Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

by Robert Coram

Summing up, we can see that: general-to-specific is related to deduction, analysis, and differentiation while specific-to-general is related to induction, synthesis, and integration.

Diff and int

Faced with such disorder or chaos, how can we reconstruct order and meaning? Going back to the idea chain of specific-to-general, induction, synthesis, and integration the thought occurs that a new domain or concept can be formed if we can find some common qualities, attributes, or operations among some or many of these constituents swimming in this sea of anarchy. Through such connecting threads (that produce meaning) we synthesize constituents from, hence across, the domains we have just shattered.24 Linking particulars together in this manner we can form a new domain or concept—providing, of course, we do not inadvertently use only those “bits and pieces” in the same arrangement that we associated with one of the domains purged from our imagination. Clearly, such a synthesis would indicate we have generated something new and different from what previously existed. Going back to our idea chain, it follows that creativity is related to induction, synthesis, and integration since we proceeded from unstructured bits and pieces to a new general pattern or concept. We call such action a creative or constructive induction. It is important to note that the crucial or key step that permits this creative induction is the separation of the particulars from their previous domains by the destructive deduction. Without this unstructuring the creation of a new structure cannot proceed—since the bits and pieces are still tied together as meaning within unchallenged domains or concepts.

Creative induction requires destructivededuction

In this context, when acting within a rigid or essentially a closed system, the goal seeking effort of individuals and societies to improve their capacity for independent action tends to produce disorder towards randomness and death. On the other hand, as already shown, the increasing disorder generated by the increasing mismatch of the system concept with observed reality opens or unstructures the system. As the unstructuring or, as we’ll call it, the destructive deduction unfolds it shifts toward a creative induction to stop the trend toward disorder and chaos to satisfy a goal-oriented need for increased order. Paradoxically, then, an entropy increase permits both the destruction or unstructuring of a closed system and the creation of a new system to nullify the march toward randomness and death. Taken together, the entropy notion associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the basic goal of individuals and societies seem to work in dialectic harmony driving and regulating the destructive / creative, or deductive / inductive, action—that we have described herein as a dialectic engine. The result is a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality.28,27 As indicated earlier, these mental concepts are employed as decision models by individuals and societies for determining and monitoring actions needed to cope with their environment—or to improve their capacity for independent action.

Bibliography 1. Beveridge, W. I. B., The Art of Scientific Investigation Vintage Books, Third Edition 1957 2. Boyd, John R., “Destruction and Creation,” 23 Mar 1976 3. Brown, G. Spencer, Laws of Form, Julian Press, Inc. 1972 4. Conant, James Bryant, Two Modes of Thought, Credo Perspectives, Simon and Schuster 1970 5. DeBono, Edward, New Think, Avon Books 1971 6. DeBono, Edward, Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, Harper Colophon Books 1973 7. Foster, David, The Intelligent Universe, Putnam 1975 8. Fromm, Erich, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, Fawcett Premier Books 1971 9. Gamow, George, Thirty Years that Shook Physics, Anchor Books 1966 10. Gardner, Howard, The Quest for Mind, Vintage Books 1974 11. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Harvard U. Press 1971 12. Gödel, Kurt, “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of the Principia Mathematica and Related Systems,” pages 3–38, The Undecidable, Raven Press 1965 13. Heilbroner, Robert L., An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, Norton and Co. 1974 14. Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy, Harper Torchbooks 1962 15. Heisenberg, Werner, Across the Frontiers, World Perspectives, Harper and Row 1974 16. Hoyle, Fred, Encounter with the Future, Credo Perspectives, Simon and Schuster 1968 17. Hoyle, Fred, The New Face of Science, Perspectives in Humanism, World Publishing Co. 1971 18. Kramer, Edna E., The Nature and Growth of Modern Mathematics, Fawcett Premier Books 1974 19. Kuhn, Thomas S., The...

Boyd's biblio