‘Patterns of Conflict’ represents a compendium of ideas and actions for winning and losing in a highly competitive world’
John Boyd A Discourse in prose
Introduction
The previous chapters have provided a conceptual lens through which we can examine Boyd’s presentations. In the following chapters I have elaborated in full prose what Boyd sketched out in his slides. This exercise will substantiate one of the arguments of this study that although the idea of “rapid OODA looping” is indeed an important theme in Boyd’s work and significant in its own right, in fact his work is much broader and more complex than “merely” this insight suggests. Reading Boyd’s own words and following Boyd through all of his slides and the essay will show that there are several other important themes that Boyd wanted to get across, indeed, it will demonstrate the richness of Boyd’s body of strategic thought.
InA Discourse Boyd not only developed an approach for fighting conventional war which later was labeled the maneuvrist approach with the rapid OODA loop notion as its conceptual heart. It will become clear that Boyd recognized there are several “categories of conflict”, all valid modes of warfare in particular contexts, and all with their own particular logic. It will also demonstrate that Boyd did not stop at the tactical and operational levels of war. On the contrary; as already alluded to in the previous chapters, he addresses the strategic and grand strategic levels as well and in considerable detail. Indeed, he is at pains to reconceptualize the meaning of these terms by putting them in the context of adaptability, as levels in the game of survival.
Furthermore, in his discussion on these issues, he departs from the rapid OODA loop idea in recognition of the fact that other factors come into play at the higher levels of war. In particular in his last two presentations Boyd takes his arguments towards higher levels of abstraction, turning his military theory into a general theory of strategy, or rather, a general theory of organizational survival. Finally, these chapters will illustrate Boyd’s view on the proper approach for strategic thinking, for A Discourse is both an argument on a specific approach for winning in conflict, a re-conceptualization of the term strategy, as well as an argument for how one should think strategically.
Preceded by an introduction to each presentation, the chapters stay close to Boyd’s slides and the structure of his argument. This does not allow for much analysis, commentary or explanation for that would obscure Boyd’s own work, but it does have the benefit of giving a good introduction into Boyd’s strategic thought in the absence of an established and accepted interpretation of his work. It also offers a view on the typical Boydian style of language. Already the previous chapters incorporated various sections of A Discourse with the purpose to show the extent, the way and the places insights from science have influenced this work. And for purposes of clarification and explanation of the character and meaning of a (section of a) presentation, I sometimes refer back to the previous chapters. Some repetition is therefore unavoidable.
The main intent of the effort is to provide the content of his slides in readable prose and to connect the slides if and where the slides themselves are either not self-explanatory, or where it is not clear what the specific contribution or logic is of a slide, an argument, an illustration or a slight amendment of wording Boyd deemed necessary. As much as possible Boyd’s own language and terminology is adhered to. Moreoever, the original structure of each presentation is kept clearly visible. In that, this rendering of Boyd’s work differs from the accounts offered by Coram and in particular Hammond1.
Structure
However, in the description of the separate parts of Boyd’s work, I do not follow the Boyd’s order. I am interested in showing the way he builds his arguments and to understand how he developed his ideas and why. To that end I follow a chronological order. The essay is so central to both the content and the development of his entire work that proper comprehension of Boyd’s work is not served by discussing it last. Just to underline this, it is worthwhile mentioning here that in his last two briefings he returns to his earliest insights and themes from the essay and elaborates on them even further.
The sections are devided in two chapters for organizational purposes and for the qualitative distinction between the essay and Patterns of Conflict (this chapter) on the one hand and the shorter presentations on the other hand, that can be considered elaboration of specific themes introduced in the essay and Patterns. This chapter starts with the essay Destruction and Creation, written in 1976, which Boyd put almost at the end of A Discourse.
The essay is followed by Patterns of Conflict. Both contain the the complete array of themes, insights and arguments Boyd wanted to get across, and together they initially formed Patterns of Conflict. Chapter 7 consists of the presentations Organic Design for Command and Control,The Strategic Game of ? and ?, and the very brief Revelation. Moreover, although Conceptual Spiral and The Essence of Winning and Losing do not form an integral part of A Discourse, they do constitute two more key elements of his work, so I have included them as well. These presentations build upon the foundation laid by the essay and Patterns,elaborating, exploring and refining specific themes and arguments, taking the audience to new levels of abstraction.
The interesting thing about this structure is that it emphasizes how he expands upon impressions and themes formulated in A New Conception in Air-to-Air Combat, the essay and Patterns of Conflict. His later work is a logical sequence to this. The early insights provided a frame of reference for his search for insights in different areas of knowledge. Early on he discovered a pattern, a core process and his presentations build upon and reinforce the idea.
Furthermore, they provide fresh substantiation and they explain in layman’s language and through the use of newspaper articles and book sections in practical terms quite abstract concepts of the essay. It also informs his entire development, his dialectic approach to the project.
Despite these modifications I think that, by sticking rather closely to the actual wording of his slides, but armed with the conceptual lenses provided by the previous chapters, we can develop a good feel of the message and the structure of Boyd’s argument and the unique Boydian way for peeling new insights from familiar matter and his unique strategic lexicon. We can at least see his mind at work. This starts already with the ‘Abstract’
he offers, in which he clearly alludes to the overarching themes embedded in this work that he considered important. It is here offered verbatim.
1 See Hammond (2001), chapters 8-10, and pp.188-191.
Boyd’s ‘Abstract’ of A Discourse
To flourish and grow in a many-sided uncertain and ever changing world that surrounds us, suggests that we have to make intuitive within ourselves those many practices we need to meet the exigencies of that world. The contents, hence the five sections, that comprise this
“Discourse” unfold observations and ideas that contribute toward achieving or thwarting such an aim or purpose. Specifically:
x ‘Patterns of Conflict’ represents a compendium of ideas and actions for winning and losing in a highly competitive world;
x ‘Organic Design for Command and Control’ surfaces the implicit arrangements that permit cooperation in complex, competitive, fast moving situations;
x ‘The Strategic Game of ? and ?’ emphasizes the mental twists and turns we undertake to surface appropriate schemes or designs for realizing our aims or purposes;
x ‘Destruction and Creation’ lays out in abstract but graphic fashion the ways by which we evolve mental concepts to comprehend and cope with our environment;
x ‘Revelation’ makes visible the metaphorical message that flows from this ‘Discourse’.
As one proceeds from ‘Patterns’ through ‘Organic Design’, ‘Strategic Game’, and
‘Destruction and Creation’ to ‘Revelation’ he or she will notice that the discussion goes from the more concrete and obvious to the more abstract. In this sense, one will notice the rise away from many particular actions and ideas to fewer and more general concepts to account for these many actions and ideas. In this context, ‘Patterns’ emphasizes historical readings, primarily military, as the backdrop for its discussion while the final four sections draw away from this historical framework an increasingly emphasize theory spread over scientific backdrop as the medium for discussion.
Yet, the theme that weaves its way through this ‘Discourse on Winning and Losing’
is not so much contained within each of the five sections, per se, that make up this
‘Discourse’, rather, it is the kind of thinking that both lies behind and makes-up its very essence. For the interested, a careful examination will reveal that the increasingly abstract discussion surfaces a process of reaching across many perspectives; pulling each and every one apart (analysis), all the while intuitively looking for those parts of the disassembled perspectives which naturally interconnect with one another to form a higher order, more general elaboration (synthesis) of what is taking place. As a result, the process not only creates the ‘Discourse’ but it also represents the key to evolve the tactics, strategies, goals, unifying themes, etc., that permit us to actively shape and adapt to the unfolding world we are a part of, live-in, and feed-upon.
Destruction and Creation Introduction
The foundation of A Discourse was laid in September 1976 with a concise, 16-page essay entitled Destruction and Creation. According to Hammond it is the culmination of a quest to find scientific, mathematical, and logical verification for principles Boyd knew instinctively to
be true. Thus tested and refined, it became the basis for most of his thoughts thereafter2. In this essay he combined concepts from the seemingly unrelated fields of mathematical logic, physics, and thermodynamics. Boyd thus became the first individual ever to link Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics3. But other concepts are either explicitly or implicitly incorporated in it as well, such as the arguments of Polanyi, Popper and Kuhn. The essay consists of an abstract and eight paragraphs. The essay is rendered in its entirety without explanatory text or interpretation, as the essay is self-explanatory (when read with the previous chapters as a conceptual background), contrary to the presentations that follow it. The only difference lies in the bibliography, which I have included not at the end of the essay, but as Appendix A of this study.
The heart of the essay is the discussion about the nature of knowledge and the way we can obtain knowledge. It is highly philosophical and obviously rooted in the debate on scientific progress and the nature of knowledge that raged in the sixties. Not surprisingly Boyd associates these epistemological issues with struggles for survival. The fundamental, unavoidable and all-pervasive presence of uncertainty is the starting point. It leads to the requirement to learn, to develop adequate mental models, and to continually assess the adequacy of these models is the basis for survival for any organism. This process requires both analysis and synthesis, both induction and deduction.
Because fighting a war is about the survival of a unit or a social organism like the nation-state, the insights from this discussion about the process of learning – or rather making sense of this constantly changing world - cannot be anything but relevant for war fighting and strategic theory. Boyd returned to the notions developed in this essay when developing his ideas about the character of a good command and control system and the essence of the strategic game. In 1996, he condensed his ideas in his final presentation, and in the five slides that make up this briefing again he returns to themes introduced in the essay. In the abstract of the essay he introduces the central theme. Then follows the literal and entire text of the essay including Boyd’s use of underlining.
‘Abstract’
To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts of meaning. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out how we destroy and create these patterns to permit us to bath shape and be shaped by a changing environment. In this sense, the discussion also literally shows why we cannot avoid this kind of activity if we intend to survive on our own terms. The activity is dialectic in nature generating bath disorder and order that emerges as a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality.
Goal
Studies of human behavior reveal that the actions we undertake as individuals are closely related to survival, more importantly, survival on our own terms. Naturally, such a notion implies that we should be able to act relatively free or independent of any debilitating external influences —otherwise that very survival might be in jeopardy. In viewing the instinct for survival in this manner we imply that a basic aim or goal, as individuals, is to
2 Ibid, p.118.
3 Hammond, The Essential Boyd, p.8.
improve our capacity for independent action. The degree to which we cooperate, or compete, with others is driven by the need to satisfy this basic goal. If we believe that it is not possible to satisfy it alone, without help from others, history shows us that we will agree to constraints upon our independent action -- in order to collectively pool skills and talents in the farm of nations, corporations, labor unions, mafias, etc.-- so that obstacles standing in the way of the basic goal can either be removed or overcome. On the other hand, if the group cannot or does not attempt to overcome obstacles deemed important to many (or possibly any) of it’s individual members, the group must risk losing these alienated members.
Under these circumstances, the alienated members may dissolve their relationship and remain independent, form a group of their own, or join another collective body in order to improve their capacity for independent action.
Environment
In a real world of limited resources and skills, individuals and groups form, dissolve and reform their cooperative or competitive postures in a continuous struggle to remove or overcome physical and social environmental obstacles4. In a cooperative sense, where skills and talents are pooled, the removal or overcoming of obstacles represents an improved capacity for independent action for all concerned. In a competitive sense, where individuals and groups compete for scarce resources and skills, an improved capacity for independent action achieved by some individuals or groups constrains that capacity for other individuals or groups. Naturally, such a combination of real world scarcity and goal striving to overcome this scarcity intensifies the struggle of individuals and groups to cope with both their physical and social environments5.
Need for decisions
Against such a background, actions and decisions become critically important. Actions must be taken over and over again and in many different ways. Decisions must be rendered to monitor and determine the precise nature of the actions needed that will be compatible with the goal. To make these timely decisions imply that we must be able to form mental concepts of observed reality, as we perceive it, and be able to change these concepts as reality itself appears to change. The concepts can then be used as decision-models for improving our capacity for independent action. Such a demand for decisions that literally impact our survival causes one to wonder: How do we generate or create the mental concepts to support the is decision-making activity?
Creating Concepts
There are two ways in which we can develop and manipulate mental concepts to represent observed reality: We can start from a comprehensive whole and break it down to its
4 In the essay Boyd frequently inserts a numbers that refers to the number of a book listed in the bibliography attached to ‘Destruction and Creation’, and indicates the source for a particular insight.
For clarity, here both the number and the works referred to are given. The entire bibliography can be found in Attachment A. The sources Boyd refers to here are books number 11: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process; and 13: Robert Heilbronner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect.
5 Ibid.
particulars or we can start with the particulars and build towards a comprehensive whole6. Saying it another way, but in a related sense, we can go from the general-to-specific or from the specific-to-general. A little reflection here reveals that deduction is related to proceeding from the general-to-specific while induction is related to proceeding from the specific-to-general. In following this line of thought can we think of other activities that are related to these two opposing ideas? Is not analysis related to proceeding from the general-to-specific?
Is not synthesis, the opposite of analysis, related to proceeding from the specific-to-general?
Putting all this together: Can we not say that general-to-specific is related to both deduction and analysis, while specific-to-general is related to induction and synthesis? Now, can we think of some examples to fit with these two opposing ideas? We need not look far. The differential calculus proceeds from the general-to-specific -- from a function to its derivative.
Hence, is not the use or application of the differential calculus related to deduction and analysis? The integral calculus, on the other hand, proceeds in the opposite direction -- from a derivative to a general function. Hence, is not the use or application of the integral calculus related to induction and synthesis? Summing up, we can see that: general-to-specific is related to deduction, analysis, and differentiation, while, specific-to-general is related to induction, synthesis, and integration.
Now keeping these two opposing idea chains in mind let us move on a somewhat different tack. Imagine, if you will, a domain (a comprehensive whole) and its constituent elements or parts. Now, imagine another domain and its constituent parts. Once again, imagine even another domain and its constituent parts. Repeating this idea over and over again we can imagine any number of domains and the parts corresponding to each.
Naturally, as we go through life we develop concepts of meaning (with included constituents) to represent observed reality. Can we not liken these concepts and their related constituents to the domains and constituents that we have formed in our imagination?
Naturally, we can. Keeping this relationship in mind, suppose we shatter the
Naturally, we can. Keeping this relationship in mind, suppose we shatter the