Systems - Ontological vs Epistemic approach

This time I'm going to delve in a more philosophical or theoretical aspect. Is quite an open-ended thing, so don´t expect a straight up point!

It all begins because many times we found ourselves (in C7) talking about systems, whether it's about defining a problem, understanding the dynamics of a situation, or trying to leverage the emergent of a system.

On the many different ways to define what a system actually is, it is usual to compare it to a "bunch of parts" and talk about how on a system these parts interact, have a structure, a purpose or something. We are not concerned about this aspect now, we are assuming a mild understanding of what a system actually is.

The line that I want to draw this time, albeit blurry and wide, is the difference between what we can interpret and analyze as a system, and what needs to be taken as a whole. This is why we'll be talking about the ontological and epistemological realms.

hmmmmmm.... reaaaaally?

Ontological refers to an "entity", what may be called a "thing in itself". Think of a person, which is "a thing in itself" regardless of being constituted by many different parts. If we set these parts apart, the person is no more, and putting things back together won´t bring the person back. It has specific properties that emerge on it´s own level of aggregation, like character, emotions, self-consciousness, and so on.

On the other hand, Epistemological refers to a "unit of knowledge" or "what can be known", regardless of the kind of bond that ties it together. Think of a group of people, like a mob. Even though they might behave as one, with emergent properties, you can separate them, and after a while put them back together, and they´ll be able to exhibit the same behavior. It seems quite similar in it´s properties to an ontological person, but it´s complexity can be reduced.*

*We´ll be talking about irreductible complexity some other time

This difference is better taken, or understood, in relation to the quintessential concept of "emergence". Let's see how these different fields take on this:

onthological emergence: apparition of a qualitative novelty,
epistemological emergence: unpredictability from lower levels.

So, for instance, even if we know that a given phenomenon is caused by the interaction of many parts, like a mob, it's very different the approach we'll take if we are studying the movement of the people through a set of stairs and halls or if we are looking at the explosion of violence that can occur inside mobs.

In the first case, we can successfully, and sufficiently, model it understanding the "decision rules" of every individual for themselves, and see what happens when those rules interact. We do not need to assign a "mood" to the mob, or a transcendent purpose or a hierarchy. Accounting for the individual rules we can model the emergent behavior. But we cannot establish a direct, obvious link between the individual rules and the whole. This is easy to see in bird flocks, whose movement is unpredictable, even though we can know with a high certainty what every individual bird does.

On the second case, it is not enough to look at any individual, as there are some properties that are shared between all the elements inside the mob. The "violence", "excitement", or the maintenance of it, is not located on any individual, but rather on the interaction between them. If a leader is taken out, another individual will probably take it's place. Actions can be coordinated between different sections of the mob, and there is a threshold quantity of people so that this phenomenon takes place. Under this "critical mass", nothing happens, even if the "most violent individuals" are present. So in this case we need to look at the mob as a whole, with a given structure and mechanisms, but largely indivisible.

Why does that matter? Well, it serves as a framework to tell what "is" from what we "see as". What has existence of its own and what is an apparent unit. This serves us to consider for instance a methodology for approaching an issue, or the level of aggregation we can use to describe the lower or higher levels that we are interested into.

This perspective may not change what we actually end up doing on a given task or problem, but is an important reality check, and it´s a big clue to help us set the way the analysis takes place. It will help us answer some things: "Are we asking the right question?", "Is this one problem or a set of related, smaller problems?", "Do we need other tools, or disciplines, to tackle this thoroughly?", and so on.

Perhaps this is no more than a brain teaser, but if it gets you to be more conscious about the way to approach different problems, then it´s a double win.