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STPrism

Hylton Boothroyd

4 min read

Based on the provided sources, particularly the works of Hylton Boothroyd and C. West Churchman, the concepts of hierarchy, non-ergodicity (novelty/irreversibility), speciation, causality, and constraint are tightly interconnected within the framework of “Action Programmes.”

Here is an “untangling” of these relationships:

1. Causality is mediated by Theories (The “Why”)

In complex social systems (unlike physical mechanisms), causality is not a direct push-pull relationship. It is mediated by human reflection.

• Theories vs. Reality: We act based on theories (pictures of how things behave) and proposals (pictures of what we wish to happen). Causality in social systems is “theory-saturated”.

• The Link: Theories provide the perceived causal link between an Action and its Consequences[1]. However, because human understanding is incomplete, these causal theories are always conjectures, never absolute truths[2].

2. Speciation disrupts Causality (The “Change”)

Social systems are not static machines; they evolve. Boothroyd refers to this as the speciation of action programmes.

• Evolution of Forms: Just as biological species evolve, organizations and social structures (action programmes) change their essential nature over time[3].

• The Break: When a programme “speciates” (changes its core theories or proposals), the causal rules change. A marketing strategy (action) that caused increased sales (consequence) in the “old species” of the market may fail completely in the “new species.” This is why recommendations are “necessarily impermanent”[2].

3. Non-Ergodicity drives Speciation (The “Novelty”)

The sources describe the system as non-ergodic (though they often use terms like “novelty” and “irreversibility”). This means the future is not a statistical reflection of the past.

• Novelty: Humans can conceive of novel actions that cannot be deduced from past data or logic[4][5]. This injection of novelty causes the system to evolve (speciate) in unpredictable ways.

• Irreversibility (The “Cut”): Churchman highlights that the word “decide” comes from the Latin decidere (“to cut”). A decision “cuts away all the other possible threads of human life… finally and forever”[6]. Once a decision is made, the system history is fundamentally altered; you cannot replay the experiment. This irreversibility prevents the system from settling into a stable, predictable state (ergodicity).

4. Hierarchy determines the Stability of Prediction

The relationship between Hierarchy and Constraint determines how well we can predict these changes.

• Nested Stability: Boothroyd argues that if a “higher-level” programme (e.g., the national economy) remains stable, we can often develop good predictive theories for “lower-level” programmes (e.g., a supermarket)[4].

• Cascading Failure: However, this stability is conditional. If the higher-level programme changes (e.g., a revolution or a new technology like the Eurodollar), the constraints holding the lower level in place disappear. The predictive value of theories at the lower level will “suddenly deteriorate”[7].

5. Constraint acts as the Stabilizer

In a world of speciation and novelty, Constraint is what prevents total chaos and allows for “piecemeal engineering.”

• Proposals as Constraints: Ethical systems, laws, and social customs act as proposals that constrain individual behavior[8]. They reduce the infinite variety of possible actions to a manageable set.

• Organizational Closure: De Zeeuw notes that organizations maintain themselves through “organizational closure”—constraints that prevent deviations and maintain identity[9].

• The “Cut” as Constraint: By making a decision (cutting), we constrain the future. We reduce the “mess” of possibilities to a single reality, allowing us to navigate[6].

Summary of the Relationship

• Non-ergodicity (Novelty) ensures that the future is not a repetition of the past.

• This novelty drives Speciation, causing the “species” of social systems (Action Programmes) to evolve.

• This evolution breaks established Causality (Theories), making all advice temporary.

• Hierarchy determines the scope of this instability; changes at the top disrupt causality at the bottom.

• Constraints (Proposals/Decisions) are the artificial stabilizers we create to impose order on this shifting, unpredictable reality.

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