Standards for Good Solutions

In the previous three posts I focused on the first two parts of Wendell Berry's important essay, "Solving for Pattern," for which this blog is a namesake. In this post I focus on the third part, which is where Berry identifies fourteen standards for good solutions. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on the first seven, and will return to the final seven at some later date. As before, I recommend that you read Berry's complete essay, which you should be able to find on the web. I will begin by listing his first seven standards; this will be followed by my comments.

1. A good solution accepts given limits, using so far as possible what
   is at hand. The farther-fetched the solution, the less it should be
   trusted. Granted that a farm can be too small, it is nevertheless
   true that enlarging scale is a deceptive solution; it solves one
   problem by acquiring another or several others.
2. A good solution accepts also the limitations of
   discipline. Agricultural problems should receive solutions that are
   agricultural, not technological or economic.
3. A good solution improves the balances, symmetries, or harmonies
   within a pattern – it is a qualitative solution – rather than
   enlarging or complicating some part of a pattern at the expense or
   in neglect of the rest.
4. A good solution solves more than one problem, and it does not make
   new problems. I am talking about health as opposed to almost any
   cure, coherence of pattern as opposed to almost any solution
   produced piecemeal or in isolation. The return of organic wastes to
   the soil may, at first glance, appear to be a good solution per
   se. But that is not invariably or necessarily true. It is true only
   if the wastes are returned to the right place at the right time in
   the pattern of the farm, if the waste does not contain toxic
   materials, if the quantity is not too great, and if not too much
   energy or money is expended in transporting it.
5. A good solution will satisfy a whole range of criteria; it will be
   good in all respects. A farm that has found correct agricultural
   solutions to its problems will be fertile, productive, healthful,
   conservative, beautiful, pleasant to live on. This standard
   obviously must be qualified to the extent that the pattern of the
   life of a farm will be adversely affected by distortions in any of
   the larger patterns that contain it. It is hard, for instance, for
   the economy of a farm to maintain its health in a national
   industrial economy in which farm earnings are apt to be low and
   expenses high. But it is apparently true, even in such an economy,
   that the farmers most apt to survive are those who do not go too
   far out of agriculture into either industry or banking – and who,
   moreover, live like farmers, not like businessmen. This seems
   especially true for the smaller farmers.
6. A good solution embodies a clear distinction between biological
   order and mechanical order, between farming and industry. Farmers
   who fail to make this distinction are ideal customers of the
   equipment companies, but they often fail to understand that the
   real strength of a farm is in the soil.
7. Good solutions have wide margins, so that the failure of one
   solution does not imply the impossibility of another. Industrial
   agriculture tends to put its eggs into fewer and fewer baskets, and
   to make “going for broke” its only way of going. But to grow grain
   should not make it impossible to pasture livestock, and to have a
   lot of power should not make it impossible to use only a little.

One theme that I see in Berry's seven standards is the notion of limits: Good solutions observe limits in terms of size (#'s 1, 3, 4) and discipline (#'s 2, 5, 6). For example, in the realm of teaching and learning, making schools larger does not make them better, and relying on technology rather than teachers does not improve learning.

Another theme that I see here is the notion that good solutions are qualitative: Good solutions promote "balances, symmetries, or harmonies within a pattern" (#3) and "coherence of pattern" (#4). Again, in the realm of teaching and learning, we know that good outcomes are associated with patterns that connect: connections between teachers and learners, connections between parents and teachers, contingencies – within learners – between learning effort and learning outcome, and so on.

Another important theme is the distinction between the industrial mind and the biological (relational) mind: We see this most clearly in #6, but it is also implicit in #'s 2, 5, and 7. As will become evident as I move into the next set of blog posts, which focus on Activity Theory, this distinction turns out to be especially useful when actively (and actually) solving for pattern. I will also explain why I think the phrase "relational mind" is better than "biological mind," even when one is talking about farms.

A final theme I would highlight pertains to the significance of aesthetics: We see this most clearly in #5, but this notion is a sort of corollary of the industrial vs biological (relational) distinction, seen in #'s 2, 5, 6 and 7. In regards to this theme, I would like to introduce two key ideas of the cybernetician, Heinz Von Foerster, namely, what he called the ethical imperative and the aesthetic imperative.

Ethical Imperative: Always act to increase the number of choices. Aesthetic Imperative: If you want to learn how to see, then learn how to act.

The first has to do with control and freedom, whereas the second has to do with the cybernetics of seeing. One straightforward consequence of the latter is that you won't really see what Berry is talking about, until you set out to act on his recommendations. We will return to these ideas over and over during the life of this blog.

A good source for understanding von Foerster's imperatives is an article by Frederick Steier and Jane Jorgensen, "Ethics and aesthetics in observing frames," which appeared in the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 2003, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 124--136.