Social Systems Engineering

4Policy between Evolution and Engineering

Martin F.G. Schaffernicht

L’état, c’est moi

Louis XIV of France

What is good for Ford is good for America.

Henry Ford

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

Mr. Spock

4.1 Introduction: Individual and Social System

We humans have a reflexive mind, giving meanings to what happens around us and making plans to adapt it to our needs and wants. Looked upon as a biological entity, each of us is a system of interdependent organs which do not have such a mind. Nor do the social systems we are subsystems of. We perceive ourselves as ‘individuals’, separated from what surrounds us and indivisible. However, without other individuals around us, none of us would walk or talk, and then there would be no other individuals from whom to learn how to do so. Many other species depend on their respective social systems to stay alive, but humans need it to become alive as such. There is no human individual without such a human social system: person and social system are indivisible, and therefore we are really ‘indivi‐duals’, indivisible in two different and simultaneous ways.

For this reason, human social systems have a feature which distinguishes them from other social systems. Social systems can generally be defined by three aspects (Ackoff, 1994, p. 179): (1) they have purposes of their own; (2) they consist of subsystems with purposes of their own; and (3) they are contained in larger systems that have purposes of their own. Accordingly, ...