Highly recommend! Frans Osinga's Science, Strategy, and War was a rich and esoteric examination of John Boyd's conceptualizations. Not for the faint of heart! Osinga's work remains far above the fray of hagiography, a common critique of Boyd biographies, which highlights a common strategy of ad hominem, too cowardly or simpleton to adequately counter Boyd's theories directly. Osinga does well to present the reader with the context and background that were the catalysts for Boyd's body of work.
The USAF, the service to which Boyd dedicated his career and life to, has hardly sought to purposefully encapsulated his concepts. For those areas where the USAF has attempted, it grossly missed the mark. The "big Air Force" fearfully revolted at Boyd's requirement for deep and challenging thinking (Sun Tzu, "know thyself" much?). Ergo, the raison d'être for Osinga's examination. Let me clear: this was fortuitous, for had the USAF not significantly dismissed Boyd's presentations and limited writings, Osinga wouldn't have needed to write his book (based upon his thesis for School of Advanced Airpower & Strategic Studies, the Air Force's preeminent center for strategic learning).
Osinga's work embarks upon the deep dive beyond the USAF's limited understanding of the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) Loop. Osinga himself describes this succienctly:
"[The] common perception is incomplete, as the OODA loop contains more elements for success than only tempo and information. This integral rendition of his work thus indicates that the popular notion of the 'rapid OODA loop' idea does not adequately capture what Boyd meant by it, and that Boyd must be remembered for more than only the idea that one can gain military victory by more rapidly OODA looping than the opponent."
The greatest value of Osinga's work is three-fold. First, Osinga places into words the deeply vast concepts that John Boyd only presented in person in presentation form. This is rather impressive, as Boyd would give his presentations only in one-sitting, typically lasting for several hours or a whole day. Osinga is meticulously sourced, with pages and pages of endnotes supporting his presentation of Boyd's concepts, often pointing out Boyd's own notes from the margins of his own primary sources. Clearly, Osinga's book is as near-to the writing that Boyd largely chose not to perform (although he had his reasons).
Second, Osinga places Boyd's theories within the context of a very learned man. In fact, this is probably the most illuminating aspect of this work: marching the reader through the rationale of Boyd's own conclusions, carefully demonstrating the philosophical and scientific tools by which Boyd made his logical leaps. Osinga masterfully leads the reader through Boyd's zeitgeist, which serves to highlight the synthesis of the ideas of Popper, Polanyi, Kuhn, Capra, Priogogine, Waldrop, Skinner, Monod, Gell-Mann, van Creveld, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Liddell-Hart to name just a few (as the 'select bibliography' is no less than 12 pages in length 10-point font) but most importantly the ideas encapsulated within Heisenberg, Godel, and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Understand this: without that vast and learned background, with particular emphasis upon the last three, there is no OODA Loop. This eclectic background is fascinating, but extremely esoteric, and Osinga arranges this knowledge fruitfully and masterfully for the discernment of the dedicated reader.
Finally, and most importantly, Osinga's book emphasizes Boyd's true novel contribution to humankind is in learning theory. This is refreshing as my previous frame of reference hinged upon a very poor impression of OODA through my USAF professional military education. While not ignoring OODA, but contrary to the USAF's educational focus, Osinga more appropriately focuses upon Boyd's fundamental of how we as human orient ourselves to our unpredictable and chaotic surroundings. Further, Osinga provides the reader Boyd's methodology for perceiving the world and creatively innovating mental models to successfully adapt and overcome unpredictability and chaos. Uncertainty is constant, and the ability to learn to adapt and overcome uncertainty equates to winning. Boyd's lesson is clear, constant learning portends success. Boyd explains it succienctly:
"Since survival and growth are directly connected with the uncertain, ever-changing, unpredictable world of winning and losing we will exploit this whirling (conceptual) spiral of orientation, mismatches, analysis/synthesis, reorientation, mismatches, analysis/synthesis ... so that we can comprehend, cope with, and shape, as well as be shaped by that world and the novelty that arises out of it."
With these tools, the reader is better prepared in my opinion to do as Boyd says:
"...to survive, and to survive on one's own terms, or improve one's capacity for independent action. Due to forced competition for limited resources to satisfy these desires, one is probably compelled to diminish their adversary's capacity for independent action, or deny him the opportunity to survive on his own terms, or make it impossible to survive at all.
Life is conflict, survival and conquest."
This is a deep and introspective-creating book by Frans Osinga. It will challenge your cognitive abilities. However, if you do not fear difficult and deep thinking you will be well served by it.
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2011
- Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2010
Top reviews from other countries
- KevinReviewed in Canada on June 14, 2014
A thorough but repetitive authority on the subject
- G.C.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2020
Science, strategy and war
