Open and closed systems and the Cambridge school.
Publication: Review of Social Economy
Publication Date: 01-DEC-06Author: Bigo, Vinca
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Abstract In recent years a group of researchers at Cambridge (UK) have (re)introduced conceptions of open and closed systems into economics. In doing so they have employed these categories in ways that, in my assessment, both facilitate a significant critique of current disciplinary practices and also point to more fruitful ways of proceeding. In an issue of this journal, Andrew Mearman has advanced three criticisms of the Cambridge position which, if valid, would seriously undermine this assessment. Below I defend the Cambridge position against Mearman's criticisms. Keywords: ontology, open systems, closed systems, economics INTRODUCTION Economics has recently taken something of an "ontological turn", at least among its heterodox traditions. (1) Much of the credit for this can be given to a group of researchers referred to by Andrew Mearman (2006) in this journal as the "Cambridge School". And indeed such labelling is not inappropriate: very recently those within reach of Cambridge (UK) have instituted an ontologically oriented project around the research to which Mearman refers, under the auspices of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group (or CSOG). Like most other commentators on this ontological project, Mearman singles out two books by Tony Lawson (1997, 2003a) (2) for close attention. This is not unreasonable as the Cambridge group is closely associated with Lawson, and his are the first two full-length monographs on the Cambridge approach. A strength of these two books is their comprehensive coverage. A disadvantage, perhaps, is that the many issues they cover are treated as more or less on par, without consideration as to which ones will seem the most difficult, important or contentious to the reader. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is possible to see which have caught the attention of those wishing to engage with the project. One such feature is the Cambridge conception and analysis of open and closed systems. Indeed, Mearman's paper is one of several to focus on this topic. (3) Mearman in fact advances three criticisms of the Cambridge position on these matters. Criticism, of course, is vital to enable us all to move forward. However, in advancing his criticisms of the Cambridge position, I think that Mearman misinterprets the latter on various key issues. And this matters. For it can be reasonably held that the Cambridge group has contributed as much as any in recent years to understanding and transcending the problems of the contemporary discipline of economics. And the manner in which the Cambridge group employs its categories of open and closed systems figures centrally in this endeavour. My limited intention in the current essay is thus to address the three basic criticisms made of the Cambridge approach by Mearman. Specifically, by seeking to clarify the Cambridge position on relevant points, I shall show that each of Mearman's criticisms fails. According to Mearman the Cambridge approach is at fault for: 1. tying the idea of closure too closely to events; 2. defining open systems in a negative (and apparently often dualistic) fashion as "not closed"; and 3. polarizing conceptions of open and closed systems, and in turn methodological debate in economics, thereby encouraging heterodox economists sympathetic to the Cambridge position to be overly dismissive of certain methodological approaches. The remainder of the paper is a response to Mearman, considering each of these points in turn. CLOSED SYSTEMS AND EVENT PATTERNS Mearman starts that section of his paper, which criticizes the Cambridge association of closures, with event patterns by acknowledging that, in fact, there is a "small range" of definitions of closed systems in the wider project of critical realism. Specifically: Closed systems are variously defined as being "cut off" from external influences [...]; "isolated" [...]; where outside factors are "neutralise[d]" [...]; and in which all disturbances are anticipated and "held at bay" [...] (Mearman 2006: p 49). Noting this apparent variety, Mearman complains that "the Cambridge school definition of open and closed systems has been, and is being increasingly, restricted to one" (ibid.: 50). Specifically, "closed (and hence open) systems are defined in terms of events and their regularity" (ibid.: 50). What is more, this "event-level definition" is "beginning to be the dominant definition" in social theorizing more widely, but particularly in economics (ibid.: 51). Why is this a problem? First, according to Mearman, "to define closures as regularities is inconsistent with the definitions of closed and open systems" supposedly advanced elsewhere in critical realism that "stress the nature of the object, conditions placed on it, its location, its being cut off" and so forth (ibid.: 53). More importantly, in Mearman's view, when properly interpreted, "closure occurs beneath the level of events: the nature of the objects and their relation to other objects are the defining factors in creating a closed system" (ibid.: 53). It is Mearman's view that the Cambridge approach, by focusing on events, fails to appreciate this. And there is no doubt, in Mearman's mind, that the Cambridge group's event-level conception of closure leads to further problems: This confusion of closure and its evidence is potentially serious: The claim conflates the empirical with the real; this is known as empirical realism, a flattening of . It also suggests that the epistemic fallacy has been committed: what exists is reduced to what is known. It also suggests actualism, defined as the denial of the existence of underlying mechanisms and acknowledges only actual events or experiences [....]. Empirical realism, the epistemic fallacy and actualism are all explicitly denied and rejected by [the Cambridge group and other critical realists]. These contradictions arise here because of the event-level definition of closed systems (ibid.: 53). This, then, is the nub of Mearmans first, seemingly potentially serious, criticism of the Cambridge approach. Mearman considers various implications. He also suggests some possible (mainly strategic) lines of defence of the position he attributes to the Cambridge school, but finds none to hold their own. Let me respond to Mearman's first line of critique by way of seeking to clarify the Cambridge conception of a closed system. CLOSED SYSTEMS: A RESPONSE If we examine the way in which Lawson, in particular, introduces the category of closure in his two books, we find that closed systems are indeed conceptualized in terms of events and their regularities. On this point Mearman is correct. However, closures are interpreted not as events or their regularities per se, but as systems in which event regularities occur. In fact, closures are formulated as an essential component of the explanatory approach that Lawson terms deductivism. Thus in Reorienting Economics, closures are introduced as follows:By deductivism I mean a type of explanation in which regularities of the form "whenever event x then event y" (or stochastic near equivalents) are a necessary condition. Such regularities are held to persist, and are often treated, in effect, as laws, allowing the deductive generation of consequences, or predictions, when accompanied with the specification of initial condition. Systems in which such regularities occur are said to be closed (Lawson 2003a:. 5. emphasis added). As the sentence to which I have added emphasis states quite clearly, closed systems are conceptualized not as event regularities per se but systems in which event regularities occur. (4) In a similar fashion, in his earlier Economics and Reality, Lawson introduces the idea of closure as follows: It is clear, in fact, that if the theory of explanation and science in question turns upon identifying or positing regularities of the form "whenever event x then event y"--let us refer to systems in which such constant conjunctions of events arise as closed--then a precondition of the universality, or wide applicability, of deductivism is simply that reality is characterised by a ubiquity of such closures (Lawson 1997: 19). Lawson, then, is quite consistent in maintaining that there is a difference between an event regularity and a system in which it occurs; in particular, that the latter is irreducible to the former. (5) The term system here, it should be clear, is serving as a placeholder, specifically as one for the structural arrangement in which the event regularity occurs. The standard meaning of a system is something like a group of interrelated elements comprising a unified whole. In science it is an object of study composed of interrelated parts. From the Latin and Greek, the term system means to combine, to set...