Systems theory at your fingertips: John Horton Conway
This article originally appeared in 2020 as an obituary for mathematician John Horton Conway. Six years later, a second Conway law underpins any serious discussion of product architecture: Conway's Law. It was written by another Conway, but both men were systems thinkers. That is reason enough to expand the article and point this out.
In the week this article was published, mathematician John H. Conway died from the effects of COVID-19 at the age of 82. Conway always endeavored to make mathematics exciting and tangible. In particular, he became known for „Conway's Game of Life“, which impressively demonstrates how simple systems can unfold an impressive complexity.
Even at the age of 11 John Conwaythat he wanted to become a mathematician. That's an age when we play a lot. Maybe that's the reason why playing games was always the main focus for him when it came to mathematics. He wrote books about mathematical games and invented many himself. The best known of these is Conway's Game of Life.
Game of Life
Conway's Game of Life is certainly familiar to anyone who has worked in computer science. It is more of a simulation with very simple rules.
The game is played on a grid of living or dead cells. The rules are very simple: if a cell has fewer than two living neighbors, it dies of loneliness. If it has more than three living neighbors, it dies due to overpopulation. A dead cell with exactly three neighbors is brought back to life.
Convey was not a systems engineer, but a systems thinker. His Game of Life is just one example with which he impressively demonstrates the "systems of systems". emergent behavior shows that a subsystem is not recognizable.
Mathematician at heart
While we systems engineers deal a lot with the complexity of systems, mathematicians are more concerned with complicated topics. Conway became known in these circles with the Conway groups named after him and wrote several fundamental works on mathematics.
But the reference to real life was always there, be it in the game or in the metaphysical. I find his essay with Simon Kochen particularly exciting The Strong Free Will Theorem. In it, he argues that elementary particles have free will in a certain sense, assuming that this also applies to the experimenter.
Mathematics is the simple bit. It's the stuff we can understand. It's cats that are complicated.
John H. Conway
Conway was a curious person who was fascinated by mathematics and left many traces on his journey, including in systems thinking. We will miss him.
Picture of "Thane Plambeck" - "https://www.flickr.com/photos/thane/20366806/„, CC BY 2.0, Link
