Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Strategy and History)

35 Jacco van Uden, Kurt Richardson and Paul Cilliers, ‘Postmodernism Revisited? Complexity Science and the Study of Organizations’, Tamara, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2001), 53–67. See also Michael Lissack, ‘Complexity: the Science, its Vocabulary, and its Relation to Organizations’, Emergence, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1999), p. 112.

36 Waldrop, op. cit., pp. 11–13.

37 See Waldrop, op. cit., pp. 225–35.

38 Capra, op. cit., citing Stuart Kauffman, p. 204.

39 Gell-Mann, op. cit., p. 17; Waldrop citing Holland, op. cit., p. 145.

40 Richard Pascale, ‘Surfing the Edge of Chaos’, Sloan Management Review, Spring 1999, p. 85.

41 Most of these are derived from John Holland, Hidden Order, How Adaptation Builds Complexity, Reading, Mass: Perseus Books, 1995. In addition see Russ Marion and Josh Bacon, ‘Organizational Extinction and Complex Systems’, Emergence, Vol. 1, No. 4 (2000), p. 76; and Gell-Mann, op. cit., p. 235.

42 See John Holland, op. cit., pp. 31–4 and Gell-Mann, op. cit., pp. 17–25.

43 Gell-Mann, interestingly, makes the comparison between schemata and scientific theories, noting how Popper’s falsification principle acts as a selection mechanism. However, he also notes that science does not progress this neatly and that theories are selected for other reasons as well, referring to Kuhn. See in particular Chapter 7.

44 Gell-Mann, op. cit., pp. 303–4.

45 Boyd, The Conceptual Spiral, p. 14.

46 Gell-Mann, op. cit., p. 25. In fact, similar to Boyd, Gell-Mann includes language, traditions, customs, laws and myths, all of which can be regarded as ‘cultural DNA’. All encapsulate the shared experience of many generations and comprise the schemata for the society which itself functions as a complex adaptive system.

47 Gell-Mann, op. cit., pp. 292–4.

48 Gell-Mann actually includes a military illustration here. See p. 293.

49 Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point, New York: Bantam Books, 1982, pp. 273–4. Capra also discusses Gell-Mann’s first three modes of adaptation.

50 Boyd, Patterns of Conflict, p. 141.

51 Ibid., p. 143.

52 Ibid., p. 144.

53 Ibid., p. 143.

54 Ibid., p. 141.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Capra (1996), op. cit., pp. 301–3.

58 Ilya Progogine, The End of Certainty, New York: The Free Press, 1996, p. 73.

59 Holland in Waldrop, op. cit., p. 147.

60 For instance: Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack (1982), Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies (1975); Charles Cruickshank, Deception in World War II (1979); Donald Daniel and Katherine Herbig, Strategic Military Deception (1982); Michael Handel, ‘The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise’, International Studies Quarterly (September 1977); David Kahn, The Codebreakers (1967); R.V. Jones, Intelligence and Deception (1979); Ronald Lewin, Ultra Goes to War (1978); Amnon Sella, ‘Surprise Attack and Communication’, Journal of Contemporary History (1978).

61 Boyd, The Conceptual Spiral, p. 32.

62 Ibid., p. 22.

63 Ibid., p. 23.

64 Ibid., p. 24.

65 Ibid., p. 28.

66 Ibid., p. 38.

67 Ibid., p. 125.

68 See Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory, New York: The Guilford Press, 1991, Chapter 1, for a good archeology of postmodernism.

69 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Turn, New York: The Guilford Press, 1997, pp. 195–6. Interestingly, they find the historical foundation for postmodern ideas in Kierkegaard, Marx, and in particular Nietsche. Boyd read Marx, but also Nietsche’s works Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Twilight of the Idols. See also Damian Popolo, ‘French Philosophy, Complexity, and Scientific Epistemology: Moving Beyond the Modern Episteme’, Emergence, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2003, pp. 77–98, for the link between Foucault, Deleuze, Popper, Bergson and Prigogine.

70 Christopher Coker, ‘Post-modernity and the end of the Cold War: has war been dis-invented?’, Review of International Studies, 1992, Vol. 18, p. 189. See also Bradford Booth, Meyer Kestnbaum, and David R. Segal, ‘Are Post-Cold War Militaries Postmodern?’, Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Spring 2001), pp. 319, where they assert that ‘the theoretical perspective of postmodernism has become commonplace in sociology’. See for an introduction into modernity and postmodernity also Kenneth Thompson, ‘Social Pluralism and Post-Modernity’, and Gregor McLennan, ‘The Enlightenment Project Revisited’, both in Stuart Hall, David Held and Tony McGrew, Modernity and its Futures, Oxford: Polity Press, 1992.

71 Pauline Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, p. 15. The first chapter provides a concise overview of both various interpretations and meanings of postmodernism as its intellectual lineage and history.

72 Darryl Jarvis, ‘Postmodernism: A Critical Typology’, Politics and Society, Vol. 26, No. 1 (March 1998), p. 98.