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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 3. Knowing What to Do
Dreaming: Liquid daffodils … a touch of crimson…slick inner elm bark and the watchful eye of the birch bark as I climb up…and up… and slide in the mud…and realize something, someone holds a place for my foot … and I climb higher…together… Just dreaming …
| Epistemology, the study of how we know anything, yields many ways to know the goodness of Rural System and its parts. |
I've struggled with the decision for including this chapter. I do not know whether I should or not. Knowing is difficult. This chapter, as others, cannot be positioned properly within this book because it is both beginning and end. Maybe it is general and notable … but only for the Appendix. Its topic is not well enough known to assume it is not needed. If nothing else, it is an appeal for using precise language, to say what you mean, to help us all out of the struggle pit in which we need to work together but cannot understand each other … but instead, popularly state: "you know what I mean…,like 'absolutely'." I need to discuss ideas and models before I discuss validating them, but I need to discuss fundamental models before I do modeling. It is a section that and does not fit well the conventional hierarchy and pattern of much writing, certainly not the newspaper inverted pyramid cousin.
We have to approach the question of how do we know that Rural System should be created. How do we know that it will "do good" (as well as "well") and that the effort will not be wasted? How do we know anything?
The message in this chapter has been important to me and to many of my students for over 40 years. Some have ignored it. It is the "basement;" people look ahead and upward. Here are concepts that are fundamental to knowing that Rural System is a good idea, to knowing that how we know is vital to the rest of the book and literally to the future of the rural environment of the world.
"We did not put our ideas together. We put our purposes together. And we agreed. Then we decided." Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Mayans
The study of how we know is called epistemology, an ugly word, but beautiful in its effects and results. Epistemology is one of the four major problems of philosophy, i.e., metaphysics, logic, axiology, and epistemology. There are at least 11 major, fairly-well- described ways to know anything, but the essence of this chapter is that "we know" when a set of criteria has been met. We have to know as best we can; we have to avoid the limitations of some ways of knowing. The stakes of failing and knowing falsely or at a low level of confidence are too high for the rural environment and its people. Guesses and random choices will not serve us well. Facts from evil people abound. Seeming knowledge about life after death hides under clouds of special words like "belief" and "faith." We have to move past primitive thought-modes, revelations, and non-discussable phenomena as grounds for action… action that is now likely to influence our present quality of life and, I fear, very badly the expanse of options for us and for future people.
I think the criteria for knowing what people want or need are the same as "human objectives" and I think we can list them but I want to suggest a novel if not new way to know anything. (It's likely to have been expressed better by someone else because I glean from their fields.)
The suggested way "to know" is heuristic convergence. Heuristic means the act of discovery. Heuristic convergence embraces and unifies the other 11 ways of knowing. It is a system of ways. Systems are whole, interconnected and curvilinear, with parallels, loops, and recursive actions. Martin Luther, who is said to have lamented the "string of pearls" model for writing theology, suggested it required the overlapping petals of the "rose bud." These knowledge bases are more like petals than pearls. I do not think they are a continuum but are useful, distinctive means for studying and then comprehending how we know. The categories provide a structure, a rough model, of how humans know. Figure 1 shows the bases that I know lead to an epistemological base called heuristic convergence.
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| Figure 1. Major knowledge systems and the classical epistemological roots of knowledge leading to the heuristic convergence proposal. |
If all bases have strengths, but to varying degrees, all are recognized within the literature of epistemology, all have some utility, but all have weaknesses, then it may be useful to those who search for truth to see them as a knowledge searching system. It is non-adversarial rational work. For each particular bit of knowledge, they may be used in different ways to assess or test its truthfulness. This involves taking multiple approaches to knowledge sequentially, simultaneously, or interactively focusing on the truthfulness of a thing. A casual optimization may be performed, a search over the surface of a mountain, exploring non-linear truth-space. It is likely to progress over time, blocked here, advancing there with a discovery, retreating with a refutation or error correction. It is a continuing, satisfying uncertainty.
Different workers will use different epistemological bases; they will be used in different mixes, with different weights. There is a continual solidification, unification, and discovery ongoing, converging on truth. It is a truth search with negative feedback. This action is an entropy minimizing effort, for "to know" is negentropic. To inquire is temporary (and probably) entropy-maximizing. There must be feedback along with it if it is to have survival value. The ongoing action creates a new epistemological base, worthy of naming to help in its use. Perhaps all I am doing is writing about something that people already know, making the vulgar common. I think we can improve our heuristic convergence, already in use, for the good of rural conditions. I know this is how we know (a most perplexing statement).
Is "heuristic convergence" science? Science is largely inductive. It includes deduction in the oft-stated "induction-deduction dialectic" but relatively few papers of a deductive nature are admitted to the "scientific literature." It includes authority (as in "literature reviews"); is strongly contextual (often its weakness); its hypotheses of the inductive base are ascribed to "private" and "other" bases; and in the gray of the research, development, and extension triangle of land-grant universities, it is strongly pragmatic. Science is much too broad a word. It has connotations and denotations far beyond epistemology. The needs, as I see them, are to recognize the bases, escape the force field of induction, and engage the synergistic power emerging from convergence toward truth. This new base unifies the best of the others and minimizes the weaknesses.
An epistemological system may be conceived. The system parts, in boldface, are: The objective is to amass and maintain truth. The process is heuristic convergence. The inputs are of all types - the literature, senses, experts, experimental observations, results of models. The feedback is the continual scrutiny and evaluation, then revising and discarding of conclusions and belief statements. It may include revising the belief levels assigned to each that remains. Feedforward may address changing storage of knowledge, now in books, art, photographs, song, and other forms. It casts ahead ongoing changes in perceptions of truth. The comprehensive, efficient, secure, storage subsystem(s) needs to be designed and created. The network from idea or observation to belief statement and its revision or replacement often needs to be stored because the network itself may provide knowledge for the knowledge system itself. For the pragmatists who would poo-poo philosophy, let their answers to "Why epistemology?" be couched as:
Not the least of the reasons for a life-long study of epistemology or taking the stance of an epistemological inquirer is that it may revise the concept of science (Chapter 4).
Quantifying Knowing
How could we know if we have an improved concept of the rural system? That we are improving? How is the state of knowledge quantified? Surely it is more than know, not-know, a one (1.0) or zero decision. I recommend not using the word "fact" except in the most general conversation because a fact has a connotation of certainty. Given the limitations in all of the epistemological bases, it would seem that complete certainty is unattainable. [There are people who state belief in a particular god, or god-concept and ascribe that belief as being 100 percent certain. This often represents a private epistemological base though other bases may be used in attempting to convince others of that certainty.]
It is very useful to discuss how certainty may be quantified in terms of probability. A range of casually-used words and phrases may be quantified as a means to think about certainty, aid in its discussion and study, and help the designer interpret what clients say or know about their objectives and the conditions of their ecosystem. "Possible" means that the probability of occurrence or of truth is greater than zero. This word opens the door for discussion ...usually about the probability of the thing discussed. Tentative warranted certainty is truth. Certainty is not demanded by critical intelligence as a necessary condition for rational belief. Belief is a key word in epistemology. It is within the middle ground between things possible and levels of probability. "I believe x is true" (e.g., that tree height is strongly related to tree diameter), "Do you believe in trees?" is an absurd question and will usually result in no response or requests about what trees can do or how they may be used to solve a problem or block, defeat, suspend, or ride-out a situation. Belief in something (other than in a god or gods) is a statement about its condition, status, or function. It is also a statement about the believer's perceptual apparatus. It may be an expression about the dynamics of something, especially its stability.
Beliefs are related to objects, events, processes, and states (status) - the structure, dynamics, and relations of general systems. For objects, just any old x, a representative statement is "I have a belief about x." Note that beliefs about objects must be about one or more of the parts or dimensions of that object and they are usually expressions of the utility of or benefits people can obtain from or with the object. For events, a statement is "I believe that x will occur." For processes, "I believe that something (like transpiration) is occurring." For status or state, "I believe the animal is dead."
When a person says, "I am certain," then the probability level is (or should be) for a precise communicator, 1.0. I have not done studies, but my perception is that general current usage suggests probability levels of:
These are statements about the certainty of knowledge, the certainty of belief statements. This range of certainty is from less than zero (the singular condition of false, not degrees of falseness) to 1.0, which is certainty. The zero condition is a state of non-belief, total abstinence of commitment to a belief statement. Since certainty seems unlikely to be reached, say only about 0.9999, then this still leaves room for rejection (i.e., 1.0 - 0.9999). This is not zero, however. The negative cannot be proven. Other means need to be found to reject something, to say: "I am certain x is false." "I know the sun will not come up tomorrow!", "I know the species has been extirpated!" I know I shall not win the national lottery!" are negative belief statements. They cannot be proven at the time they are stated. Belief statements are formulated so that expressions of certainty may be made about them.
Students have often expressed difficulties with applied general systems theory especially in agricultural and natural resource topics. I have presumed that this has been because it, as presented, lacked order (the a, b, c of freshman biology and chemistry). I have imagined this systems theory and a systems approach to resource topics as being placed as if by magic near the center of a large industrial conference and exhibition hall. There are pathways and units, but no required order. You may go anywhere, see it all, probably make some inefficient turns, return to some exhibits, and only glance at others. I presume there are some who would sit trembling in such an exhibition hall and wait for an assistant; some who would find the entrance and start there because it was so labeled. In this book, the chapters are little more than groups of ideas, like groups of types of equipment in the exhibit hall. If this book were computer-stored, the best use would be in searching for key word pairs throughout the book (called "hypertext").
The truth-search is constant, like the ever-moving focus-knob of the microscope being used by the expert, the ever-shifting eyes of the soldier patrolling at night. It is continuing study of the methods and grounds of knowledge, especially its limits and validity.
I imagine that like me, before I evaluate an idea, verify an observation, or decide on anything, you need to have a concept or knowledge about it. I need the concept to create a model - words, physical, or computer. How do we know that what we are to model is right? The emphasis is not on the rightness of modeling (whether we should and whether the technique is proper), but on how we know …anything. To the ecosystem designer confronted with the prospects of a high dam that will block a major elk migration, the question to be asked is not "What is my duty?" but "How can I know what is my duty?" Next, the person's question may be: "How do the advocates know of the rightness of their proposal?" He or she may thus aid in providing the criteria for judging an answer.
To the systems-oriented person familiar with constraints, linear programming, and multi-dimensional concepts, the definition of epistemology as human credibility space will be meaningful. Ecosystem or rural system designers do not have to become epistemologists and master the substance, structure, and tools of that endeavor. Rather, epistemology provides the most fundamental, perhaps most exciting creative base for skepticism and theoretical development imaginable. It can provide a new awareness, one that creates pressures for rigorous and analytical thought and a compulsion to ask at each step in design some yet more fundamental question. Designers need to insist that what they know they really know. They need to become less involved with whether rural economic and ecosystem principles and statements are true and more involved with how they are true.
Without epistemology, humans can hardly advance towards any but the most empirical knowledge. I believe that a theory of knowledge is significant although more pragmatically and personally-empirically than idealistically. Significance is partially meaningful, simply if mistakes are prevented. Significance is a measure of how intimate knowledge is tied to the active realization of human objectives. With the epistemological struggle, I hopefully work against an egocentric professional and worldview, thus losing (or never gaining) significance. Failure to join the intellectual struggle, it seems to me, is the reproachful materialization of: "I like things as they are," or "Do not confuse me with the facts, especially with the factors that determine their factuality." Neglect of epistemology sponsors a barrage of guesses about the nature of reality. Neglect produces the chaos in which one opinion is as good as another. Neglect and the resultant chaos generate a very apparent pseudo-scientific dogmatism in ecosystem and rural system work that is closed, defensive, and often out to create a mental monopoly.
There is need to pay increasing attention to epistemology in a period when the scientific community or public no longer seriously raises the question of how will a technological hurdle be crossed, only when; when the brilliance of the scientific method blinds people from dark questions about science and the creation and conservation of knowledge; when the truth of natural systems remains private knowledge. Agriculturists, foresters, and ecologists, trained in the scientific method, rarely understand that they have been captured by induction, one epistemological base. It now seems that an alternative is available. Hardly just one, the alternative rejects the concept of a best or perfect base and states a multi-perspective truth premise. It is called heuristic convergence and it has eleven bases or positions from which truth may be sought or perceived.
The bases are:
Authority
This is knowledge based on a power figure, some fount of truth. This is knowledge asserted by the expert or virtually an undisputed source. It may also be a group authority such as expressed in a creed. Primitive examples are the medicine man or wise person of the tribe. A modern example is the authoritative text.
Although limited, authority it is a way to know. People who have worked afield for years as trained observers know an enormous amount. It is very sad to see environmental agencies not attempt to capture this knowledge when these people change areas or retire. (It is addressed in Nature Seen.) Depending on self-prepared publications is totally inadequate.
While it may be good, authority is weak as a base because it cannot handle the prophet, the spurious observation (i.e., the sensory base discussed later), the wrong reason, and it cannot discriminate between authoritative groups. Parental authority is enough to make many people leery of this base, but then on second thought... A sub unit of authority is privilege. "How do you know her salary is that much?" "I know; I am her supervisor." Not necessarily experts, some people have special access to information that others do not.
Other
A modest escape valve, there are probably means other than those listed and discussed here of knowing. These may include those insights induced under drugs and sickness and brain cell implant. This may overlap the private base. Overlapping is not uncommon throughout this analysis. Such knowledge gained may be repeated or repeatable but only in a limited way.
Knowledge of presence or place is said to be gained in unusual ways, perhaps electromagnetism, as in migrating birds, or by some total, innate, multi-sensory comprehension of conditions, including impending attack and "imprinted" conditions of early childhood.
Genetic
Insects emerge, and some exist as adults for a very short period, perhaps only a few days. They know what to eat, in what patterns to behave, how to reproduce, and how to avoid some predators. Other organisms, including people, have some innate knowledge transmitted within the genetic code. The more dependent an animal is upon its parents, upon learning, the less information, knowledge for life, seems imparted in the code.
Place
Perhaps there is another epistemological base, that of place. A squirrel is not startled into jumping when a leaf falls beside it. It knows its terrain and actors. It dodges hawks; it ignores leaves. Short-lived insects know their foods, their homes, and their roles, but these can be claimed to be a genetic base. A wilderness traveler sleeps soundly; the tenderfoot awakes at any hoot, every scurry in the leaves, every fire-brand collapse, and every rock roll in the stream. From biology we gain an alternative concept of how animals know anything, and that is "imprinting." The duckling knows its parent. A duckling brought from an egg incubator imprints on a human child or adult and behaves toward it as it might to its parent. There is evidence that birds and insects also "imprint" on spaces and structure. They return to the same nesting area; they build the same nests; they use the same nest-size holes. Wood ducks, raised in boxes, return from migration to nest in boxes. Progeny of wasps having built paper nest on wires on the ground return to the same wires. Migratory fish imprint on the chemical characteristics of their original streams. Perhaps place is an element of cover. People grow up in grasslands; they "love the plains" and express discomfort at living among mountains. Mountain people tolerate, but express ad nauseam the beauty of coastal living, but long to return. They know their place; they feel uncomfortable out of it. Not proven; I suspect a type of low-level, residual, humanoid imprinting.
Perhaps place is an ancillary type of the coherence epistemological base. Most bases seem related. I cannot decide whether recognizing and knowing the name of a person (or a plant) or not doing so is a place phenomenon. Maybe there is only simple correlation in such observations, but I think failing to recognize an otherwise well-known person because he or she was in a totally unexpected place suggests the mental action of searching among several ways to know anything.
I visited northeastern China in 1989 and knew the place. I felt at home in the forest, though everything else was different. The species were different than those I knew, but the families and genera of plants were similar. The farms were the same. I could relate easily; I was familiar with the total, the "surround," a spatial gestalt. I knew the place. I knew what to expect. I did not feel at risk. I suspected that I could never feel comfortable in Senegal. Everything seemed different. I could not predict what was behind each tree, beneath the river surface, or what had caused the disturbance on the ground surface.
A student of mine took me to the Rann of Kutch in northwestern India, a vast frightful coastal salt desert. He was at home there. He loved the place; he knew it well. Place may be a way to know.
Private
There are people who claim to have had very personal, perhaps unrepeatable experiences. They know something but how they know is private to them. It is perfectly sufficient, but its source is unavailable. Metaphysical experiences (revelations) are one of the grounds of private knowledge. The person having knowledge asserts to the question of "how?": "I just know!" The knowledge is uninvestigatable. The knowledge held is almost undiscussible. As Bendall asserted: "The notion of truth presupposes the notion of inquiry. "
The Rural System designer knows that it is inappropriate to discuss facts. I avoid using the word, suspecting there are none. The discussible dimensions are how do you know the facts? How were they determined? Let us discuss their factuality.
Sensory
"Seeing is believing" is a well-known phrase but upon reflection, it is only true for the trained observer and then it is limited. The variation in courtroom testimony about what has been seen can be convincing that it is limited. Training of behaviorists, scientists, and law enforcement officers is notable because a sensory base can be improved. "How do you know?" "I sensed it!" People learn to improve their sensory perception with eyeglasses, hearing aids, microscopes, etc. Most of the technology of environmental sampling is designed to improve the sensory perception of the ecosystem. The perfect observation cannot, however, overcome the bad sampling strategy or bad research design. A sensory epistemology is limited also because of limited sensory ability, training, equipment, etc. It is also limited because of communication. An uncommunicated observation (or one poorly done) is private knowledge.
A blind-folded person smelling burnt hair and touched with an ice cube will "know" he has been burned! It is almost impossible to have a pure stimulus. The context of the stimulus provides its meaning. To know based on sensory perception requires knowing the context.
The empiricists (e.g., Hume, Berkley, and Locke) went to the world to learn to see and gain knowledge. The struggle, unabated, is between knowing what to observe (having a structure, organization, or model as a means of assembling sensory perceptions and thus avoiding "noise" and the entropy of information systems) and being aware of the dangers that such a model, a concept, may cause you to observe the wrong thing or in the wrong way. The structure (or context), not the sensory experience, may be flawed.
The sensory apparatus itself is limited. Being hit in the head, a person might exclaim: "I saw a blinding light!" This could occur in the dark. Drugs produce altered states that either reduce or enhance senses (e.g., guard dogs search better when given certain drugs). Dreams are often so real that people report events that have never occurred.
Contextual
Not the physical context but the language context is one basis for knowledge. This is knowledge based on tacit, continuing agreement among users of a language. We assume people know what we mean by "hard," "soft," "pain," or "wet." We may know what land "carrying capacity"(e.g., for a wild animal population) means because of the way it is used. Under close examination, many of these phrases and words disappear (or should do so) because they are weak, incomplete, and imprecise. (Carrying capacity is so widely and differently uses as to make it meaningless.) This epistemological base is weak because a process for agreeing on the language is usually lacking; the users change in knowledge and need for the words, and the words themselves are mere models, codes … almost by definition a representation and thus not all truth.
Coherence
There is knowledge based on how well something fits with the rest of knowledge. We know that water does not run up hill, the sun always rises. The bird digging a hole in the sand dune is not a woodpecker. I know that! It fits with everything else that I know. This base is strong because it is related to a large fund of knowledge, but it fails to be able to establish the truthfulness of that fund.
"How did you know that instrument would work?" asks the student. "It just made sense that it would, based on size, shape, design, price, reputation of the company, and reported prior use of similar equipment." ("Reputation" is precisely related to coherence)
"How do you know your proposed technique will work?" asks the skeptic. "It has never been tried before; I just know!" Not private knowledge (but possibly), this is a display of the coherence base.
A large fund of knowledge is key to this concept. Starting at an arbitrary point, a garbage pile called knowledge could be built. Starting is not arbitrary, however. Coherence overlaps strongly, as do others, with authority, contextual, and induction bases.
Pragmatism
The agricultural, forestry, rangeland, fisheries and environmental fields are full of pragmatists. The epistemological test is whether something is useful or whether it works. It usually includes concepts of efficiency (high output per unit input) or effectiveness (high specifically-stated, desired output per unit input). Knowledge exists if it serves to cope with people and the environment.
How to define "it works" is a looming problem (How is this known?). What works for some people or during a period may not work for others or in a later period. "I know I will not get sick after boiling and eating these old beans" may work today, may be highly satisfying, but deadly tomorrow.
Pragmatism may be sufficient in local situations, but does not accommodate events in the tails of the normal curve. It cannot handle rapid change or the new interactions that arise when a factor is added to a system. In general, when pressed, the epistemologist must shift to another base.
Induction
This is the classical "scientific method," Baconian, and flows from hypothesis through test to conclusion. The last stage, publication or presentation, is usually omitted, but it is essential as a feedback loop for review and correction. The knowledge base is a small system with a shared conclusion, a knowledge statement, being the objective. This procedure is logical, flows well, and the evidence is that it works (note the epistemology of an epistemological base). Knowledge is based on processing evidence to arrive at results, then a conclusion.
This base may fail because of the sensory nature of much evidence used. I interviewed many professors before leaving a university and asked what should be gained from a Ph.D. degree. The most memorable answer: two major things (1) how to ask answerable questions, and (2) the nature of evidence. The latter is a major difficulty of the inductive approach to knowledge.
Equally difficult to resolve are infrequently occurring events (e.g., earthquakes) and some for which evidence cannot be gained due to moral or other reasons. What is inside the church cornerstone? Knowledge must await the church destruction. Can a person recover from a bite of a rabid animal on the shoulder? Can a person get rabies by aspirating air from a cave with rabid bats? The answers await immoral experiments. Some experiments are too costly to perform; some systems are too sparse to study except in some weak inductive manner (cf. endangered species); some populations are so variable that no conceivable experimental design will produce a conclusion other than that more studies are needed. The mark of experience and education, the evolution of a coherent epistemology augmenting the inductive, is to see the general in the truly unique.
Correspondence
Also called deduction, this epistemological base is one of knowledge based on tests of reality usually made against standards. Often considered a process of reasoning from the general to the particular, it is the converse of induction which seeks general rules, premises, and descriptors. Language and mathematical models are examples of general representations of knowledge. Languages and mathematics are model-building media. How well models represent reality is a qualitative aspect of this base. A picture or painting is true, faithful, or accurate to the degree it corresponds to that which it represents.
To perceive anything is to form a mental image of it. This is true for a sensory experience or some entirely mental activity, perhaps of some previously unseen relationship among agro-ecosystem components. Truth is an expression of the accuracy of the replica or model in the mind to the things outside of the mind. Every abstraction, every model, is, in part, a falsification because of what is omits. We must focus, omit much. Validity of models will be discussed later. Correspondence is an analysis of the truthfulness of the model. Not computer models, but communicated expressions of the model in the mind are the topic here. Without communication, the model is private. Correspondence becomes the major issue in deciding how well results of questionnaires reflect reality. These may be questionnaires about perception of scenery, willingness to pay for recreation, and importance of objectives. These are models. How well they represent the human mind and the fundamental decision-making process remains an important question.
"Practice what you preach" is an exhortation for correspondence. An advocate of population control for improving the environment better not have 10 children! (But perhaps they know better than anyone.) This is true for the individual as well as for the nation. A policy statement for the world must correspond well with national policy, and more importantly, with perceptions of the behavior of the nation suggesting the policy.
Correspondence in personal and agency life may be seen in three dimensions. At any time, a person, enterprise, or agency may locate itself within a space among (1) what they are doing, their life expression, (2) what they think and say they are, and (3) what they perceive they can become. The perception of what a person, group, organization, agency, etc., may become, may itself be flawed, and may be either excessive (beyond any practical levels of attainment) or conservative. Resolution of these differences is in the literature of "human potential," of ethical behavior, of humanism, and of course theology as it may relate humans to their god-concept. Within psychology these concepts are discussed as "cognitive dissonance;" in marketing they are discussed in relation to what a buyer wants, needs, and feels he or she deserves. We hold a dangerous wonder.
How?
Words are not adequate for many topics. Different languages handle topics better than others because of the available words and their uses. "How do we know?" may be a question answered best (for one meaning) by saying,"read a chapter in a book." "How we know" may be topic for a psychologist or better yet, a neurologist. An anatomist may be correct in pointing to the exact part of the brain where dimensions of knowing occur. Do not mistake. For the future of the rural world and its people, all of us, as rapidly as possible, need to know the ways that people know. We must struggle to use the most appropriate ones in the most refined and discriminating ways possible. We need to move the condition of knowing onto the platform of action, of heuristic convergence. To delay is to trade "I know, therefore I am" with "I knew …I was."
Next is a small discussion of general systems therory and the systems approach, Chapter 6 Systems and Their Use.
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