Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through Other Patterns

by Nora Bateson

In scientific circles, the systems sciences have become a haven for a modeling and explanatory language for how to deal with complex problems. This would be OK, except that the linearity and the mechanistic principles of reductionism in western culture have wormed their way into the systems vocabulary. The result is that we get strategic methodologies and defined models for fixing isolated issues within complex living interactions that have a living context. To put it more bluntly, the old way of addressing problems—by defining causality and applying predetermined formulized ‘actions’ to ‘solve’ the problem defined—has become painted into the terms and language of the new systems and complexity disciplines. The vocabulary has changed, but the thinking remains the same. ‘Recursive’ becomes a word that brings to mind a series of boxes connected by arrows, and ‘decoupling’ seems now to refer to a mechanistic split in systems linkages.