System Metaphor Research Articles

CLOSED SYSTEMS AS METAPHOR FOR TRANSFERENCE

ABSTRACT The systems theory concept of the closed system is suggested by Ronald Fairbairn as one metaphor both for internal object relationships, and their expression in transference. This paper considers how this metaphor may be helpful in analysing the patient–therapist relationship and, particularly, in deciding when aspects of it should be understood as transference. The argument is that one major challenge could be seen as lying in the complexity and subtlety of internal world systems, and a second in the many factors that conspire to lure the therapist to participate in rather than notice them. The systems metaphor seems useful both in bringing into focus some of the difficulties in analysing the therapist–patient relationship and also in offering a vehicle for thinking about them.

From designing objects to designing fields—from control to freedom

In this paper we want to explore Field as a concept and as a metaphor for understanding interactive systems. By interactive systems we mean both systems and artworks, where the user by interacting changes the course of events. We intend to show why we need new terms and why we consider Field to be a fruitful concept and term. Further we will show how the Field concept changes both our understanding of what we do as designers and composers and how we acknowledge our audience. We will exemplify the design consequences of the Field concept by going through some design considerations we made when designing the audio tactile installation Mufi.

Agent-based Collaborative Working in Construction: Understanding and Modelling Design Knowledge, Construction Management Practice and Activities for Process Automation

This paper uses the open systems metaphor to propose advanced information ond communications technology (ICT) and distributed artificialintelligence (DAI) techniques that ’Iauld enhance distributed collaborative working In construction organisations. The metaphor views a construction organisation as a group of cooperating (and sometimes competitive)entities/units that work together to achieve certain indlviduai and cooperative goals of the collaborating entities. In a construction context this translates to achieving design, construction, and prodUct delivery goals. However, while current approaches to modelling problem solving In construction focus on separate views of the product and process components, these models do not capture the actual work practices and social contexts within which construction prodUcts are designed, constructed and delivered. The paper contributes to address the eXisting gap by discussing how the multi-agent paradigm (a DAI technique) can be used to model distributed organisatio...

Scavengers and decomposers in an eco-industrial park

SUMMARY Industrial ecology is an approach to industrial development which emphasizes material cycling and webs of producers, consumers, scavengers and decomposers, and encourages resource conservation and waste prevention that leads to improved efficiency, competitiveness and sustainability. This article first introduces the functions and roles of scavengers and decomposers in the natural ecosystem. Then, by using this natural system metaphor, it studies how the industrial world can realize closing loop operation by encouraging the development of scavenger and decomposer businesses. A case study of Burnside Industrial Park is employed to further help the reader understand how to analyze the roles and functions of different businesses in an industrial system.

A hierarchy of coupled maps.

A large number of logistic maps are coupled together as a mathematical metaphor for complex natural systems with hierarchical organization. The elementary maps are first collected into globally coupled lattices. These lattices are then coupled together in a hierarchical way to form a system with many degrees of freedom. We summarize the behavior of the individual blocks, and then explore the dynamics of the hierarchy. We offer some ideas that guide our understanding of this type of system. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Differentiation and complexity in the functionalist corpus: Rethinking the metaphor of system

The following paper examines the cybernetics trajectory of Parsons’ later work and its extension in the work of Luhmann. While the earlier work was focused on social action as a basic unit of sociological analysis, in The Social System Parsons articulates a notion of systems as self-generating and self-regulating. In Luhmann’s Social Systems this trajectory is made more explicit and developed in opposition to the early Parsons. Its metaphorical dimensions are also developed, creating additional levels and layers of abstraction. Those developments are deemed necessary in order to come to terms with the increasingly “complex” nature of modern society; however they are problematic in several respects—including their tautological nature which provides a basis for the unrestrained explanatory power of “system.“

Natural System Metaphors for Supporting Collaboration in Air Force Applications

Mixed-initiative settings involve situations where humans and computers are tasked together to accomplish a set of goals. For these goals to be successfully executed, humans and software agents must work together. This paper examines natural systems such as the brain, the immune system, population ecology, and economics for potential metaphors of facilitating collaboration. Each of these natural systems has salient common characteristics including the ability to represent collaboration as well as competition in distributed networks. This article provides an overview of an ongoing research effort that attempts to unlock these metaphors towards building computational models for planning problems in Air Force applications.

At the heart of information ecologies

The ecological metaphor for technological systems provides a useful supplement to others dealing with the question of human control over technologies. However, it fails to develop adequately its own reliance on communication as the means whereby human values may be embedded in technologies, or to recognize the role of professional communicators in that process.

Exact and Approximate Nondeterministic Tree-Search Procedures for the Quadratic Assignment Problem

This article introduces two new techniques for solving the Quadratic Assignment Problem. The first is a heuristic technique, defined in accordance with the Ant System metaphor, and includes as a distinctive feature the use of a new lower bound at each constructive step. The second is a branch-and-bound exact approach, containing some elements introduced in the Ant algorithm. Computational results prove the effectiveness of both approaches.

Creativity of metaphor in perceptual symbol systems

A metaphor can often create novel features in an object or a situation. This phenomenon has been particularly hard to account for using amodal symbol systems: although highlighting and downplaying can explain the shift of focus, it cannot explain how entirely new features can come about. We suggest here that the dynamism of perceptual symbol systems, particularly the notion of simulator, provides an elegant account of the creativity of metaphor. The elegance lies in the idea that the creation of new features by a metaphor proceeds in the same way as the creation of regular features in a perceptual symbol.

Marital interaction in dyadic and triadic contexts: continuities and discontinuities.

While the systemic metaphor used in much current family research requires examination of the interrelationships among individuals, relationships, and the family as a whole, work on triadic relationships has generally been missing. This research examined the presence of second-order effects in marital interaction: changes in interactions between spouses when the husband-wife dyad became a parent-parent-child triad. Results indicated the presence of consistent context effects. Parental behavior when alone was not a good predictor of parental behavior in the presence of a child: behaviors occurred at significantly lower levels in parental dyads than in parent-parent-child triads, and correlations across the two contexts were less than consistent. Results are discussed in light of their implications for observations of families.

An abstract framework for globalising interactive systems

We present an abstract framework for designing and developing globalised interactive systems from simple components viewed as games [1] (K. Stathis, M.J. Sergot, Games as a Metaphor for Interactive Systems, in: M.A. Sasse, R.J. Cunningham, R.L. Winder (Eds.), People and Computers XI (Proceedings of HCI′96), August 1996, London, UK, BCS Conference Series, Springer-Varlag, pp. 19–33). We identify a set of concepts required to specify and implement interactions, in such a way whereby instantiating the specifications and implementations of games we obtain components that correspond to localised instances of an interactive system. Localisation is also obtained by either customising the specification or the implementation of the interactive system, or both. The framework also caters for complex interactive systems which are interpreted as compound games built-up from sub-games. In this case, coordination of sub-games is the main issue that we must address at the global level. This is resolved by specifying and implementing sub-games as active components of the more complex games, and, as a result, we localise the coordination of components in the interactive system. The framework lends itself towards a methodology that is suitable for globalising the development of interactive systems.

Dirt in our mouths and hunger in our bellies: Metaphor, theory-making, and systems approaches to sustainable agriculture

The metaphor of the food system,dominant in current research approaches to sustainableagriculture, mirrors the productionist paradigm, whichreduces our relationship to land and food to theproduction and consumption of commodities. Theenactment of the familiar values of nourishment andhospitality is what the goal of sustainableagriculture would amount to in terms of our day to daylived experience. The metaphor of an ’’earthen bowl‘‘ asa theory of food and agriculture can ’’embody‘‘ thesevalues such that broader change might be achievedthrough embracing the idea and practice of theories asnourishing and theorizing as hospitable.

Families as systems.

In this chapter, we discuss theoretical and conceptual models that use an organismic or systems metaphor for understanding families. We suggest that such theories are important for stimulating new research and organizing existing data, and that advances in these theories over the past few decades have expanded the potential for understanding child development, as well as adult adaptation and the development of close relationships. These paradigms follow from models that view development as resulting from the transactional regulatory processes of dynamic systems. Such models are helpful for considering multiple influences on development and adaptation and have implications for the design of effective interventions. We focus on the specifics of systems theories as applied to families, and the research generated by or consistent with these views. Our review is not exhaustive; rather, we intend to give a sense of the direction of this work and its importance for the understanding of development and adaptation.

Part 1: Transforming Family Nursing Theory: From Mechanicism to Contextualism

Although the systems metaphor has been useful in conceptualizing families, at this time in our evolution offamily nursing theory and practice it is essential that we begin to broaden our understanding and conceptualization offamily. Evolving out of a contextual worldview, this article presents an alternate metaphor to address aspects of family that are not captured by the systems metaphor. Based on a narrative perspectivefamily is envisioned as a polyphony of voices in dialogical relationship. This narrative conceptualization of family emphasizes the ineffable nature of "family," and acknowledges the diversity of meanings and experiences family may draw forth in people's lives. Based on this reconceptualization offamily, the author underscores the necessity of developing new approaches to family nursing practice. The author suggests phenomenological inquiry as a foundation for contextual family nursing practice.

White settler assertions of native status

The anthropology of postcolonialism has tended to neglect or homogenize the varied expressions of cultural and national identity of British settler descendants. Against the backdrop of research with white settler descendants who farm large Crown pastoral lease properties in the South Island high country of New Zealand, this article examines evidence they presented before the Waitangi Tribunal about their attachment to land as a politicized expression of belonging, of one set of Pakeha voices. It analyzes how high country runholders speak about and symbolically construct belonging and suggests that the high country landscape is a central metaphor in the conceptual systems of its inhabitants, providing them with a way of thinking about their cultural distinctiveness within the arena of contestations in the meanings of cultural identities defined by the Waitangi Tribunal. [postcolonial settler identity, New Zealand high country, land claims, sheep station life, anthropology of place]

Of families and other cultures: the shifting paradigm of family therapy.

This essay proposes that family therapy is currently undergoing a paradigm shift as a result of the ascendance of an epistemological focus absent in the foundational works that gave rise to the field's dominant clinical approaches. While systemic metaphors for the family are based on mechanistic, biological, and linguistic models primarily concerned with how the world is (ontology), postmodernism's social constructionist leanings give primacy to meaning, interpretation, and the intersubjectivity of knowledge (epistemology). Thus, the metaphor of the family as a system is gradually being subsumed by a metaphor that construes families as interpretive communities, or storying cultures. It is suggested that this largely implicit transformation be made explicit in order to explore more fully the clinical implications of the new epistemology.

SYSTEMS METAPHORS, SYSTEMS ANALOGIES, AND PRESENT CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

During the Cold War, international relations studies were dominated by elaborate models based on early concepts of cybernetics and systems thinking. Applications of the concept of “stability” serve as the best example of those efforts. However, rigorous mathematical models have not proved very useful in international relations studies and in associated domains. Rather systems analogies and metaphors can influence theory and practice of international relations. The paper attempts to show the meaning of the term stability in international relations theory and practice, as well as limits of its applications. In addition, it is shown that terminology associated with chaos—nonequilibrium systems, self-organization, and autopoiesis—replaces traditional interpretations of stability with evolutionary concepts corresponding to the idea of liberal-democratic organization of social life.

An Examination of Some Metaphorical Contexts for Biologically Motivated Computing

Biologically motivated computing seeks to transfer ideas from the biosciences to computer science. In seeking to make transfers it is helpful to be able to appreciate the metaphors which people use. This is because metaphors provide the context through which analogies and similes are made and by which many scientific models are constructed. As such, it is important for any rapidly evolving domain of knowledge to have developments accounted for in these terms. This paper seeks to provide one overview of the process of modelling and shows how it can be used to account for a variety of biologically motivated computational models. Certain key ideas are identified in the subsequent analysis of biological sources, notably, systemic metaphors. Three important aspects of biological thinking are then considered in the light of computer science applications: biological organization, the cell, and models of evolution. The analysis throughout the paper is descriptive rather than formalized so that a large variety of potential applications may be considered.

Understanding biosystem organization Part 2: towards a theoretical framework

The notion of biosystem organization is poorly understood by students and so its exploitation as an integrative concept is far from complete. In an attempt to go some way towards removing this problem, this paper presents a framework for analysing and describing biosystem organization. Taking biosystems to be models, the nature of the modelling process is reviewed from one perspective in the philosophy of science. Some important themes involved in biosystem modelling are identified and examined in some detail. One category, the systemic metaphors, is examined more fully and examples are described. The paper concludes with a look at some educational implications of this approach.