1.5. Chapter Five Overview: The Systemic Basis of Burke's Theory of Symbolic Action
As noted at the outset, Burke encountered considerable opposition because he opposed the mechanistic conceptions then current. Bertalanffy also opposed these conceptions and employed a similar methodology. Moreover, despite working in very different fields, both came to nearly identical conclusions about the role of language. Both assert that the capacity to use symbols makes us human, representing a "quantum leap" to a level of complexity with accompanying emergent properties: values. Furthermore, symbols allow a kind of categorical thinking that does not exist in lower system, and affect the way that human beings perceive the world (which is a human world, in distinction to a purely biological world). Mechanistic metaphors, which treat higher level systems in terms of lower level systems, are thus not apt for studying human thought and behavior.
Because of its empirical origins, General Systems Theory is more developed and explicit on structure than Burke is. Though Burke thinks about mind, language and culture as systems, and even considers how they interrelate, his account is highly intuitive. He posits that systems are made up of clusters of terms, and that they grow through analogical extension, but he does not get much more precise. General Systems Theory and its descendent, Self-Organizing Theory, can be helpful in refining Burke in this respect. For example, Bertalanffy holds that language is a system because it has all the attributes of the "soft" system definition: a self-maintaining structure of heterogenous parts which can cope and even grow in a changing environment (1975 46). In addition, it evolved as part of a biological system, so the idea of its being unsystematic makes about as much sense as a pancreas being unsystematic. Moreover, aspects of language are clearly systematic, such as syntax and phonology.6
Once language is accepted as a system, it is only a short step to see mind and culture as systems as well. Systems thinking would then lead us to consider the interrelations among these systems. A possible way of looking at this is to consider the three as subsystems of a supersystem: quality space. Systems theory further holds that all systems must have mechanisms of stability and flexibility. The concluding chapter will argue that in the case of quality space this is accomplished through metaphor.
Despite the rather remarkable convergence of ideas in Burke and Bertalanffy, there are differences in emphasis that make the two complementary. But even fortified by General Systems Theory, there are some fundamental questions about the structure and function of quality space that remain unanswered. The final chapter will attempt to answer those questions.
next: 1.6.Chapter Six Summary: The Metaphorical Basis of Symbolic Action