Other than chance and necessity; intention and purpose by design

Abstract

Very little success has been enjoyed by decision makers in managing the life threatening problems found in the world today using techniques borrowed from the natural sciences and humanities. New promise, however, can be found in the expanded and transdisciplinary notion of the Systems Approach as developed by C. West Churchman. Using Churchman's work as a base for transdisciplinary inquiry, the new image of the dynamics of complex systems presented in the work of Ilya prigogine and others is brought to bear on the most complex system of all; social systems and the roles played by two types of social system participants; designers and planners. Designers provide the trigger in social systems leading to the dynamic system behavior described by prigogine as bifurcation which leads to rebirth and renewal in complex social systems (progress). However, unlike Prigogine's random perturbation, the designed trigger is full of intent and purpose. The complementary role of the planner is to determine the ideal level of systems performance compared to the actual level of performance and to determine how to more closely approximate the ideal (improvement).