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Contemporary Systems Thinking

Lucia Urbani Ulivi Editor

The Systemic
Turn in Human
and Natural
Sciences
A Rock in The Pond
Contemporary Systems Thinking

Series Editor:
Robert L. Flood
Maastricht School of Management
The Netherlands

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5807

Lucia Urbani Ulivi
Editor

The Systemic Turn in Human

and Natural Sciences
A Rock in The Pond
Editor
Lucia Urbani Ulivi
Department of Philosophy
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
Milan, Italy

ISSN 1568-2846
Contemporary Systems Thinking
ISBN 978-3-030-00724-9    ISBN 978-3-030-00725-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00725-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960444

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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Preface

It was as early as 1978 when Evandro Agazzi first proposed introducing into the
domain of human sciences, including philosophy, the concept of “system” that
cybernetics and engineering had acquired and were largely developing in their
domains. Agazzi, as scientist and philosopher, could trace back to Aristotle and to
the scientists operating after Galileo the early origins of the systemic idea, clearly
showing that if the term “system” can be accredited with some novelty, the corre-
sponding concept is an ancient way of looking at the things of the world that has
permeated our culture since early times. But this approach was met with an almost
total sunset in the early twentieth century, with general mechanicalism trailing
behind metaphysical materialism, drawing the natural sciences toward a reduction-
ist point of view and philosophy to a mostly formal and analytical attitude.
It is only fair to acknowledge that reductionism and analytical approaches have
produced significant results in many fields of contemporary knowledge offering
great contributions to relevant scientific discoveries and to consequent technologi-
cal applications, but it is no less important to clearly limit their validity within spe-
cific fields and objectives, taking care not to improperly accredit them as the best
and only methods of knowledge in every domain.
The suggested limitation has been totally overlooked, and a paradigm derived
from scientific and technological success became pervasive, while the few voices
observing that an individual entity escapes description in terms of its constituents,
and that many problems are unsolvable if an entity is reduced to the sum of its ele-
ments, were obscured or muted without any discussion.
In time the pervasive triumphalism met with disappointment in many fields—
just consider Artificial Intelligence—and it is nowadays increasingly and widely
recognized that analytical or mereological approaches in ontology, and also reduc-
tionism in its many forms in epistemology, are inadequate for solving many prob-
lems and that we should introduce and support the diffusion of new concepts and
different attitudes in research. The demand for “new ideas” is perceived in various
fields, and finding new paths, methods, and points of view in the comprehension of
our contemporary world is, if any, the proper task of philosophy.

v
vi Preface

The concept of “system,” to some extent and for proper objects, is a good
candidate for fulfilling such a demand, since it no longer considers the elementary
constituents of an object but rather the phenomena emerging from the relations and
interactions among its elementary parts.
The systemic point of view makes it possible to reconstruct several domains,
both philosophical and scientific, introducing fresh ideas into research in view of a
general rational vision of the world on a more comprehensive basis.
The birthdate of systemic thinking is traditionally fixed as 1967, when biologist
Ludwig von Bertalanffy published his major work, General System Theory, opening
a new attitude in research.
Nowadays systemic thinking is widely recognized and appreciated in various
fields, and the production of books, conferences, and seminars testify to its vitality
and conceptual richness, but its diffusion in many fields and throughout culture, in
general, is far from achievement.
This book makes a return to Agazzi’s program with two main focal points: firstly,
contributing to the consolidation and expansion of system theoretical thinking in
order to integrate the general reductionist and analytical attitude still broadly domi-
nant in our culture and, secondly, keeping the pace with the rich and fast-growing
systemic researches now expanding in different disciplines.
Since the time of von Bertalanffy’s pioneering studies, systemic researchers have
faced many problems, both internal and external to the systemic horizon, that were
unknown or unperceived in the early days of systemics. Since then the concept of
“emergence” underwent a widespread debate, and previously unexpected ideas and
theoretical problems, such as those of interdisciplinarity, complexity, identity through
dynamics, logical openness, quasi-systems, and incompleteness, entered onto the stage.
As a consequence many classical concepts underwent an important rethinking,
including causality, abduction, objectivity, and epistemology, and also the concept
of solution was revisited through dynamic and multiple approaches. All this fol-
lowed in the wake of an update of traditional systemic references, to the point that
we can now distinguish “first systemics,” based on the concept of organization,
from “second systemics,” focused on coherence. The researches of Gianfranco
Minati contributed greatly to the identification and distinction of the two phases of
systemic thinking and warned also against the risk of “systemic reductionism.”
To meet both of the aforementioned objectives, a branch of systemic research
called “Systemic Researches in Philosophy, Sciences and Arts” was opened in 2009
at the Department of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Milan, hosting semi-
nars—both public and privatissimums—and conferences whose results have been
regularly published in dedicated sections of the Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica
and in three volumes, all titled Strutture di mondo. Il pensiero sistemico come spec-
chio di una realtà complessa, ed. Lucia Urbani Ulivi, Bologna, Il Mulino 2010,
2013, and 2015, that provide an appreciated contribution to both continuity and
novelty in systemic research.
The participants—mostly well-known academicians—have been working
together for many years, taking part in and holding lectures, seminars, and debates,
discussing and comparing ideas through the practice of interdisciplinary work.
Preface vii

Presenting this book is the occasion for evaluating the many systemic activities
over the last 10 years, trying to answer the questions: have the impressive contacts
and exchanges of views among the representatives of different and also heteroge-
neous sciences merged into a new general perspective? Have the investments of
intellectual energies, organization, and time been rewarded? Has all this activity
been fruitful?
The investment has been rewarded, certainly as far as the public outcome is con-
cerned, but if we ask a more subtle question, whether the many contributions and
activities have been able to dismiss many prejudices and to change at least to some
degree the general paradigm of our culture, then the answer is not so optimistic: the
message in the bottle has been thrown in the vast ocean of shared culture, but
whether somebody will collect it depends on many heterogeneous factors, mostly
out of control. What John Dupré says is certainly true that culture is strongly norma-
tive in regulating our ideas and behaviors and that it is at the same time ephemeral
and easily changeable, but cultural changes are hardly predictable, and ideas can
stay still and steady for centuries. So we can only forward the message, and wait,
and hope.
There is one last question that should be posed: which are the original contribu-
tions and new ideas likely to accredit this book as worthwhile reading?
I will briefly sketch out some relevant traits.
Vitiello and Giuliani, physicist and biologist, respectively, underline the relevance
of the unobservable as the origin of the observed, linking the explicit behaviors of
phenomena to hidden variables that remain opaque to direct knowledge. They suggest
that there is much more to understand besides the plain data.
Matelli traces a clear conceptual link between the ancient idea of body and the
contemporary concept of system, deeply rooting the contemporary in its ancient
origins. She also suggests that a necessary ingredient for comprehension of ancient
authors is a knowledge of the ideas, values, and objectives structuring their cultural
context.
Economists Lamperti, Monasterolo, and Roventini clearly show that complexity
is hardly understandable using classical models, while Fontana in architecture and
Ingegnoli in bionomics underline the limits of seeking “functional optimization” in
both built and natural environments.
Jurists Cafagno, D’Orsogna, and Fracchia, introducing systemic perspective into
environmental legal studies, suggest viewing the environment as a common with
legacy value.
Frigerio, philosopher of language, proves that a radical version of the principle
of compositionality cannot be maintained, while I suggest a fresh start in philoso-
phy of mind, considering mind and brain as different constituents of the human
being, viewed as a system.
All these contributions strongly support a new manner of looking at our world: the
place where the observer and the observed are defined in terms of each other, where
continuous and interlaced phenomena of emergence take place, obscure to complete
and precise comprehension, far from predictability, readable through principles with
viii Preface

local validity, and open to creativity as the main resource for successfully interacting
with complex and irreducible phenomena.
Whether or not such suggestions will be accepted and developed depends on
many circumstances and not only on their value.
I wish to express my deep gratitude to all participants in this venture, and I espe-
cially want to mention Evandro Agazzi and Gianfranco Minati for their support and
encouragement and also for freeing the philosophical debate from many inherited
limitations, for opening new directions in research, and for offering solid results,
which should encourage other researchers to keep the path open and constantly
trodden.

Milan, Italy Lucia Urbani Ulivi

Systemic Thinking: An Introduction

Evandro Agazzi

Abstract In the 1970s, General System Theory was still the object of a radical
controversy between enthusiastic supporters and fierce enemies, the firsts being
attracted by the fact that GST was offering a legitimacy to concepts like those of
ordered totality, global unity, goal-oriented processes, specific function, multilevel
realities, and emergent properties that are frequently and profitably used in several
sciences, from biology to psychology, sociology, and other “human” sciences. The
enemies rejected such concepts considering them as vague, imprecise, and belonging
to the superficial level of common sense language, but that should be banned from
the rigorous discourse of science. This attitude was in keeping with the positivistically
inspired scientific culture still predominant in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Systemic Point of View

At a distance of nearly four decades from that historical period, the systemic way of
thinking has shown itself as the most proper tool for understanding complexity and
investigating complex realities and stimulates reflections capable to revisit the clas-
sical philosophical concepts, the basic metaphysical and ontological principles, the
deepest sense of fundamental developments in the history of science, the critical
appraisal of merits, and the limitations of many present research programs in vari-
ous fields.
“What are systems, what is a system?”
The answer to this question is not simple, not because this term circulates only
in specialized sophisticated languages but because, on the contrary, it has acquired

E. Agazzi
Panamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico

ix
x E. Agazzi

a very large display of applications in a variety of contexts. So, for example, in ordi-
nary language we speak of linguistic system, legal system, political system, economic
system, bureaucratic system, productive system, industrial system, energetic system,
railways system, metric system, and so on. In addition, within specialized disciplines
one finds the mention of several systems, like muscular system, nervous system,
endocrine system, and a lot of other systems in biology; numerical system,
Boolean system, Euclidean system, and equation system in mathematics; or elastic
system, gaseous system, and isolated system in physics, not to speak of the many
systems that are considered in chemistry, crystallography, astronomy, geology,
and geography and in the domain of humanities, the capital notion of philo-
sophical system.
Such a variety of applications may at first produce the reaction of considering the
notion of system as endowed with a vague and confused meaning belonging to ordi-
nary language that can only give rise to ambiguities and misunderstandings and
must be overcome and replaced by a rigorous and technical treatment. This impres-
sion is wrong, because this generalized use rather testifies that it belongs to common
sense, that is, to that complex set of basic concepts and principles that make possible
our understanding of reality and whose meaning is, therefore, not ambiguous but
analogical, that is, such that it must be applied partly in the same way and partly in
different ways to different kinds of reality. If this is the situation, the stimulating
task is that of making explicit that common semantic core that underlies the analogi-
cal use and makes it possible.
This core can be described in a rather intuitive way by saying, for example, that
a system is an entity constituted by parts that are linked by mutual relations, making
up a complex-ordered unity which is endowed with its own individuality in the
sense that it is characterized by its own properties and functioning that are different
from those of its constituent parts though depending on them to a certain extent.
In a shorter way, we could perhaps say that we mean by a system an ordered totality
of interrelated parts whose characteristics depend both on the characteristics of the
parts and on the web of their interconnections.
GST can be considered as an effort for making explicit and precise this concep-
tual core, by revisiting sometimes concepts and principles that philosophy has
already defined and analyzed in the past but have been neglected or abandoned for
several historical reasons, especially as a consequence of the predominance attained
by the conceptual framework of certain successful sciences in Western culture.

The History of the Notion of System

The System of the World

The concept of system (or, better, the term “system”) is so widely used in our
linguistic contexts—as we have already noted—that we can be spontaneously con-
vinced that it has belonged to our learned vocabulary from times immemorial; but
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Systemic Thinking: An Introduction xi

if we try to retrieve in our memory of “cultivated” people, it is likely that we find

its first irruption on the stage of Western culture in the title of the most famous work
of Galileo, the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems published in
1632, in which the reasons supporting, respectively, the Ptolemaic and the
Copernican astronomic theories are compared. This occurrence, however, was
not new, if we consider that already in the conclusion of his Sidereus Nuncius
(1610) Galileo mentions as a commonly used notion that of the Copernican system
and promises to present his own system later on. In short, we have sufficient evi-
dence to maintain that the concept of system entered the background of Western
culture in modernity and coming from the domain of the natural sciences.
The obvious consequence of this circumstance was that the domain of application
of this concept was that studied by the new natural sciences, that is, the domain of the
physical bodies considered in its generality, more or less in the sense of “external
world.” This is why the new science felt itself charged with the task of providing also
a system of the world (or a “world system” for brevity), and we actually find this
expression as the title of the concluding book of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica (1687) that sounds De mundi systemate (“On the system of
the world”). This phrase became quickly standard, and we find it, for example, in the
title of Laplace’s work Exposition of the World System (1796).

The System of Nature

A similar concept soon emerged in the context of another natural science, biology,
and is present in the title of one of the most famous works of this discipline, Charles
Linné’s Systema Naturae, which has known, between 1735 and 1768, ten successive
enlarged and revised editions during the life of its author. The significant novelty
resides in the methodological structure of this work in comparison with the treatises
of physics: as is well known, the most important contribution credited to Linné is
the introduction of the binomial nomenclature for the classification of living species
which, with certain improvements, has remained in use until today. For two centu-
ries, the naturalists had been looking for a “natural criterion” for the classification
of the living beings, and none had proved satisfactory. Linné’s idea was that a natu-
ral classification should reflect that logical order that exists in Nature due to the fact
of its being the expression of the supreme intelligence of the Creator God. In other
words, the order of living creatures had to be a logical order for which formal
logic had provided a well-known scheme in the ancient “Porfiry tree” regarding
the hierarchic disposition of genera and species. According to this view, the entire
Nature was conceived as a kind of mosaic in which the position of any single
piece is strictly determined following a design constituted by a web of logical
relations, in which each piece occupies “its” proper place. This is the fundamental
worldview of fixism.
If we compare his “system of nature” with the “system of the world” proposed
by the physicists, we can recognize that the latter was in a certain sense more sig-
xii E. Agazzi

nificant, since the systemic architecture of the world was conceived as consisting in
causal links expressed in terms of natural laws and forces, and not simply through
the fragile spider web of a conceptual order, and we may also add that Linné’s
system has only a descriptive aim and purport, whereas the physicists’ systems had
an explanatory aim.

Philosophical System

All this is true, but we cannot ignore the historical background of that time, in which a
prominent thinker such as Spinoza could formulate in the second book of his Ethica
More Geometrico Demonstrata the aphorism ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac
ordo et connexio rerum (“the order and connection of the ideas is identical with the
order and connection of things”), a statement that can sound a dogmatic tenet today but
that still fascinated the representatives of the romantic “philosophy of nature” at the
end of the eighteenth century and also the thinkers of the German transcendental ideal-
ism of the nineteenth century. That fascination was produced by that impression of
intellectual rigor, systematicity, and architectural elegance that transpires in Spinoza’s
work and was easily taken as a warranty of speculative soundness, as opposed to that
“rhapsodic” way of thinking (to use Kant’s term rhapsodistisch) that marks the style of
those scattered reflections that ignore the need of strong logical links.
In Kant’s work this kind of appraisal is explicitly made, and it is significant that
the term “system” widely occurs in order to express the satisfaction of the said
requirements. This explains how the phrase “philosophical system” has become
customary for denoting the whole complex of the speculation of a single thinker,
independently of the fact that he uses or not this denomination to this end (like does,
e.g., Schelling in his System of Transcendental Idealism).

The Issue of Finalism

Modern natural science was born—as we have seen—according to certain ontologi-

cal, epistemological, and methodological restrictions that had been proposed by
Galileo and accepted by Newton and their followers. Among these restrictions one,
in particular, was more implicit than explicit but of paramount importance and
regarded the concept of cause. The “principle of causality” is one of the most fun-
damental metaphysical principles that can be formulated, in its simplest form, as the
statement that every change has a cause. This principle is so fundamental that can
be considered as an indispensable condition for understanding reality and, as such,
universally admitted. But the concept of cause is far from being univocally under-
stood, and very many meanings of this concept have been proposed in the history of
philosophy. The one which is probably the most common in ordinary language is
that which was called “efficient cause” in the philosophical tradition and
Systemic Thinking: An Introduction xiii

corresponds to the idea of something that produces something else as its effect, and
whose most familiar examples are the physical actions that bring about new objects
or certain observable processes.
Common language, however, has no difficulty in accepting as meaningful, for
example, the discourse of Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo, when he explains that the cause
of his coming and remaining in prison (waiting for his capital execution) was not his
legs, bones, and muscles (which had served equally well to run away) but his desire to
obey his city’s laws. That physical situation had an immaterial cause. This depends on
the fact that the Greek word aitìa (that is commonly translated as “cause”) had a poly-
semous sense, which we might better express through the notion of “the reason for
which.” In this way we can easily understand Aristotle’s doctrine of the “four causes”
(formal, material, efficient, and final), of which only the efficient means the “produc-
tion” of an effect, whereas the others concern the “reasons” for which something
occurred, these reasons being the presence of a material substratum, the “form” or
essence of the entity concerned, and a goal orienting the process. This goal can be
either the aim or purpose pursued by an external operator performing the process or a
pattern inscribed in the internal essence of the entity, a kind of design presiding over
its development and also over its way of behaving in the different circumstances.
A generalized rejection of the final causes can be found at the beginning of mod-
ern philosophy, both in empiricist philosophers like Francis Bacon and in rationalist
thinkers like Descartes and Spinoza. No wonder, therefore, that it enters also the
new natural science, especially considering that Galileo had explicitly excluded
from the objectives of this science the investigation of the essence of the physical
bodies, and the final cause was precisely meant to reside in their essence. The same
attitude is explicitly adopted by Newton who, in the Scholium Generale of his
Principia, after having admitted that he had been unable to uncover the cause of
gravitation, declares that he will not try to “imagine hypotheses,” by postulating
“hidden causes,” like those that the Scholastic tradition was accustomed to locate in
the substantial forms of things.
This kind of reasons has nothing to do with a refusal of finalism in Nature that,
according to certain authors of our time, would be a subtle improper tool for admit-
ting the interference of religion into science by requiring the existence of an intel-
ligent omnipotent God as the cause of the marvellous order or design present in
Nature. Indeed, the Newtonian statement hypotheses non fingo appears in the con-
clusion of the Scholium Generale in which ample space is given to a series of theo-
logical considerations according to which only the existence of such a supernatural
spiritual Creator can account for the global order of the world, while the impossibil-
ity of uncovering the cause of gravitation is linked with the impossibility of natural
science (called “experimental philosophy”) to bypass the external properties of
things and penetrate their intimate essence (which is an epistemological reason).
As a matter of fact, the mechanically interpreted order of Nature has remained
for a long while one of the fundamental arguments for the existence of God as its
cause, even for anti-religious thinkers like Voltaire, and the same Darwin’s evolu-
tion theory (in which no finalism is present) was considered by him as the more
compatible with divine creation (as he says in the final lines of the Origin of Species
xiv E. Agazzi

that have remained until the last edition, “There is grandeur in this view of life, with
its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being evolved”).

System Theory

One can correctly point out that Bertalanffy’s study, in which he presents the first
seeds of system theory, focuses on the inadequacy of the second principle of thermo-
dynamics for the explanation of the phenomenon of biological growth of individual
organisms (Investigations on the laws of growth, 1934). This principle, however, had
been often criticized in physics. The novelty of Bertalanffy’s approach is the consid-
eration that it applies to closed systems, whereas living organisms are open systems.
Therefore, the problem is not that of “criticizing” the second principle of thermody-
namics (that is right under its specific hypothesis) but to recognize that it is not fully
pertinent in the case of living organisms because they are not systems of the kind
envisaged by the said principle. Therefore, the issue is that of making a pertinent
investigation regarding the different kinds of systems and possibly their common
features. In particular, the question of “lawlikeness” was important, because the priv-
ilege of the physical closed systems was that of being regulated by deterministic
“natural laws,” permitting predictions and experimental tests, while nothing compa-
rable appeared possible for living systems. Nevertheless, it is also evident that living
organisms are able to preserve a certain identity underlying their continuous change
that they realize and tend to keep a steady state which is different from the simple
equilibrium (be it the mechanic or the thermodynamic one). These are among the
best known characteristics that are studied in General System Theory (GST). They
suggest that, due to their difference with regard to the conceptual tools usually admit-
ted in the sciences, they can offer the opportunity of revisiting certain other more
general philosophic concepts that are appreciated within the systemic way of think-
ing. In other words, GST, which is born in the field of science, can help us to recover
the intellectual importance of philosophical concepts that had been marginalized as
a historical consequence of the advent of modern science in the Renaissance.

Holism

The ontology of GST consists of a web of single totalities, each one of them being
individually characterized by its own internal structure and proper functions. In
order to appreciate the novelty of this ontology, it is sufficient to compare it with
that of another great foundational theory in mathematics, that is, set theory. In set
theory only one relation is primitive, that of membership of the elements in the set,
 Systemic Thinking: An Introduction xv

but the elements are in a certain sense all equivalent, since they have no property.
Moreover, they have no internal structure, are not even linked by particular rela-
tions, but can be arbitrarily aggregated in sets, subsets, and supersets. On the con-
trary, the primitive constituents in system theory are systems, each having its specific
characteristics and internal structure, and they do not simply “belong” to the global
system but are mutually interrelated with the other systems and are not “elements”
but “subsystems” of the global system, according to a net of relations that allow the
global system to have certain properties and perform certain functions.
Due to this fact, every system is at the same time “simple” (in the sense that it is
well determined in what it is, independently of its relations with other systems) but
also “complex” (as far as it has an internal structure, constituted by a web of rela-
tions among its subsystems, from which its own specific properties depend). It is not
arbitrary nor difficult to recognize in what we have just said the classical notion of
substantial form, which was precisely the ontological principle expressing the fact
that any entity is what it is due to a particular organization of its constituent parts
whose status was qualified as matter (not because they are simply “raw material”
but because they belong to a lower level of organization). After these precisions it
should be clear that “holism” is here understood as the appreciation of the “point of
view of the whole” as opposed to “atomism” and has nothing to do with the notion
of holism that Bunge rejects.

Complexity

In the holistic perspective, the concept of complexity is included, whose sense is

that the properties of a system are the result of the correlations among the subsys-
tems that constitute it and also of the relations it has with its environment. Modern
science, on the contrary, had followed Galileo’s proposals not only in the exclusion
of the investigation of the intimate essence of things but also in the practice of
studying an isolated phenomenon concerning one single property by trying to create
an artificial situation in which all possible “disturbances” were eliminated. This is
the basis of the experimental method that has given a tremendous impulse to the
natural sciences and has permitted to establish numberless physical laws of a strictly
deterministic type, from which exact predictions can be inferred. All this represents
the merits of the analytic method.
Nevertheless, already at the end of the nineteenth century, the limitations of this
approach have appeared in connection with the awareness of the impossibility of
adopting this model for the treatment of complex systems. Nonlinearity and several
forms of “indeterminism” are too well known to be recalled here. Therefore, the
synthetic approach has emerged not at variance with, but as complementary to, the
analytical approach and has produced a wide investigation on complexity that is
strictly cognate with GST. This situation has promoted important philosophical dis-
cussions regarding the meaning of natural laws and the applicability of this concept
also in other domains—like psychology, sociology, and economics—as well as a
xvi E. Agazzi

deeper analysis of the notions of determinism and causality, that is, of fundamental
ontological and epistemological issues. All this is a part of more specific problems
of the philosophy of science, like, for instance, the proposal of admitting as “expla-
nation” of phenomena and also the proposal of “mechanisms” that describe “how”
they occur, rather than “why” they occur, or the legitimacy of speaking of laws for
single phenomena, just to mention a few examples.

Finalism

In system theory the concept of finality could receive a sense purified of any psycho-
logical flavor linking it with the intention or purpose set down by a subject (a mean-
ing that, however, is perfectly legitimate in the study of human actions). This objective
meaning of finality simply reflects the condition for qualifying something as a sys-
tem, that is, the fact of being an ordered totality of parts, endowed with properties
that objectively contribute, thanks to a precise order of relations and correlations (and
not to another one), to the existence of properties and functions of the global system.
This is actually the classical notion of “final cause,” which expresses the specific way
in which a certain entity behaves because it has a specific nature. If we prefer, we
could say that the final cause expresses the dynamic aspect of the nature of an entity.
This type of causality can be amplified also to include the supersystems of a particu-
lar system and in such a way can concern even the universe, as it was the case with
Aristotle’s doctrine of the “immobile motor”: this acts as supreme final cause and not
as an efficient cause. It is due to the Judeo-Christian doctrine of God’s creation that
this was also seen as efficient cause, and this—as we have already noted—produced
the diffidence of certain contemporary authors against the admission of final causes
in science. GST offers a conceptualization of finalism or “teleology” that is neutral
and not entailing per se any “theological” consequence, though not preventing one,
on the other hand, to take this finalism as an objective feature present in the world for
proposing specific philosophical arguments for proving the existence of God, and
their force must be judged according to philosophical criteria.
It may be noted, in addition, that the notion of propensity introduced by Popper
and taken up by recent scholars for the explanation of several phenomena in the
natural and especially in the human sciences is a rather patent recovery of the con-
cept of final cause.

Interdisciplinarity

Already Bertalanffy had pointed out that the systemic approach can be applied in
different domains, and this idea was strongly reinforced when the notion of an
“open” system was extended not only to the existence of exchanges of matter and
energy with the environment but also of information. In such a way, concepts like
Systemic Thinking: An Introduction xvii

those of feedback, regulation, and self-regulation, together with all models elabo-
rated in cybernetics, could be used for a significant improvement of the description
of the interactions within systems and between systems and environment.
This means that the concept of system is transdisciplinary, that is, it can be prof-
itably used in different disciplines. The systemic approach, however, is equally
important in every interdisciplinary research that is in the treatment of complex
problems. By complex problem we do not mean a “difficult” problem but one in
which different aspects of an issue must be taken into consideration. In these cases
the best strategy is that of making explicit the differences and specificity of the dis-
ciplines that can approach each aspect, with their specific criteria of investigation,
of testing, and of making arguments, and then to make the effort of making a certain
translation and especially of finding correlations between these disciplinary results.
The “global” result will not be, and must not be, a “unique” portrayal of the reality
investigated (obtained by reduction to a single allegedly “fundamental” discipline)
but a multifaceted portrayal in which the contribution of every discipline can be
appreciated because it “contributes” to a better understanding of the whole.
Considering the enormous quantity of complex problems that are surfacing in
our contemporary world, and which will increase in number and complexity in the
coming future, we can conclude that a generalized adoption of a systemic way of
thinking will be the more suitable intellectual attitude to be promoted in our
societies.

Evandro
Mexico City, Mexico Agazzi
Contents

Systemic Thinking: An Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    ix

Evandro Agazzi
 henomenological Structural Dynamics of Emergence:
P
An Overview of How Emergence Emerges����������������������������������������������������    1
Gianfranco Minati
The World Opacity and Knowledge ��������������������������������������������������������������   41
Giuseppe Vitiello
I n Search of Organization Laws: A New Way of Doing Science?
(The Uprising of Systemic Attitude)��������������������������������������������������������������   53
Alessandro Giuliani
I s Present Ecology a Systemic Discipline? New Scientific Paradigms
Lead to Bionomics��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   61
Vittorio Ingegnoli
 rchitecture and Systemics: A Brief Outline������������������������������������������������   83
A
Carlotta Fontana
 limate Risks, Economics and Finance: Insights from Complex
C
Systems��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   97
Francesco Lamperti, Irene Monasterolo, and Andrea Roventini
 he Legal Concept of the Environment and Systemic Vision���������������������� 121
T
Maurizio Cafagno, Domenico D’Orsogna, and Fabrizio Fracchia
 he Living Body as a Model of Systemic Organization in Ancient
T
Thinking������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 149
Elisabetta Matelli

xix
xx Contents

 entences as Systems: The Principle of Compositionality

S
and Its Limits���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 171
Aldo Frigerio
 ind and Body. Whose? Philosophy of Mind and the
M
Systemic Approach������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 185
Lucia Urbani Ulivi
Contributors

Evandro Agazzi Panamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico

Maurizio Cafagno Dipartimento di diritto, economia e culture, Università degli
studi dell’Insubria, Como e Varese, Italy
Domenico D’Orsogna Università di Sassari, Sassari, Italy
Carlotta Fontana Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani—DAStU,
Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Fabrizio Fracchia Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy
Aldo Frigerio Department of Philosophy, Università Cattolica S. Cuore, Milan,
Italy
Alessandro Giuliani Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
Vittorio Ingegnoli Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy—ESP,
Università Statale di Milano, Milan, Italy
Francesco Lamperti Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa,
Italy
Elisabetta Matelli Dipartimento di Filologia classica, Papirologia e Linguistica
storica, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
Gianfranco Minati Italian Systems Society, Milan, Italy
Irene Monasterolo University of Economics and Business (WU), Vienna, Austria
Andrea Roventini Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa,
Italy
Lucia Urbani Ulivi Department of Philosophy, Università Cattolica del Sacro
Cuore, Milan, Italy
Giuseppe Vitiello Dipartimento di Fisica “E.R.Caianiello”, Università di Salerno
and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Salerno, Italy

xxi
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Phenomenological Structural Dynamics
of Emergence: An Overview of How
Emergence Emerges

Gianfranco Minati

Abstract We propose a conceptual overview of the phenomenology of emergence,

dealing with some of its crucial properties, representations, and specific inducing
phenomena. We focus on properties such as compatibility and equivalence, and
their interplay, as a basis suitable for hosting and inducing processes of emergence.
We specify this interplay by considering suitable hosting processes, such as syn-
chronisation, covariance and correlation, coherence, and polarisation. We then con-
sider phenomena where such processes are considered to occur, providing suitable
foundations for the establishment of processes of emergence, such as the establish-
ment of attractors, bifurcation points, chaos, dissipation, domains of coherence,
multiple and remote synchronisations, and multiple systems. We list properties of
representations understandable as signs, clues, and possible trademarks of the
coherence of interplaying compatibilities and equivalences. This interplay estab-
lishes processes of emergence, such as the presence of bifurcations, meta-structural
properties, network properties, non-equivalence, power laws, scale invariance, sym-
metry breaking, unpredictability, and the constructivist role of the observer. Such
interplay is considered in the continuing absence of a consolidated theory of emer-
gence and within a new, generalised conceptual framework where theorisation is no
longer considered as a necessary perspective. Finally, we briefly discuss issues
relating to simulation.

1 Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to present a general, inevitably partial overview of the
phenomenology of emergence and considers some related properties and represen-
tations, the interplay between compatibilities and equivalences, and phenomena as
suitable incubators of types of emergence (see Sect. 2).

G. Minati (*)
Italian Systems Society, Milan, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

L. Urbani Ulivi (ed.), The Systemic Turn in Human and Natural Sciences,
Contemporary Systems Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00725-6_1
2 G. Minati

We consider the interplay among suitable hosting processes, such as synchroni-

sation, covariance and correlation, coherence, and polarisation, the establishment of
attractors, bifurcation points, chaos, dissipation, domains of coherence, multiple
and remote synchronisations, and multiple systems, and properties such as bifurca-
tions, meta-structural properties, network properties, non-equivalence, power laws,
scale invariance, symmetry breaking, unpredictability, and the constructivist role of
the observer (Sects. 4 and 5).
The overview that we present is mainly conceptual and intended for interdisci-
plinary usage. This includes recognising predominant properties, processes and
their combinations, as well as suitable approaches, correspondences, representa-
tions, and transpositions when problems and solutions of a discipline give rise to or
constitute problems and solutions for another discipline. This contributes, with
reference to the topic of the book, to the transdisciplinary study of systemic
properties when systemic properties are studied per se and not systems having
such properties, e.g. in biology, economics, linguistics, and physics.
This overview is presented in the persisting absence of a consolidated theory of
emergence and in a new generalised conceptual framework where theorisation is no
longer considered as a necessary perspective, “contenting” ourselves with concor-
dances and correspondences in a data deluge (Anderson 2008) such as the proper-
ties listed in Sect. 5.2. However, the approach assuming that correlation supersedes
causation and theorising is mathematically wrong (Calude and Longo 2016).
More realistically, we should consider soft-theorisations, quasi-theories as par-
tial, regarding composite phenomena of the global system under study. For instance,
in the study of emergent collective behaviour, e.g. flocking and traffic, we have
available theories of fluid dynamics, gravitation, thermodynamics, and topology,
however insufficient, to constitute a theory of collective behaviour. In the same way,
we may consider the intrinsic limitations of the theory of phase transitions to model
phenomena of emergence (Minati and Pessa 2006, pp. 229–230). Section 5 consid-
ers how incompleteness for theorisations may be considered related to the impossi-
bility to fully zip the representations of system behaviour into analytical formulae.
Theories are considered here as corpuses constituting explicit symbolic
approaches contrasted with non-explicit, non-symbolic approaches such as net-
works and sub-symbolic approaches. A theory is considered as a coherent group of
tested or verifiable general propositions allowing extrapolations and falsification.
Examples are the Big Bang theory, currently the prevailing cosmological model
for the birth of the universe; Darwin’s theory of evolution; Quantum Field Theory;
and the Theory of Relativity.
Examples of alternatives are data-driven approaches, i.e. to cluster retrospec-
tively by finding emergent correspondences without looking for the respect of theo-
retically pre-established ones, by using, for instance, statistics, finding correlations,
or by using neural-network-based models.
The concepts introduced should be useful for dealing with problems of complexity,
particularly where such problems are not well formalised and may never be so, for
instance, in architecture, economics, education, medicine and welfare, philosophy,
political sciences, safety at work, and other general social issues. We mention how
Phenomenological Structural Dynamics of Emergence: An Overview of How… 3

social systems, problems of post-industrial society, where knowledge is the main

resource and which is characterised by significant levels of complexity, are often still
dealt with by using only knowledge from pre-complexity industrial society (Kumar
2004; Minati 2012a, b), i.e. ignoring processes and properties of complex phenomena.
While several robust, although partial, formalisations are available for the study
of complexity (see Sects. 4 and 5), the interplay of equivalences, recovery dynam-
ics, and other properties conceptually introduced here may need to wait to be prop-
erly formalised within the perspective of further research.
Various interdisciplinary contributions have introduced and elaborated the con-
cepts of:
• Self-organisation, considered here as a continuously variable, but stable process
of acquisition of new structures, e.g. either periodic, quasi-periodic, or quasi-­
predictable. Examples include swarms having repetitive behaviour and dissipa-
tive structures such as whirlpools, the Bènard rolls (Getling 1998), and structures
formed in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (Kinoshita 2013). Stability of vari-
ability, e.g. periodicity, corresponds to stability of the acquired property.
• Emergence, considered here as continuous and irregular, but coherent, e.g.
dynamically correlated, variable in the acquisition of new structures and non-­
equivalent processes of self-organisation. Examples include the continuous,
irregular, and unpredictable, but coherent acquisition of shapes by swarms and
traffic distributions. Some contributions presented suitable models and, in some
cases, simulations (see, for instance, Anderson and Stein 1985; Batterman 2011;
De Wolf and Holvoet 2005; De Wolf et al. 2005; De Wolf et al. 2006; Fernandez
et al. 2014; Krause and Ruxton 2002; Licata and Minati 2016; Manrubia and
Mikhailov 2004; Samaey et al. 2008; Vicsek and Zafeiris 2012).
Returning to the theme of this contribution, we specify that self-organisation and
emergence are phenomena intended as being continuously established by related
constituting processes, e.g. sequences of dynamical coherent aggregations. The
concept of coherence may be considered coincident, for the moment, with correla-
tion. The concept of coherence is elaborated in Sect. 4.3.
Different levels of representation of phenomena of self-organisation and emer-
gence can be considered as microscopic, macroscopic, and mesoscopic. Microscopic
considers each specific agent as a well-distinguishable entity, such as boids, mole-
cules, or customers in markets. Macroscopic considers global variables ignoring
any specificities of indistinguishable agents, such as patterns, temperature, or daily
revenue in markets. Mesoscopic considers properties of clusters of microscopic
agents without ignoring them completely. This could include instantaneous clusters
of boids, possibly spatially dispersed but flying at the same altitude; molecules clus-
tered by same energy level and chemical properties; numbers of cars in traffic that
cannot accelerate (we cluster cars slowing down, cars at constant speed in the queue,
and cars standing still in a queue), or daily revenue subdivided by product and time
period of sale in markets. This is consistent with the definitions of the three levels
described by Liljenstrom and Svedin (2005). We consider how processes of emer-
gence may occur in different equivalent ways.
4 G. Minati

We consider here collective phenomena established by processes of emergence

intended as mesoscopic coherence (Minati and Licata 2013). Clusters considered by
the mesoscopic representation are based on microscopic equivalences among clus-
tered elements. We elaborate here the interplay between such equivalences as a
“mechanism” leading to coherences and processes of emergence.
The structure of this contribution is as follows:
–– The first part summarises the basic properties of complex systems and emer-
gence, introducing the central role of the coherent interplay of equivalences and
compatibilities.
–– The second part discusses crucial aspects of complex systems and their genera-
tive processes of emergence.
–– The third part briefly describes some generic processes and their properties suit-
able for hosting the interplay between compatibilities and equivalences. This
includes synchronisation, covariance and correlation, polarisation as global
ordering, and relationships between correlation and coherence.
–– The fourth part considers phenomena where processes mentioned in the third
part are considered to occur and provide suitable places for the establishment of
processes of emergence. This includes phenomena such as the establishment of
attractors, bifurcation points, chaotic behaviour, dissipation, domains of coher-
ence, multiple and remote synchronisations, and multiple systems. Furthermore,
we list properties of representations of processes considered as signs, clues, and
possible trademarks of coherence of interplaying compatibilities and equiva-
lences establishing processes of emergence, such as having attractors, bifurca-
tion points, meta-structural properties, network properties, non-equivalence,
power laws, scale invariance, symmetry breaking, unpredictability, and finally
the constructivist role of the observer.
–– Section 6 briefly discusses issues relating to simulation.

2 Emergence from Compatibilities and Equivalences

Among the various possible processes of emergence (see below) consider a suffi-
ciently representative prototype: the case of the establishment of collective behav-
iours or collective motions in 3D space by generic agents. For example, living agents
assumed to possess a suitable cognitive system (boids and fishes); living agents
assumed to possess no cognitive system (amoeba, bacterial colonies, cells, and mac-
romolecules); non-living agents (lasers, networks of oscillators, traffic signals, or
rods on vibrating surfaces). For a more detailed overview see, for instance, Vicsek
and Zafeiris (2012). When dealing with collective behaviour, in the following we
also use both the terms “component” and “entity” to denote a composing, belonging
generic agent.
The following considerations may be suitably generalised across disciplines
thanks to the genericity of the agent considered and by considering other nD,
Phenomenological Structural Dynamics of Emergence: An Overview of How… 5

non-­Euclidian, and possibly non-physical spaces having properties such as spaces

of values, e.g. prices, or of possible events.
As stated above, we consider here the case of spatial emergent collective behav-
iours given by temporally subsequent coherent changes occurring in 3D space such
as for flocks, swarms, traffic, and possible related simulations (Vicsek and Zafeiris
2012). We stress the phenomenological importance of the homogeneity of agents
giving rise to the collective behaviour under study such as boids forming flocks,
mosquitoes forming swarms, fishes forming schools, firms forming industrial dis-
tricts, oscillators forming networks of oscillators (Lind et al. 2009), and signals or
vehicles forming traffic phenomena. The homogeneity of the constituent compo-
nents ensures sameness, for instance, of rules of interaction, parameters, ranges of
values for variables, and of the ways to process (cognitively or not) environmental
inputs. We do not consider here any possible cases of non-homogeneous, i.e. mixed,
or unlikely collective behaviours.
The peculiarities of emergence include, on the one hand, robust coherence given,
for instance, by the occurrence of long-range correlations (see Sects. 4 and 5) among
components and, on the other, intrinsic low predictability, singularities, with little or
no possibility of external regulation. Such peculiarities are intended here as being
related to the dynamic interplay among compatibility and equivalence, as specified
below, of multiple, instantaneous, subsequent microscopic roles, e.g. spatial posi-
tions, velocity, and direction, of components or of their configurations forming a
collective behaviour. This is suitable, for example, for the case of the mesoscopic
level which is considered as the place of continuous negotiations between the micro
and macro. At the mesoscopic level, a large variety of equivalent mesoscopic repre-
sentations are possible because of the undefined number of possible multiple clus-
ters (Laughlin et al. 2000), such as, for example, Multiple Systems and Collective
Beings (Minati and Pessa 2006) and Networks (see Sect. 5).
Interactions among agents may occur in several ways. A first simplification, the
simplest case occurs when considering couples having a single and completely
identifiable interaction between each component of the couple. In this first simplifi-
cation, the interaction in progress is not considered as being composed together
with other superimposed interactions having, for instance, different durations and
intensities. However, depending on the granularity of time considered, at each
instant we may have several interactions in progress regarding different couples,
independent of their initial times and durations.
The approach which considers the states of components per instant of discretised
time as resulting and not in progress is a second simplification. Interfering processes
which are differently temporally autonomous, i.e. have different initial times, dura-
tions, and intensities, should be considered as progressively establishing the collec-
tive behaviour. In models and simulations (see Sect. 6), this simplification usually
comes together with the first simplification when considering single non-­interfering
temporally subsequent interactions. However, real cases of populations of interfer-
ing interactions (for instance, occurring in physics as a superimposition of waves
and disturbances, where the interference changes the effects of interactions or the
interaction itself) having different initial times, durations, and intensities, differently
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He had thought at one time of asking Matthew Witlock to let him
come as his assistant in the workshop. He had retained much of his
old skill as a mechanic. With a little practice it would come back to
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who had once been himself. Old Wandering Peter would have sat
cross-legged upon the bench and talked to him. He would have
come across his father, pottering about among the shadows; would
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listened to the passing footsteps. There, if anywhere, might have
come the Master.
It had cost him an effort to dismiss the desire. He so wanted to
preach the practical, the rational. We could not all be blacksmiths.
We could not all do big things, heroic things. But we could all work
for God, wherever and whatever we happened to be; that was the
idea he wanted to set going.
He wanted to preach to men that the Christ-life was possible for all:
for the shop-keeper, for the artisan, for the doctor, for the lawyer, for
the labourer, for the business man. He wanted to tell the people that
Christ had not to be sought for in any particular place, that he was
here; that we had only to open the door and He would come to us
just where we were. One went on with one’s work, whatever it was,
the thing that lay nearest to one, the thing one could do best. We
changed the Master not the work, took other wages.
He wanted to tell it in Millsborough for the reason that it was the
only place where he could be sure of being listened to. Nowhere else
could he hope to attract the same attention. He wanted to attract
attention—to advertise, if any cared to put it that way. It was the
business man in him that had insisted upon Millsborough. In
Millsborough, for a time—for quite a long time—this thing would be
the chief topic of conversation. Men would discuss it, argue around
it, think about it when alone.
In Millsborough he had influence. In Millsborough, if anywhere, he
might hope to find followers. For twenty years he had been held up
to the youth of Millsborough as a shining example: the man who had
climbed, the man who had “got on,” the man who had won all the
rewards the devil promises to those who will fall down and worship
him, wealth, honour, power—the kingdoms of the earth. He stood
for the type of Millsborough’s hero: the clever man, the knowing
man, the successful man; the man who always got the best of the
bargain; the man who always came out on top; the man who
whatever might happen to others always managed to fall on his feet.
“Keep your eye on Anthony Strong’nth’arm.” In Millsborough it had
become a saying. The man to be in with, the man to put your money
on, the man God always prospered.
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help but grin as he thought of it. Anthony Strong’nth’arm declines a
peerage. Anthony Strong’nth’arm resigns his chairmanship of this,
that and the other most prosperous concern; his directorship in half
a dozen high dividend-paying companies; gets rid of his vast
holdings in twenty sound profitable enterprises; gives up his great
office in St. Aldys Close, furniture, fittings and goodwill all included;
writes a courteous letter of farewell to all his wealthy clients; takes a
seven-roomed house in Bruton Square, rent thirty-two pounds a
year; puts up his plate on the door: “Anthony John Strong’nth’arm,
Solicitor. Also Commissioner for Oaths. Office hours, ten to four.”
What’s the meaning of it? The man is not a fool. Has never, at any
time, shown indications of insanity. What’s he up to? What’s come
into his head? If it’s God he is thinking of, what’s wrong with the
church or the chapel, or even the Pope, if he must have a change?
Does he want a religion all to himself? Is it the poor that are
troubling him? He’d do better for them, going on with his money-
making, giving them ten—twenty, fifty per cent., if he liked, of his
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Anthony Strong’nth’arm himself?
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hear him out to the end. It might be but a nine days’ wonder; the
talk grow tiresome, the laughter die away. That was not his affair. He
wanted to help. He was sure this was the best thing he could do.
He had not noticed the door open. She was standing before him.
She drew his face down to her and kissed him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, “for one of the happiest days of my
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“There is something I want to tell you,” he said.
She put a hand upon his lips. “I know,” she answered. “In three
minutes time. Then you shall tell me.”
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clock upon the mantelpiece had softly chimed the twelve hours.
Then she released him, and seating herself in her usual chair, looked
at him and waited.
 CHAPTER XVIII
He had not asked her for an answer. She had promised to think it
out. She might wish to talk it over with Jim. She and Jim had always
been very near to one another. And there were the children to be
consulted. She was to be quite free to choose. Everything would be
arranged according to her decision. He had said nothing to persuade
her—unless he had hoped that by explaining to her his own reasons
he might influence her,—and beyond a few questions she had
remained a silent listener. It was shamefacedly, as one confessing a
guilty secret, that he had told her. From the tones of his voice, the
look in his eyes, she had read his unconscious pleading to her to
come with him. But whether she went with him or stayed behind
would make no difference to his going. It was that had hardened
her.
To a certain extent she had been prepared. Ever since the child
John’s death she had felt the change that was taking place in him.
There was an Anthony she did not know, dimly associated in her
mind with that lover of her dream who standing by the latchet gate
had beckoned to her, and from whom she had hidden herself, afraid.
She had set herself to turn his thoughts aside towards social reform,
philanthropy. It was with this idea she had urged him to throw
himself into public affairs, to prepare for Parliament. She had hoped
for that. There she could have helped him. It would have satisfied
her own craving to be doing something herself.
And then the war had engulfed them, obliterating all other horizons:
it had left her nothing but her animal emotions. Her boy’s life! She
could think of nothing else. Norah was in France: and she also was
in the danger zone. The need of work obsessed her. She had found a
rambling old house, far away upon the moors, and had converted it
into a convalescent hospital.
Labour was scarce and the entire management had fallen upon her
own shoulders. Anthony’s duties had confined him to Millsborough.
For years they had seen one another only for a few hours at a time.
There had been no opportunity for intimate talk. It was not until her
return home to The Abbey that her fear had come back to her. There
was no definable reason. It was as if it had always been there—a
presence, waiting its time. One evening, walking in the garden, she
had seen him standing there by the latchet gate, and had crept back
into the house. She had the feeling that it would be there, by the
latchet gate, that he would tell her. So long as she could avoid
meeting him there she could put it off, indefinitely. The surer she felt
of it, the more important it seemed to her to put it off—for a little
while longer: she could not explain to herself why. It was when,
without speaking, he had pressed her to him so close that she had
felt the pain in his body, that she knew the time had come for her to
face it.
What answer was she to make him? It seemed such a crazy idea. To
give up The Abbey. To think of strangers living there. It had been
the home of her people for five centuries. Their children had been
born there. For twenty years they had worked there lovingly
together to make it more beautiful. It would be like tearing oneself
up by the roots. To turn one’s back upon the glorious moors—to go
down into the grimy sordid town, to live in a little poky house with
one servant; presuming the Higher Christianity permitted of even
that. Yes, they would get themselves talked about: no doubt of that.
To do her own shopping. She had noticed them—passing them by
swiftly in her shining car—tired women, carrying large network bags
bulging with parcels. Some of them rode bicycles. She found herself
wondering abstractedly whether she would be able to afford a
bicycle. She had learnt to ride a bicycle when a girl. But that was
long ago. She wondered whether she would be able to pick it up
again. She pictured herself bargaining outside the butchers’ shops,
examining doubtful looking chickens—when chickens were cheap.
There was a particular test you had to apply. She would have to
make enquiries. She could see the grinning faces of the tradesmen,
hear their oily tongues of mock politeness.
Her former friends and acquaintances—county folk who had motored
in for a day’s shopping, the stout be-jewelled wives of the rich
magnates and manufacturers of Millsborough. Poor ladies! how
worried they would be, not knowing what to do, meeting her by
chance in the street. She with her umbrella and her parcels. And
their red-faced husbands who would squeeze her hand and try to
say the right thing. There would be plenty of comedy—at first,
anyhow. That was the trouble. Tragedy she could have faced. This
was going to be farce.
The dulness—the appalling dulness of it. The long evenings in the
one small living room. She would have to learn sewing—make her
own dresses, while Anthony read aloud to her. He read rather well.
Perhaps, by help of great economy in the housekeeping, they might
be able to purchase a piano, on the hire system—or would it have to
be a harmonium?
She had risen. From the window, she could see the cloud of smoke
beneath which the people of Millsborough moved and had their
being.
Why should it seem so impossible. Her present ordered existence,
mapped out from year to year, calling for neither thought nor effort,
admitting of neither hope nor fear, the sheltered life of a pampered
child—had not that also its dulness, its monotony? Why did rich
people rent saeters in Norway, live there for months at a time on
hunter’s fare, doing their own cooking and cleaning—welcome the
perils and hardships of mountain climbing; of big game shooting; of
travels into unknown lands; choose danger, privation and toil, and
call it a “holiday”? Had not she herself found the simple living and
hard work of the hospital a welcome change from everlasting
luxuriousness? Would the Garden of Eden have been the ideal home
for men and women with brains and hands? Might not earning one’s
living by the sweat of one’s brow be better sport?
Need those evenings after the day’s work was done be of necessity
so deadly? Her great dinners at The Abbey, with all their lights and
lackeys, had they always been such feasts of intellectuality? Surely
she had had social experience enough to teach her that brains were
a thing apart from birth and breeding, that wit and wisdom were not
the monopoly of the well-to-do. It came back to her, the memory of
her girlhood’s days when they had lived in third-rate boarding-
houses in Rome and Florence; rented small furnished appartements
in French provincial towns; cheap lodgings in Dresden and Hanover.
There had been no lack of fun and laughter in those days. Those
musical evenings to which each student brought his own beer, and
was mightily careful to take back with him the empty bottles, for
which otherwise ten pfennigs would be charged. How busy she and
her mother had been beforehand, cutting the sandwiches, and how
sparing of the butter! Some of the players had made world-famous
names; and others had died or maybe still lived—unknown. One of
them she had heard just recently, paying ten guineas for her box;
but his music had sounded no sweeter than when she had listened
to it sitting beside Jim on the uncarpeted floor, there not being
chairs enough to go round. Where had she heard better talk than
from the men with shiny coat sleeves and frayed trousers who had
come to sup with her father off maccaroni and chianti at two lire the
flask. There might be clever brilliant men and women even in
Millsborough. So far as she could judge she had never succeeded in
securing any of them for her great receptions at The Abbey. They
might be less shy of dropping in at Bruton Square.
It was what one felt, not what one had, that was the source of our
pleasure. It was the school boy’s appetite, not a Rockefeller’s wealth
that purchased the good dinner. The nursery filled with expensive
toys: the healthy child had no need of them. It was the old rag doll,
clutched tight to our bosom that made the attic into heaven. It was
astride on the wooden horse without a head that we shouted our
loudest. We over-burdened life with empty show, turned man into a
mannikin. We sacrificed the play to the scenery and dresses. Four
walls and a passion were all that the poet demanded.
Whence had come this idea that wealth brought happiness? Not
from the rich. Surely they must have learnt better, by this time.
It was not the enjoyable things of life that cost money. These acres
of gardens where one never got away from one’s own gardeners!
What better were they than a public park? It was in the hidden
corner we had planted and tended ourselves—where we knew and
loved each flower, where each whispering tree was a comrade that
we met God in the evening. It was the pleasant living room, where
each familiar piece of furniture smiled a welcome to us when we
entered, that was home. Through half-a-dozen “reception rooms,”
we wandered, a stranger. The millionaire, who, reckoning interest at
five per cent., paid ten thousand a year to possess an old master—
how often really did he look at it? What greater artistic enjoyment
did he get out of it than from looking at it in a public gallery? The
joy of possession, it was the joy of the miser, of the dog in the
manger. Were the silver birches in the moonlight more beautiful
because we owned the freehold of the hill?
She remembered her walking tours with Jim. Their packs upon their
backs, and the open road before them. The evening meal at the
wayside Inn, and the sweet sleep between coarse sheets. She had
never cared for travel since then. It had always been such a
business: the luggage and the crowd, and the general hullaballoo.
What would the children say? Well, they could not preach, either of
them: there was that consolation. The boy, at the beginning of the
war, and without saying a word to either of them, had thrown up
everything, had gone out as a common soldier—he had been so
fearful they might try to stop him—facing death for an ideal. She
certainly was not going to be afraid of anything he could say, after
that.
Norah’s armour would prove even yet more vulnerable. Norah, a
young lady brought up amid all the traditions of respectability, had
dared even ridicule; had committed worse than crimes—vulgarities.
A militant suffragette reproving fanaticism need not be listened to
attentively.
But this case she was thinking of was exceptional. Whatever
Anthony and she might choose to do with the remainder of their
lives need not affect their children. Norah and Jim would be free to
choose for themselves. But the young mother faced with the
problem of her children’s future? Ten years ago, what answer would
she herself have made?
The argument took hold of her. She found herself working it out not
as a personal concern, but in terms of the community. Was it
necessary to be rich that one’s children should be happy? Childhood
would answer “no.” It is not little Lord Fauntleroy who clamours for
the velvet suit and the lace collar. It is not Princess Goldenlocks who
would keep close barred the ivory gate that leads into the wood.
Childhood has no use for riches. Childhood’s joys are cheap enough.
Youth’s pleasures can be purchased for little more than health and
comradeship. The cricket bat, the tennis racket, the push bike, the
leaky boat that one bought for a song and had the fun of patching
up and making good; even that crown of the young world’s desire,
the motor-cycle itself—these and their kindred were not the things
for which one need to sell one’s soul. Education depended upon the
scholar not the school. Was the future welfare of our children helped
by our being rich? or hindered?
Suppose we brought up our children not to believe in riches, not to
be afraid of poverty: not to be afraid of love in a six-roomed house,
not to believe that they were bound to be just twice as happy in a
house containing twelve, and thereby save themselves the fret and
frenzy of trying to get there: the bitterness and heart break of those
who never reached it. The love of money, the belief in money, was it
not the root of nine-tenths of the world’s sorrow? Suppose one
taught one’s children not to fall down and worship it, not to sacrifice
to it their youth and health and joy. Might they not be better off—in
a quite material way?
It occurred to her suddenly that she had not as yet thought about it
from the religious point of view. She laughed. It had always been
said that it was woman who was the practical. It was man, was the
dreamer.
But was she not right? Had that not been the whole trouble: that we
had drawn a dividing line between our religion and our life,
rendering our actions unto Caesar, and only our lips unto God?
Christianity was Common Sense in the highest—was sheer Worldly
Wisdom. The proof was staring her in the face. From the bay of the
deep window, looking eastward, she could see it standing out
against the flame-lit sky, the great grey Cross with round its base
the young men’s names in golden letters.
The one thing man did well—make war. Man’s one success—the
fighting machine. The one institution man had built up that had
stood the test of time. The one thing man had made perfect—War.
The one thing to which man had applied the principles of
Christianity. Above all things required of the soldier was self-
forgetfulness, self-sacrifice. The place of suffering became the place
of honour. The forlorn hope a privilege to be contended for. To the
soldier, alone among men, love thy neighbour as thyself—nay, better
than thyself—was inculcated not as a meaningless formula, but as a
sacred duty necessary to the very existence of the Regiment. When
war broke out in a land, the teachings of Christ were immediately
recognized to be the only sensible guide to conduct. At the time,
Anthony’s suggestion had seemed monstrous to her; that he should
ask her to give up riches, accept poverty, that he should put a vague
impersonal love of humanity above his natural affection for her
children and herself! But if it had been England and not God that he
had been thinking of—if, at any moment during the war, it had
seemed to him that the welfare of England demanded this, or even
greater sacrifice, she would have approved. The very people whose
ridicule she was now dreading would have applauded. Who had
suggested to the young recruit that he should think of his wife and
children before his country, that his first duty was to provide for
them, to see to it that they had their comforts, their luxuries: and
then—and not till then—to think of England? She had regarded his
determination to go down into the smoky dismal town, to live his life
there among common people, as foolish, fantastic. He could have
helped the poor of Millsborough better by keeping his possessions,
showering down upon them benefits and blessings. He could have
been of more help to God, powerful and rich, a leader among men.
As a struggling solicitor in Bruton Square of what use could he be?
Had she thought like that, during the war, of the men who had given
money but who had shirked the mud and blood of the trenches—of
the shouters who had pointed out to others the gate of service?
Neither rich nor poor, neither great nor simple—only comrades.
Would it ever be won, the war to end war—man’s victory over
himself.
The pall of smoke above the distant town had merged into the night.
In its place there gleamed a dull red glow, as of a pillar of fire.
She turned and faced herself in the great Cheval glass with its frame
of gilded cupids. She was still young—in the fulness of her life and
beauty; the years with their promise of power and pleasure still
opening out before her.
And suddenly it came to her that this was the Great Adventure of
the World, calling to the brave and hopeful to follow, heedless,
where God’s trumpet led. Somewhere—perhaps near, perhaps far—
there lay the Promised Land. It might be theirs’ to find it—at least to
see it from afar. If not—! Their feet should help to mark the road.
Yes, she too would give up her possessions; put fear behind her.
Together, hand in hand, they would go forward, joyously.

THE END
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHONY JOHN
***

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