scholarly journals The rationale for complexity thinking and emergentist systemism

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Hofkirchner
Keyword(s):  
System Theory ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
General System ◽  
General System Theory ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Complexity Thinking ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Problems ◽  
The Way

The rationale for thinking in terms of complex systems today is its fitness to help understand the global problems and alleviate, if not solve, them. The tenets of complexity thinking can be identified, drawing upon the path-breaking assumptions of  Bertalanffy’s General System Theory that revolutionises the way of thinking, the world picture, and the worldview of scientific disciplines.

Overcoming despair and the alienation it produces

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.G. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
System Theory ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
General System ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
General System Theory ◽  
World Views ◽  
Principal Source ◽  
Environmental Work ◽  
The Way

AbstractEnvironmental work deals in the most depressing of statistics — measures of damage to our planet and measures of apparent incapacity to change them. Years working to bring about changes in the way people deal with their environment can be very frustrating and ultimately debilitating. Some aspects of personal frustration and the despair it leads to are examined. The most advanced tools used by environmental scientists such as systems theory are themselves shown to be a source of frustration. A principal source of despair is shown to be frustrated expectations based on faulty world views.Suggestions toward resolving this outcome of concern are made. They involve personal work toward changing the expectations we have of our tools and the way we deal with reality. Evidence for the efficacy of such suggestions is taken from General System Theory itself. Deep Ecology and interpretations of twentieth century physics.

Importance of the Intersection of Library and Information Sciences with Systems Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Lee
Keyword(s):  
System Theory ◽  
General System ◽  
General System Theory ◽  
Von Bertalanffy ◽  
Meta Level ◽  
Professional Field ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Critical Insight ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Information Sciences

This paper is the attempt to show how system theory could provide critical insight into the transdisciplinary field of library and information sciences (LIS). It begins with a discussion on the categorization of library and information sciences as an academic and professional field (or rather, the lack of evidence on the subject) and what is exactly meant by system theory, drawing upon the general system theory established by Ludwig von Bertalanffy. The main conversation of this paper focuses on the inadequacies of current meta-level discussions of LIS and the benefits of general system theory (particularly when considering the exponential rapidity in which information travels) with LIS.

The Pre-Socratic World-Picture

1952 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. K. C. Guthrie
Keyword(s):  
Religious Thought ◽  
World Picture ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Way

I recently became aware that I had for a long time entertained certain preconceptions about the way in which Presocratic thinkers saw the world, without ever having seriously considered the evidence on which my belief was based. This I have now tried to do, with the results which are set forth in this paper. Since in any case it will deal, in a fairly general way, with problems concerning the interaction of philosophical and religious thought in early Greece, I hope it will have a certain interest, whether or not its readers agree with the thesis put forward. The perennial fascination of that topic has been enhanced in recent years by the discussion provoked by Werner Jaeger's book on The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, from which I take this sentence as a kind of text for my own reflections: “Though philosophy means death to the old gods, it is itself religion.”

scholarly journals A journey from reductionist to systemic cell biology aboard the schooner Tara

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (13) ◽  
pp. 2403-2406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Karsenti
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Molecular Interactions ◽  
Cell Biology ◽  
Statistical Physics ◽  
Interaction Networks ◽  
Cellular Functions ◽  
Personal Journey ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

In this essay I describe my personal journey from reductionist to systems cell biology and describe how this in turn led to a 3-year sea voyage to explore complex ocean communities. In describing this journey, I hope to convey some important principles that I gleaned along the way. I realized that cellular functions emerge from multiple molecular interactions and that new approaches borrowed from statistical physics are required to understand the emergence of such complex systems. Then I wondered how such interaction networks developed during evolution. Because life first evolved in the oceans, it became a natural thing to start looking at the small organisms that compose the plankton in the world's oceans, of which 98% are … individual cells—hence the Tara Oceans voyage, which finished on 31 March 2012 in Lorient, France, after a 60,000-mile around-the-world journey that collected more than 30,000 samples from 153 sampling stations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document