Paradigms - Systems Science Wholes and the Post structural

“A system is a family of meaningful relationship among the members acting as a whole.” This is our working definition of General systems.


Russell Ackoff identified three main kinds of systems: technological systems, social systems, and biological systems. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, recognized as the founder of General System Theory, said that human beings are biological organisms, but we live in world of symbols, and then suggested that it is the symbolic dimension of our lives that is at the root of most of our problems. He argued that wars are symbolic conflicts, not necessarily biological conflicts. While economics clearly plays an important role in contemporary conflicts, it would be an interesting project to try to tease apart the symbolic and biological dimensions of our economic sphere, particularly as the neo-Darwinian framework is often evoked to justify the increasing disparity in the human condition.


able 1: Schools of Thought/Practice in the Systems Field

Problem Solving	Modeling	Synthesis/Integration	New Paradigm
Systems Engineering Systems Analysis	System Dynamics Systems Ecology Dynamical Systems Chaos/Complexity	Cybernetics General System(s) Theory	Deep Ecology Change in Consciousness

 the final category of new paradigm thinking recognizes the significant influence of systems thinking in the emergence of deep ecology and related fields, which draw on system concepts to highlight the importance of relationship and interdependence, and the need for a change in consciousness, particularly in terms of our sense of identity in relation to the larger world of which we are a part, if we're going to move to a more sustainable culture.

In August 2004, the new Provost at Sonoma State University, where I teach, sent out on our campus listserv an article by Vartan Gregorian entitled, "Colleges Must Reconstruct the Unity of Knowledge." Gregorian wrote about the fragmentation of knowledge and the problems of increasing specialization, and then suggested that in order to find meaning and to understand their role in society, students need to develop skills in synthesis and systemic thinking. He went on to say that while we have enormous amounts of information and computer systems to help us integrate it, that information alone can't help us come up with a coherent moral framework or tell us what questions are really worth asking.

What intrigued me was the vehemence of the response to this article. There was enormous resistance from several faculty members to this notion of the unity of knowledge. One person wrote about the "facility with which generalization and synthesis lead to fallacy." Another person wrote that, "knowledge is historically contingent, socially constructed, and deeply contested."...

In response, the Provost wrote, "I see in this call for unity a turn back from a post-modernist fragmentation of meaning, a reaffirmation of the possibility of progress in knowledge and, finally, of progress in the human experience." To which, another faculty member responded: "Calls for a unity of knowledge, or 'consilience,' can indeed directly conflict with what is broadly called postmodernism. However, rather than regarding postmodernism primarily as fragmentation, we might also see it more positively as a democratization of discourses and an opening to perspectives heretofore marginalized by monopolistic [and as another writer added, interest dependent] claims to 'the Truth.' I cannot believe that in our globalized multicultural world we can ever go back to any unitary absolutism (unless we surrender to some variety of fundamentalism)."

There is clearly some confusion about what is meant by idea of the unity of knowledge. What ISSS offers is a place where we can bring in multiple perspectives and share our ideas with one another. There is clearly reason for concern about the potential tendency, in pursuit of the "unity of knowledge," toward a kind of disciplinary and/or theoretical imperialism. I heard this at Santa Fe Institute, toward the end of the summer school, from a faculty panel, who said that you can't do complex systems studies unless you know differential equations and linear algebra. Similarly, E.O. Wilson, in his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, proposed an integration of the natural and social sciences using evolutionary theory as the overarching framework. What ISSS offers, in contrast, is an opportunity for bringing multiple voices together without trying to fit them into one single framework - the kind of democratization of discourses mentioned above. I believe this is a tremendously valuable contribution toward addressing the critical issues of our times, as we will never be able to solve the problems we face, if we are unable to talk to each other across the divides that have traditionally kept us from understanding - and working together with - one another.

Debora Hammond, Ph.D.

Incoming President's Address | ISSS 49th Annual Conference | Cancun, Mexico, July 2005

Hammond, Debora, 2003. The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory (Boulder: University Press of Colorado)





How Big is our Umbrella? by Ken Wilber

"... researchers tend to choose one or two of those approaches very early in their careers, usually under the influence of a significant mentor, organization, or academic department. And, human nature being what it is, it is then extremely difficult for them to embrace, or sometimes even acknowledge, the existence of the other approaches. Evidence that supports their position is avidly accumulated; evidence that does not is ignored, devalued, or explained away.But what if, instead, we make the following assumption: The human mind is incapable of producing 100 percent error. In other words, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time"