EMERGENCE, 2(4), 40–49

Copyright © 2000, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Out of Control into

Participation
Brian Goodwin

F or nearly 500 years, western science has provided our cul-

ture with a remarkably successful procedure for gaining reli-
able knowledge of the natural world that can be used to
produce a great range of artifacts and technologies whereby
we can control natural processes. However, the dialectic of science has
now brought us face to face with a world that is intrinsically uncontrol-
lable, for reasons that remain scientifically intelligible. In a fundamental
sense, this is the end of a deeply pervasive cultural attitude of control that
has dominated most of our institutions, including those of government
and the corporate sector. We have reached a moment of truth in which
rationality itself points to a necessary new praxis, a different way of being
in the world from that which we have cultivated and practiced for
centuries.
This is deeply challenging; but there is a bridge of continuity across
what appears to be a sudden cultural abyss, from conventional western
scientific practice to a new mode of informed and extended rationality.
Complexity theory points to a path across the chasm, although it does not
itself provide the bridge. In this article, I shall examine the nature and
implications of this pointer, and how we can follow it into a new world.
The specific properties of that world are, however, necessarily still largely
out of sight. I begin with a brief description of the assumptions within
western science that give it both its power and its limitations.

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GALILEAN SCIENCE

When Galileo started the great adventure of modern science with his sys-
tematic study of the motion of falling and projected bodies, cylinders
rolling down inclined planes, and the movements of the moons of Jupiter,
he was guided by a deep and powerful organizing idea: natural phenom-
ena can be described by mathematics. He wasn’t the first to explore this
ordering principle of nature. Egyptian, Greek, and Arab natural philoso-
phers had all contributed substantially to the realization that processes
involving the operation of levers, musical intervals, and harmony, and
particularly the movements of the heavenly bodies, are governed by
number, ratio, and geometry, so that there is a distinctly rational aspect to
natural processes.
What Galileo did was to define the methodology of science in terms
of the study of number and measure. Those properties of the natural
world that can be measured and expressed in terms of mathematical
relationships define the domain of scientific inquiry. These measurable
quantities, such as mass, position, velocity, momentum, and so on, are
the “primary qualities” of phenomena, as the philosopher John Locke
defined them. They originate from our experience of weight and force in
natural processes. Other experiences that we may have, such as the per-
fume and texture of a fruit or a flower, feelings associated with their
color, or the joy that we may feel at the beauty of a landscape or a sun-
set, which have no quantitative measure, are outside the legitimate
domain of scientific inquiry. Modern science is thus defined as the sys-
tematic study of quantities and excludes “secondary” qualities (experi-
ence of color, odor, texture, beauty of form, etc., which are often referred
to as qualia).
As a strategy for exploring an aspect of reality—the quantifiable and
the mathematizable—the restriction of modern science to primary quali-
ties is perfectly reasonable. It has also turned out to be remarkably suc-
cessful. The diversity of aspects of the natural world that fall under the
spell of number, measure, and mathematics is astonishing, ranging from
light, magnetism, and chemical reactions to the laws of biological inheri-
tance. But the impulse to mathematize nature takes scientific description
well beyond what is perceived as the “common-sense” behavior of clocks,
magnets, and chemical processes to the strange but self-consistent world
of quantum mechanics. Here, causality functions differently from
mechanical interactions. Quantum elements do not behave as independ-
ent entities whose properties can be varied in arbitrary ways.

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The quantum realm is governed by principles of intimate entangle-

ment and coordination between its components, giving rise to coherent
holistic order that extends over any distance.
Mathematics also gives us new insights into the curious logic of the
weather, showing us why it is unpredictable but intelligible. The discov-
ery of deterministic chaos in dynamical systems allows us to reconcile
these two apparently contradictory properties. As is now widely known,
sensitivity to initial conditions means that any error in specifying these
for weather calculations, and rounding errors that inevitably accompany
computation, will grow exponentially so that errors rapidly overwhelm
the calculation and long-term prediction fails. This is the property of nat-
ural processes governed by deterministic chaos (Gleick, 1987), which is
now recognized to be a natural or generic pattern of behavior for most
nonlinear systems. It has been identified in the dynamics of our hearts
and brains, in the behavior of social insects, and in many other biological
processes (Goodwin, 1994; Kelso, 1995).

THE CREATIVITY OF NATURE

There is another source of unpredictability in natural processes that has

become the focus of a recently developed field of research called the sci-
ences of complexity (Kauffman, 1993, 1995; Cohen & Stewart, 1994).
Here, the problem is to understand how unexpected properties arise
from the interactions of the component elements of a complex system,
which can be physical, chemical, biological, or social. These are called
emergent properties because the system as a whole displays behavior that
is unpredictable from an observation of the interactions of its component
parts.
For instance, colonies of social insects such as bees, wasps, termites,
and ants achieve remarkable feats of organization and coordinated action
that go so far beyond the capacities of the individuals that the colony is
often described as a superorganism, an emergent whole with properties
of its own. Termites construct their beautifully intricate colonial
dwellings through processes that look anything but organized. Yet, out of
the activities of termite construction gangs that form and disperse in
apparently disorganized patterns, there emerge coherently structured
pillared halls and passageways, complete with air conditioning, that
accommodate thousands of inhabitants (O'Toole et al., 1999). Nature is
full of creative surprises, and the sciences of complexity explore, by
means of observation, mathematical modeling, and computer simulation,

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how this creativity of natural process can be understood even if it cannot

be predicted or controlled. However, an important feature of emergent
properties is that they are always consistent with, although not necessar-
ily reducible to, the properties of the components of the system. Nature
doesn’t suddenly produce something out of nothing, so there are no mir-
acles (Sol & Goodwin, 2000).
Western science has now arrived at a dramatic turning point.
Scientific knowledge was intended to reveal the laws of nature, which we
could then use for prediction and control of natural processes. This
knowledge has given us a remarkable range of very useful technologies,
and this process will continue for those limited aspects of nature that con-
form to mechanical causality. But what has been revealed by science itself
is that much, probably most, of nature cannot be predicted and con-
trolled. We can now understand why the complex systems on which the
quality of our lives depends, such as the weather, ecological systems,
communities, organizations, economies, and health, are out of our control
except in very limited ways. But we have to interact with the complex sys-
tems that surround us because we are a part of them. What is the appro-
priate relationship to nature in view of our new understanding?

FROM QUANTITY TO QUALITY: INTUITION AND A

SCIENCE OF QUALITIES

One of the main constraints on conventional science that limits the abil-
ity to gain insight into the realm of complex phenomena is the restriction
of data to quantifiable, measurable aspects of natural processes. There is
no intrinsic reason that this constraint should be accepted. What is
required in a science is some methodology whereby practicing subjects
come to agreement on their observations and experiences. This is the
basis of quantitative measurement: acceptance of a method whereby dif-
ferent practitioners can reach intersubjective consensus on their results.
Where there is no consensus, there is no “objective” scientific truth.
Why should this not be extended to the observation and experience of
“secondary” qualities? In fact, this extension is practiced in many areas,
an example being the healing professions, whether conventional western
medical practice or complementary therapeutic traditions. The present-
ing subject’s experience of pain and its qualities is certainly used in diag-
nostic practice, as are many other qualities such as color and texture of
skin, posture, tone of voice, etc. Paying close attention to these, as well as
to quantitative data such as temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, is a

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significant part of the art of diagnosis. Conventional wisdom accepts that

these skills can only be acquired through practice and experience, which
hones the intuitive faculty to perceive reliably the underlying condition
that is the cause of change from health to disease. Health is an emergent
property that cannot be reduced to the sum of quantitative data about dif-
ferent aspects of the body. Its perception requires the healer to pay atten-
tion to qualities as well as quantities, and to make use of the intuition
(noninferential perception of wholes) in coming to a holistic judgment
about the condition presented.
Conventional scientists begin to get very nervous when this type of
procedure is described as science. They are suspicious of intuition, and
they mistrust qualitative observation. As far as intuition is concerned,
they need have no anxieties: it is a universally recognized subjective
component of scientific discovery. It is the intuitive faculty that makes
sense of diverse data and brings them into a coherent pattern of mean-
ing and intelligibility, although of course the analytical intellect is also
involved in sorting out the logic of the intuitive insight. What is not prac-
ticed in science is the systematic cultivation of the intuitive faculty, the
capacity to recognize the coherent wholes that emerge from related
parts. However, the study of emergent properties in the science of com-
plexity clearly requires the use of intuition to a high degree. It is what is
required to perceive the subtle order that characterizes the holistic
properties of complex systems—ecosystems, communities, organiza-
tions, health.
Furthermore, these emergent properties are closely associated with
“secondary” qualities. The health of an ecosystem is reflected in the qual-
ity of birdsong as well as in the (quantitative) diversity of species.
However, scientists are trained to pay attention only to quantities. As peo-
ple and as naturalists they are aware of qualities, which are often the pri-
mary indicators of change. But as scientists they factor them out of their
consciousness. This restriction is based on a convention that has worked
extremely well for “simple” systems, but it has severe limitations in the
face of complexity. It is time for a move into a science of qualities.
A science of qualities is not new in the western tradition. This is the
science that was practiced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Regarded for many years as an
aberration because of an apparent conflict with Newtonian science,
Goethe’s studies have been largely ignored within mainstream science.
However, it is now evident that Goethe’s approach to natural processes is
not so much in direct conflict with the dominant science of quantities as

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different in emphasis from it (cf. Bortoft, 1996). In Goethe’s study of color,

for example, which is where he ran into trouble for challenging Newton’s
color theory, an explicit goal is not simply to understand the conditions
under which various colors emerge, but also to relate this to the experi-
ence we have of different colors, i.e., their qualia. The assumption is that
our feelings in response to natural processes are not arbitrary, but can be
used as reliable indicators of the nature of the real processes in which we
participate. Qualities include the realm of the normative, our assessment
of the rightness or wrongness, appropriateness or inappropriateness, of
particular actions in relation to our knowledge.
A science of emergent qualities involves a break with the positivist
tradition that separates facts and values and re-establishes a foundation
for a naturalistic ethics (Collier, 1994). The essential argument here is
that, if we believe that our knowledge is reliable and relates to a real
world, it guides our behavior toward that world. This is clearly true for
conventional scientific knowledge, such as understanding the properties
of gold and using it appropriately in technology. It also holds for qualities:
if we believe that it is in the nature of children to play, we will provide
opportunities for them to do so in order that they can have a good qual-
ity of life. This principle extends logically to treatment of other species
and to nature in general, within an epistemology that includes qualitative
evaluation as an intrinsic aspect of reliable knowing.

INTO PARTICIPATION

Participation now enters as a fundamental ingredient in the human expe-

rience of any phenomenon, which arises out of the encounter between
two real processes that are distinct but not separable: the human process
of becoming and that of the “other,” whatever this may be, to which the
human is attending. In this encounter where the phenomenon arises,
feelings and intuitions are not arbitrary, idiosyncratic accompaniments,
but direct indicators of the nature of the mutual process that occurs in the
encounter. By paying attention to these, we gain insight into the emer-
gent reality in which we participate.
Of course, there are idiosyncratic, personal components of the insight,
just as there are idiosyncratic elements of the integrating theories that
come with flashes of intuitive insight to individual scientists. These need
to be distinguished from the more lasting and universal aspects of the
insight, which is where the process of intersubjective testing comes in to
find consensus among a group of practitioners (cf. Wemelsfelder et al.,

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2000). The same type of process is required to evaluate the insights

gained from paying attention to qualities of experience in order to under-
stand the subtle order of complex systems.
The sensitivity of these systems to initial conditions, to change in their
parts or their interactions, means that we must be finely tuned to the
process we seek to influence beneficially in order to monitor our effects,
as in any healing process. These are basic ingredients of a science of qual-
ities. In a sense, they are no more than a statement of what holistic prac-
titioners have been engaged in. However, it is time to develop such a
science systematically as an extension of quantitative science in a direc-
tion that is appropriate to the needs of our age.

METAPHORS AND PRAXIS

The sciences of complexity provide us with an extremely suggestive set of

metaphors, which give useful indications of the properties needed in a
new scientific praxis that could apply to human organizations as well as
to relations with the natural world (Reason & Goodwin, 2000; Stacey et
al., 2000). Moving away from control, letting go, living on the edge of
chaos where emergent order arises that can provide adaptive solutions to
problems: these indicate precisely where we want to be to deal creatively
with unexpected change. Why not simply use the insights of complexity
theory to take human organizations to the edge of chaos so that they can
operate more effectively? There are two reasons that this can’t be done
within our current science of control.
The first has already been described: the restriction of “reliable”
knowledge to quantitative variables and their coherent mathematical
relationships, so that qualia cannot contribute to “objective knowledge.”
The “agents” described in complex adaptive systems have no qualitative
experience and so cannot behave like humans except in a very restrictive,
mechanical sense. The other reason is the assumption that the scientist
must stand outside of and apart from the “system” in order to examine
and influence it. But we are inside the systems that are causing us prob-
lems, part of their intrinsic relationships. We cannot manipulate these
complex processes, taking them to a desired state, because they operate
in terms of principles of self-organization and we are part of the self,
along with all the other participants in the process in which we are
engaged. However, we can feel or intuit change as well as measure what-
ever may help us in assessing what is happening. This is of course how
we live our lives in relation to our fellows, so we have plenty of practice

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at it. Once basic needs (of food, shelter, and clothing) are met, quantities
play a relatively small part in achieving a fulfilled life, which depends on
quality of relationships. Ways of systematically developing an appropriate
praxis within self-organizing communities that facilitate the emergence of
appropriate order have been explored and developed within several dif-
ferent traditions, prominent among them being cooperative inquiry or
participatory action research (Heron & Reason, 1997; Reason, 1998).
Science is not ahead in these developments; it is behind.
Our scientific and technological culture has emphasized quantities of
everything as the measure of achievement and fulfilment, and in doing so
has progressively isolated individuals from one another and from nature.
Quantification and control of nature, once acting through technology as a
liberating force for humanity, have now reached the point of enslaving
everything they touch, particularly life itself through patents that turn
organisms and their parts into salable commodities and humans into per-
fectable machines. The “bottom line” of profit as the constantly scruti-
nized criterion of success in the unregulated marketplace is a major
quantity that enslaves the corporate sector and prevents the transition of
most companies to a condition of freedom and creativity.
In physiology it is becoming recognized that such inflexibility of goal,
a kind of rigid homeostasis, is a clear sign of danger: a constant high heart
rate warns of proneness to sudden cardiac arrest. Such order indicates
that the body has lost its flexibility and responsiveness to change and has
fallen into a condition of disease. Health, on the other hand, carries with
it a signature of unpredictable variability in physiological variables, but
variability within limits as in a strange attractor. Indeed, it appears that
health is characterized precisely by a balance between order and chaos in
the body’s functions, which takes us back to the insights of complexity
theory: creative living occurs on the edge of chaos.
This suggests that present business practice, with its rigid focus on
maintaining constant high profits, has resulted in severe proneness to the
economic equivalent of sudden cardiac arrest, as observed in the increas-
ing rate of company failures. Again we have a suggestive metaphor, but
no prescription from complexity theory for healing the patient. There
isn’t one within the current scientific paradigm, for the reasons given
above: it still works within the tradition of separation of the
investigator/manipulator/leader from the system and restricts itself to
quantities, whereas we humans live most of our lives in terms of qualities
and relationships, as does the rest of living nature. Leadership in the new
context means facilitating processes and procedures that encourage high

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quality of experience in the group. This then results in a robust creativity

and health such that profits look after themselves, remaining within rea-
sonable bounds but varying unpredictably in the short term.
There are very powerful economic and political forces that act against
such transformation, maintaining a culture of fear in organizations due to
the threat of loss of market share if high profitability is not maintained. It
therefore requires a remarkable act of courage to get to the point of
engaging financial analysts and shareholders in a conversation about the
goals and purposes of trade that could transform the objective of business
to good quality of life for all. Financial analysts are, of course, simply
reflecting to CEOs how the “market” expects them to behave. But the
collusion between analysts, managers, and shareholders is actually what
maintains the dangerous condition of high profits that is a primary symp-
tom of the current economic and environmental disease from which we
suffer.
A better quality of life can only be realized if all the members of our
planetary society are included in the new contract, for this is what par-
ticipation means. It makes no sense trying to achieve a good quality of life
for humans at the expense of the rest of nature, as we are now learning
the hard way through the destructive effects of environmental pollution,
unhealthy industrialized food, turbulent climate change, and species
extinctions. These were all foreseen as dangerous results of our actions by
the few who read the signs and understood mutual dependence through
complex networks.
A science of qualities extends the science of quantities to include the
different ways of knowing that we can use to understand the complex
webs of relationship within which we are embedded at every moment of
our lives. Focus on quality of life by the cultivation of the antennae
needed to participate responsibly in these webs is not new. We do it nat-
urally all the time, and all human cultures have developed these qualities
of participation to a greater or lesser degree. We have chosen to do so to
a lesser degree in our culture and there is a growing consensus that it is
time to recover our balance.

REFERENCES
Bortoft, H. (1996) The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way Toward a Science of Conscious
Participation in Nature, New York: Lindisfarne Press.
Cohen, J. & Stewart, I. (1994) The Collapse of Chaos, London: Viking.
Collier, A. (1994) Critical Realism: An Introduction to Bhaskar’s Philosophy, London: Verso.
Gleick, J. (1987) Making a New Science, New York: Viking.
Heron, J. & Reason, P. (1997) “A participatory inquiry paradigm,” Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3): 274–94.

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Kauffman, S. A. (1993) The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution,

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