturana, someone’s whose work I had engaged with as a result of Peter Bond taking a welcomed interest in my PhD, put who I hadn’t explored to any significant level.  This is partly because Maturana’s work is more on the theoretical side of systems thinking and partly because I get easily distracted by new ideas and concepts. Maturana is most closely associated with autopoiesis (self-producing systems) (Ramage and Ship, 2020, p. 202) and he considered himself to be primarily a biologist and not a systems thinker.  Interesting he was born in Chile and was present at the same time as Beer was developing his Cybersyn project, and Beer was early advocate of Maturana’s work applying the concept of autopoiesis in a management context (Ramage and Ship, 2020, p. 196).

So, what does this have to do with the Frog Chorus and systems thinking?  Well, when I originally read Systems thinkers, I completely missed the part where it talks about the work Maturana, alongside Jerry Lettvin, did with the retinal cells of frogs, which Kline (2015, p.196) argues was the start of second order cybernetics.

Studying the retinal cells of frogs, they discovered that the information given from the frog’s eye does not describe the world as such, but only such aspects of the world as are relevant to the frog at a particular moment. In particular, the frog does not see flies (its foodstuff) but only patterns of moving shadows which enable it to catch flies. Applied to humans, this leads inexorably to the conclusion that our understanding of the world is partial, that we take only from the world that information which we need at the time. The work was carried out in the traditional scientific paradigm, but was widely regarded as highly important at the time.
(Ramage and Shipp, 2020, p.204)

Reading this I had an “a-ha” moment (and I don’t mean Take on Me was playing in the background).  I have long believed that perception is one of the key fundamentals of systems thinking and have sought a way to give this a basis in science.  What Lettvin and Maturana’s work highlights is that even from a physical/biological position different creatures will perceive the world in different ways.  And it’s true even for humans, as although most people have the same biological optical equipment, there is no evidence that people automatically perceive things in the same way, whether because of differences in the optical equipment e.g. colour blindness or because of how personal experience can influence people’s perceptions.  Once something has been observed and individual will instinctively apply their own beliefs, values and experiences to what they see.  For instance, a tailor may primarily see a belt as something to hold trousers up, whilst a child victim of domestic abuse might see a belt as something which inflicts pain.  It’s the same item but the perspective from which it is viewed can have a significant influence.

This is because there is a difference between perception and perspective, and although they are closely related, they are different.  Perception is based on sensory input, whilst perspective is the framework that we use to interpret the world.  To use an analogy of a half-filled glass.  We world perceive the amount of liquid in the glass, but we would interpret whether the glass was half full or half empty through applying our perspective.  Therefore, in the example above both actors would perceive a belt but would apply a different perspective to what they see.

In a 1970 paper titled the “Biology of Cognition” (republished in Maturana and Varela, 1980, p8) the phrase “anything said is said by an observer” which means that simply by undertaking the act of observation, the observer becomes part of the system.  This has implications for the practical use of systems thinking as it puts an onus on the practitioner to consider their role within the system, rather than seeing themselves as outside of the system.  In some situations, this may not be significant whereas in others it may be.  For instance, if we were looking at the system for designing belts for manufacture then it’s probably reasonable to disregard that belts can also be used to inflict pain, whereas if we were looking to understand children in care and clothing choices then the use of belts as a weapon is highly likely to be significant.

All of this means that perception must be considered when choosing how to undertake a systems thinking investigation.  And this is where Critical Systems Thinking becomes so powerful, especially if the EPIC framework is utilised.  The Explore stage of EPIC, requires that we view the problem situation from five systemic perspectives (Jackson, 2020,p.850); Machine, Organism, Cultural/political, Societal/Environmental and Interrelationships.  Jackson observes:

The different systemic perspectives provide breadth and depth when exploring the problem situation. Each will reveal new matters worthy of attention in seeking improvement and provide different explanations for matters of concern. They will often provide conflicting information and explanations. This is helpful in gaining a full appreciation of the complexity involved and in supporting considered decision making.
(Jackson, 2021, p3).

References 

• Jackson, M. C. (2020)   Critical systems practice 1: Explore—Starting a multimethodological intervention. Systems Research and Behavioral Science,37, 839-858 , DOI: 10.1002/sres.2746
• Jackson, M. C. (2021).Critical systems practice 2: Produce—Constructing a multimethodological intervention strategy. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.
• Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Dordrecht: Reidel. 
• Ramage, M. and Shipp, K., 2020, Systems Thinkers, Springer