To an Unknown God

The ancient Greeks had worshiped many gods and goddesses. Among them was Zeus, the king of gods, who ruled over the others in a council set up on mount Olymp. Including Zeus, there were in total 12 members in that Olympian council forming a hierarchy of power. Together, the 12 gods were perfectly capable of dealing with the people’s problems of that time. Depending on what the problem was, certain gods had to be worshiped. For smaller problems, worshiping one god was sufficed. For bigger problems, more gods had to be involved. Thereby, the granularity of 12 gods has emerged most likely because 12 was a highly respected and practical number. Likewise, the number is sufficiently practical to refer to the lunar cycle while dividing 12 months into four symmetrical seasons, to count to 12 with your thumb running along the joints of your other four fingers (three joints in each of the four fingers), or to relate Jupiter’s cycle to Earth’s using the factor 12. These things were kind of a big deal back in the day.

However, there was a stain on the conceptual beauty of the Olympian council as some curious problems emerged from time to time for which apparently no god was responsible. Generally, the issue was to correlate the fixed number of 12 gods and their corresponding responsibilities with the complexity of the changing real world. In analogy, it became apparent that the usefulness of the number 12 was idealistic at best. There are slightly more than 12 lunar cycles, which does not fully correspond to the four seasons governed by the solar year. It is more reliable to order drinks from across the room using base 10 fingers. Jupiter does not take exactly 12 years to orbit the sun. And (therefore) there are also more than 12 Greek gods…

There was the famous Hades who ruled over the dead from the underworld (hence why he was not part of the council on mount Olymp). But let’s keep him out of the picture respectfully, because there is something else going on. While Hades was one of the older gods, the ancient Greeks apparently also came up with new gods and other mythical creatures as the set of people’s problems evolved. After all, they needed someone they could worship to solve all these new problems. A figurative example is Dionysus who stormed mount Olymp and forced the older goddess Hestia into an awkward position and out of the Olympian council. Nevertheless, these were small issues that could be dealt with swiftly by iterating on the story being told by the Greeks. But there came to light another god in ancient Greece. The 13th Geek god. The unknown god(s), AGNŌSTOS THEOS.

In clever foresight – or was it madness? – the ancient Greeks had erected an altar to whatever god they might have inadvertently left out. Not only did they worship the known gods perfectly capable of dealing with all their usual problems, no, they also worshiped the 13th Greek god. That form of spiritual risk management was supposed to deal with everything that was unknown to the people, with everything they could not perceive as a threat, but which could in some yet to be unveiled way impact their lives.

In general terms, worshipping the known greek gods was based on a form of problem oriented thinking, where the problem was to conjure certain favorable events in one’s life. These problems could be solved by worshipping the right gods in the right way. But neither did the people want to incur problems that just might exist but that no one was aware of yet. So, worshipping the 13th Greek god is based on a form of solution oriented thinking, where the solution is to have a good life whatever the means. So the Greeks worshiped the known gods to solve their known problems and one more to also have solutions to all other possibly existing problems that did not occur to them yet.

Conceptually, the same situation is still relevant in today’s world. When a system is build, a certain border is drawn to separate something that maintains order from chaos. Thereby, the system is designed in such a way that it is robust enough to account steadfast for the unobservable, unpredictable chaos. To do so, certain assumptions are made about the uncertainty of the real world. As inputs and outputs, these assumptions map a system into its observable (controllable) and unobservable states. The observable state is then governed by a structure of order and higher order, which the olympian council is the analogy of. To account for more unobservable states, the system’s complexity of its orderly structures can be increased. The result of too much complexity is a system that often decays back into chaos due to internal struggles in its structure of order. Rather, the goal in system design often is to work with a limited but powerful set of assumptions about the real world and a governing structure of controllable complexity. A similar procedure was completed by the ancient Greeks. Their assumptions about the real world resulted in the Olympian council consisting of the 12 Greek gods that supposedly dealt with the most important issues of one’s life when worshipped.

But assumptions have to change for any sufficently complex system in an evolving system of systems where specified inputs and required outputs change. As society produces new insights and new technological inventions become availiable, forces of conservation are weakened and assumptions are rendered absolete. Without change, the established, old systems would innevitably fail, as the ordering structure they rely on would be based on ungrounded truths. Consequently, innovation requires a redesign of systems. Sometimes, a system’s redesign can be achieved by simple iteration, as demonstrated by Dionysus storming the Olymp where he replaced the old godess Hestia. Sometimes, more drastic measures are required.

Sometimes disruptions are far too big for iterative changes to account for them in time. As a consequence, the system would inevitably fail at some point. The digital age is one such period among others that brings changes at a speed and scope that requires an advanced form of agility in system (re-)design. When design iterations cannot keep up with changes, a sacrifice to the 13th Greek god is needed. To do so, there better be an altar prepared. In modern terms, the conceptualization of a system should include as procedures its change management approach. This approach can range from Open/Closed Principles, which to some extent only allow extension of a system but not modification, towards abductive design thinking close to the spirit of the 13th greek god, which enables a complete system overhaul/pivot (after all, the 13th greek god was employed literally by the Christians as a tool to evangelize Greece)

But is there a chance to pick the best of two worlds here, as an invariant spans a bridge across the change management spectrum. The invariant can be understood based on the concept of interfaces. Interfaces allow a system to be understood as an instance of a more general solution that that can take different forms. Think of new machinery that is using the same power plug interface. The power socket does not care about what machines will be plugged in. Think of Dyonisus. The Olympian council does not care what gods are in it. In Open/Closed Principles, the interface is closed, while its implementation is open. This enables the definition of a stable core that can be realized in a flexible manner. This works great, as long as a system’s assumptions stay the same. It allows for iterative improvements while conserving a systems overall function turning inputs into outputs. E.g., you can switch your computer for a prettier one but still browse the internet on the new one, because the new computer is just a different realization of the same interface. Interfaces can also be defined at different levels of generality. Correspondingly, the 13th Greek god merely extends the agility of the Open/Closed Principles by introducing the meta concept to interfaces. This enables the vision of multi-speed design space exploration where a system’s change to disruptions is possible in a well constrained minimal manner. Even more so, the resulting hierarchy of interfaces allows the design of atomic systems based on clear assumptions. On the abstract end of the hierarchy, systems are constrained by fewer interfaces and have more freedom of design. But if an abstract interface changes, all its implementations and lesser abstract interfaces are impacted. On the concrete end of the hierarchy, systems are constrained by more interfaces and are grounded in reality. But if a less abstract interface changes, fewer dependencies are impacted.

What is the take away message? Always think a certain number of abstraction ahead because thinking too narrow is bad in the long run. However, keep that number small because thinking too far ahead is not beneficial either. In ancient Greek, they viewed the world through the perspective of their gods’ responsibilities. This was their first level of abstraction. The second level of abstraction was the Olympian council. The third and final one was the 13th greek god. This approach was one aspect that allowed the greeks to flourish for centuries, which is why we might still want to consider the number three for the scope of abstraction today. So, what is the story for the hierarchy of abstractions for your daily life, your peers, and your culture? Did you build splendid altars to worship them, to tear down in case of disruptions?