General Systems Theory
15 May 1997 15:42
"Lord, I disbelieve; help Thou my unbelief."An off-shoot of cybernetics, with (so far as I can see) far less to recommend it. This is not to say that none of its advocates ever produced anything worthwhile, just that the credit for it should not go to the verbiage which passed for "approaches to a general theory of systems" (query --- why is that phrase much more respectable than "theory of things in general"?). Its hey-day was in the '60s and '70s, when my father was studying planning, and took a course or three in it from C. West Churchman (see below); it seems to have become extinct by now, though some of the survivors have tried to hitch it to complexity. It is not to be confused with dynamical systems theory in mathematics, still less systems of equations, though I've seen philosophers and science-studies people do both.
- Recommended:
- David Berlinski, On Systems Analysis: An Essay Concerning the Limitations of Some Mathematical Methods in the Social, Political, and Biological Sciences [I've seen my own writing described as "Panzer assualts,"< but this made me blanche. This is fire-bombing.]
- C. West Churchman, The Systems Approach [A gentle, almost folksy approach which wisely put the idea of taking everything relevant into account before the mathematical appratus; but this fails to distinguish the systems approach from the rational approach in general, especially as Churchman is frank about the difficulties of deciding what is relevant, and how little the mathematics actually added.]
- Yakov Feygin, "Dreaming of a 'New Planning': Development and the Internationalization of Economic Thought in Late Soviet Reformist Politics", Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 12 (2021) [Thanks to Dr. Feygin for a reprint. A revised version appears as ch. 6 in Dr. Feygin's book, Building a Ruin, which I have yet to read]
- John Gall, illus. R. O. Blechman, Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail (a.k.a. General Systemantics)
- The Society for General Systems Research used to (and for all I know still does) put out an annual journal, General Systems, which at least in the early issues had many interesting articles, especially some papers by Ashby, but nothing remotely resembling a general theory of systems. The decline in its scientific quality was, however, steady and perceptible, and even the least fastidious must have written it off after about 1980.
- To read:
- B. D. O. Anderson, M. A. Arbib and E. G. Manes, Foundations of System Theory: Finitary and Infinitary Conditions
- Daniel Belgrad, The Culture of Feedback: Ecological Thinking in Seventies America
- Guy Beneveniste, The Politics of Expertise [1972]
- John Biggart et al. (eds.), Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in Russia
- Robert Boguslaw, The New Utopians: A Study of System Design and Social Change [1965]
- C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization
- Robert L. Flood, Liberating Systems Theory
- Ida R. Hoos, Systems Analysis in Social Policy: A Critical Review [=? Systems Analysis + Public Policy]
- Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes (eds.), Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After
- Stephen B. Johnson, The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs
- Jennifer S. Light, From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America
- Robert Lilienfeld, The Rise of Systems Theory: An Ideological Analysis
- N. Luhmann, Social Systems
- H. H. Pattee