My systems Credo

Abstract

A scientific field is defined by what it studies, its subject matter. It is scientific to the extent that it employs scientific method. In my view "systems" does not designate a scientific field, not even a nonscientific field. It designates a new world view, a weltanschauung, and a new way of thinking. To me, the emergence of the systematic world view and systemic thinking constitutes the beginning of as profound a cultural transformation as the Western World went through during the Renaissance, when the mechanistic world view and mechanistic thinking emerged. The mechanistic world view was derived from two fundamental beliefs: first, that the world could be completely understood, and second, that analyticcausal thinking was sufficient to yield such understanding. A set of doctrines was derived from these beliefs. These doctrines made up the mechanistic world view. They were, first, reductionism, the belief that every object and event could be decomposed into indivisible parts, elements, and second, that understanding of objects and events could be obtained from knowledge of the causal relationships between the elements of which they were composed. The resulting view of the world was deterministic, one that precluded the concepts of choice and free will, hence purpose. The mechanistic world view was challenged by a series of dilemmas such as that created by the "uncertainty principle," the mechanist-vitalist paradox, and especially what I like to call the "systems paradox." A system is a whole whose behavior cannot be explained by the behavior of, and relationships between, its parts--that is, by knowledge of its structure and how it works. To explain the behavior of a system, we must understand its function in the larger system of which it is a part. Knowledge develops by moving down from wholes to parts; understanding, by moving up from