[_vvhw]

I agree with the main point that conceptual integrity in system design is important, and it's a great article over all.

However, I really think that the immediate examples given by the author are actually not great examples of conceptual integrity, because the author too quickly conflates "conceptual integrity" with "consistency" (note the repeated use of "everything is a" in the examples given):

  Smalltalk ("everything is an object", and the small set of other accompanying principles)
  SQL ("all data is in tables", with keys and constraints)
  Lisp ("everything is a list")

Conceptual integrity and "consistency" (or "everything is a" thinking) are not at all the same thing.

I would even go as far to say that an over-emphasis on simplistic consistency speaks more to the lack of a genuine concept, or as the classic quote has it: "consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative".

And committees love consistency because it's a cheap sell.

On the other hand, conceptual integrity just means staying true to the concept, however that is defined, so that conceptual integrity could well mean a break from simplistic consistency where the concept demands it.

If I can give it a shot, I would say that the human body is a better example of conceptual integrity in system design: not everything is a head or a hand, not everything is a foot or a finger, not all fingers are the same size, and yet everything works together. The conceptual integrity lies more in the overall symmetry of the human body, its purpose, its functions, its senses, motion, perception, thoughts, speech, actions, and especially in its interdependent relationship to others in community, as well as everything else in the world.

[DyslexicAtheist]

the paper "a city is not a tree" is a perfect example of the fallacy and makes a point of the complexity of systems and the fallacies in systems thinking. The parallel is very useful to illustrate the stupidity that is "smart cities" engineering (& marketing). System thinkers envision highly complex "systems of systems" as tree-like structures (in the CompSci/Mathematical sense). It applies to all systems and models of systems though.

A city is not a tree http://www.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexa...

[_vvhw]

Thanks, Christopher Alexander is great.

[dwohnitmok]

Do you think there is any long-running complex system that does not have conceptual integrity? For example, does a city have conceptual integrity? Does a country have conceptual integrity?

Conversely do you think there have been any failed and therefore short-lived complex systems that did have conceptual integrity?

[musingsole]

Everything in the human body is a collection of cells.

[Layke1123]

This is not true. Your extracelluar matrix is vital for your survival, as well as the gases dissolved into it and in your lungs. Your bones, while they have stem cells inside and have osteoblasts scattered throughout an extra cellular material. Do the cells build all this? Yes, but not everything inside of you is strictly speaking made of cells.

[musingsole]

I knew my post had a 100% chance of a follow-up "aksually!". Thank you for the irrelevant information.

[Layke1123]

Or you could admit you spoke incorrectly like an adult and move on.

[musingsole]

I didn't speak incorrectly. You didn't understand my point and apparently not the GP's either. Diving into the construction of the human body isn't relevant to a discussion on design philosophy weighing homogeneous vs. heterogenous constructs.

"But the body isn't homogeneous! It's just mostly homogenous" is a splitting hair argument even if I'd believed you'd kept the plot.

[Layke1123]

It is not mostly just homogenous as previously described. It is a hefty mix of cells and extra cellular material, or are you going to argue that hair is made of cells too and that distinguishing between alive and dead cells is splitting hairs?

The fact that you even acknowledge it is splitting hairs indicates that you are aware that your analogy is flawed as you can't really think of the body as just cells and that is in direct contrast to systems we discuss in which everything, not mostly, are a certain way. Your body is not mostly cells in the strictest of senses. It is lot of non living material that is a mix or organically made structures as well as various gases, liquids and solids.

[imbnwa]

I feel like this is downvoted so harshly with only a single reply at this writing because there was some sentimental value to grandparent's post, but their analogy was fundamentally broken when they started talking about the design of human life from the high-level perspective of Aristotle's definition of a living thing as "being-at-work-being-itself", essentially.

More importantly, the perceived conceptual integrity of the human body is rather philosophical was put to question by Roger Penrose in his JRE episode where he talks about why the distribution of motor functions makes no sense ("the foot and walking are over here", "running is all the way over there", to paraphrase) all and we likely need a new physics model to explain consciousness as it arises in the physical brain.

Biology moved on from such an Aristotelian perspective for good reason, to slightly alter something Spinoza once said, we don't know what a cell can do. Our physical being is a radical aggregate that we don't even fully understand yet.