Systems Thinking and the Internet from Independence to Interdependence

2011 ◽  
pp. 3651-3656
Author(s):  
Kambiz E. Maani
Keyword(s):  
System Dynamics ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Systems Thinking ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Divide And Conquer ◽  
Business Economics ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Gaia Theory ◽  
The One

Despite our most impressive advances in sciences and technology, our prevailing worldview and the way we work and relate is deeply rooted in the thinking that emerged during the Renaissance of the 17th century! This thinking was influenced by the sciences of that era and in particular by Newtonian physics. Newton viewed the world as a machine that was created to serve its master–God, (Ackoff, 1993). The machine metaphor and the associated mechanistic (positivist) worldview, which was later extended to the economy, society, and the organization, has persisted until today and is evident in our thinking and vocabulary. The mechanistic view of the enterprise became less tenable in the 20th century partly due to the emergence of the corporation and the increasing prominence of human relation issues in the workplace. Today, this way of thinking has reached its useful life – The futurist, Alvin Toffler declared in 1991 “the Age of the Machine is screeching to a halt”. For well over a century, the western world has subscribed to a way of thinking known as analysis (Ackoff, 1995). In analysis, in order to understand things—a concept, a product, a law, an organization, human body—we break it into pieces and study the pieces separately. This approach tends to overlook the interdependencies and connections between the constituent parts, which are responsible for dynamic change in systems, say aging in human body. On the one hand, this “divide and conquer” approach has served us well in the past. It has enabled efficient mass production of goods and services, which has brought a new social and economic order creating unprecedented wealth and standards of living in the industrialized world. On the other hand, this thinking has resulted in over-fragmentation and has created complexity and cross-purposes within organizations. In the early part of the 20th century, a new breed of scientists, in particular quantum physicists such as Werner Heisenberg (Uncertainty Principle) and Norbert Weiner (Cybernetics) began to challenge the Newtonian precepts (Zohar & Marshal, 1994). In 1968, Austrian biologist Von Bertalanffy (1968) published “General Systems Theory”—a major departure from conventional fragmentation in science. Similarly, Jay Forrester of MIT introduced and demonstrated the applications of feedback theory in organizations (Forrester, 1958). Forrester’s seminal work marks the birth of a new discipline known as System Dynamics. System Dynamics is concerned with applications of systems theory and computer modeling in complex problems in business, economics, and the environment. System Dynamics is the forerunner and the scientific foundation of Systems Thinking. Today, biologist and physicists as well as social and cognitive scientists are working on new fields such as complexity and network theory, and Gaia theory. These emerging fields come under the broader umbrella of “systems theory” or “living systems” and “they are working in the systems sciences and are contributing to advancing the integrated, systemic understanding of life” (Capra, 2007).

Social Systems on the Cross

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinos Diamantides ◽  
Anton Schütz
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
The One

While early 20th century Social Darwinism has been discredited, post-WW2 theories have re-emphasized Darwin's notion of the environment. On this basis, and substituting social systems for natural species, society has been analyzed as a system-in-evolution, a machinery that, reflexively or self-referentially, produces itself at every moment anew. Modern society, according to social systems theory, continuously makes itself, thanks to countless simultaneous communications taking place at once. There are two equally disquieting lessons here. On the one hand, modern law, understood as the communicative system that applies the distinction lawful/unlawful to everything that gets in its way, is placed within an environment constituted by other communicative social systems (the economy, politics, religion, art etc) and the conditions created by those. On the other hand, social systems at large are separated from the realm of human consciousness, i.e. of collective or individual identity (the ‘psychic systems’). While ‘social' and ‘psychic’ systems never meet, they rely on absolute indifference with respect to their other side, as only this indifference enables especially social systems to assure their (superior) fact-creating potential. Our own project consists in spelling out the implications of this scissile sense of ‘meaning’, at once understood as a shorthand for what is actually happening (fragmented communications) and as consciousness-as-identity (imaginary unity).

scholarly journals The Visionary Companies, an Excellent Case of the Informal Systems Thinking

10.28945/2543 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matjaž Mulej ◽  
Zdenka Zenko ◽  
Vojko Potocan
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Systems Thinking ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Holistic Thinking ◽  
Implicit Systems ◽  
The One ◽  
High Level ◽  
Level 2 ◽  
Insight Into

Systems theory has become a worldview aimed at holism, and a methodology supportive of holism. But it has also become a sophisticated mathematical and philosophical approach, which limits it to rather few intellectuals and systems theorists. This is not enough for humankind to do well. An insight into the most successful companies, called the visionary companies in the analysis briefed here, let us see that an informal, implicit, indirect, systems thinking might be as important as the systems theory (which still remains important as its aide). The point is double, at least: (1) systems thinking practices holistic thinking that implicitly attains the requisite holism on a high level, (2) systems theory is not a theory aimed at itself, but at supporting the holistic rather than one-sided thinking, by building bridges between mutually different specialists. Informal, implicit systems thinking can do equally much good as the one backed by systems theory.

scholarly journals Gaia Theory: Between Autopoiesis and Sympoiesis

Problemos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Audronė Žukauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Systems Thinking ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
First Order ◽  
Gaia Hypothesis ◽  
Lynn Margulis ◽  
James Lovelock ◽  
Gaia Theory ◽  
Second Order Systems

The article discusses the development of the Gaia Hypothesis as it was defined by James Lovelock in the 1970s and later elaborated in his collaboration with biologist Lynn Margulis. Margulis’s research in symbiogenesis and her interest in Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis helped to reshape the Gaia theory from a first-order systems theory to second-order systems theory. In contrast to the first-order systems theory, which is concerned with the processes of homeostasis, second-order systems incorporate emergence, complexity and contingency. In this respect Latour’s and Stengers’s takes on Gaia, even defining it as an “outlaw” or an anti-system, can be interpreted as specific kind of systems thinking. The article also discusses Haraway’s interpretation of Gaia in terms of sympoiesis and argues that it presents a major reconceptualization of systems theory.

scholarly journals SYSTEMS THEORY OF SYSTEMS THINKING: GENERAL AND PARTICULAR WITHIN MODERN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-410
Author(s):  
Andris Broks
Keyword(s):  
Technology Education ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Systems Thinking ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Surrounding Medium ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Science And Technology Education ◽  
Human World ◽  
Human Thinking

Following the concept of human as spiritual alive body, human thinking is spiritual activity of our brain – brainwork. Today we accept that thinking means processing of information what is important for management of human body life. Studying organization of human brainwork, people have discovered that all our thoughts and thinking activities are interconnected and form definite hierarchic structures. Humans reflect world as a set or network of diverse phenomena by building corresponding theories or models of observed phenomena. In other words, all phenomena in human world of thoughts are reflected as SYSTEMS, which are organizational units of Systems Thinking. Every system contains their interconnected parts and as a whole is a part of surrounding medium, made from other systems. Such hierarchic integral understanding and comprehension of human brainwork today has become the basic value of Systems Theory as theory of Systems Thinking.

ALTRUISTIC AND EGOISTIC AGON IN THE EMOTIONAL CRISIS OF SUŠIĆ'S DRAMATIC PERSONS

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2361-2365
Author(s):  
Almedina Čengić
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Modern Process ◽  
Artistic Vision ◽  
Dramatic Characters ◽  
The One

The second half of the 20th century in Bosnian literature is marked by the new tendencies of avant-garde writers, who will create their work through a different form of artistic creation, compared to the one that was presented at the beginning of this period. It is important to clarify the specificity of the various procedures that have positively directed dramatic creativity towards the modern lines of European literary circles. Derviš Sušić (1925-1990.), the Bosnian-Herzegovinian tradition and the reality of images, presented in a completely new artistic vision, make oscillation, in the writer's creation, between the determinants of historical facts and the legacy of oral tradition. Derviš Sušić Within the avant-garde tendencies of contemporary writers of the regional region, which appear in the mid-20th century, Sušić dominates in his virtuous creations of dramatic situations and dilemmas, in which his protagonists act. In a specific presentation of crucial culmination points, within the framework of the process of "drama of the flow of consciousness," a modern process in the conduct of drama, this writer analytically approaches the individual's dialectical duplication. Through artistically shaped fragments taken from historical records, this literary virtuoso presents in his texts a culmination point of Bosnian survival, very picturesque dramatic shaped historical characters and crucial events. It is symptomatic that Susić's characters become prototypes of stage characters, without temporal or location restrictions, transmitting a universal message of a unique attitude about the value of human activity and existence, outperform stereotypical models recognizable in the additional drama literature. Through the colorful of seeing and a range of specific dramatic characters, without the diversity of their differentiation in national status or sociopolitical affiliation, this writer creates a special ambient effect in the construction of his poetic fabrics based on historical background. The task of this paper is to prove the causality and conditionality of altruistic (social) and egoistic (individual) agonies in the actions and actions of Sušić's characters, in the examples of dramatic texts "Veliki vezir" (1969) and "Posljednja ljubav Hasana Kaimija "(1973), as well as the influence of emotional indicators on the concrete initiation of the dramatic conflict. It is therefore very interesting to explore and verify the models that will dominantly dominate the regional scene for almost half a century and be accepted as models in the way of writing its contemporaries, among the readers' population, but also at the same time with very successful placement in the theater audience.

scholarly journals The Orderliness of Music from the Perspective of Complex Information Systems

Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Shan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Music ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
20Th Century Music ◽  
Complex Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

By applying the concept of natural science to the study of music, on the one hand, we can understand the structure of music macroscopically, on the other, we can reflect on the history of music to a certain extent. Throughout the history of western music, from the classical period to the 20th century, music seems to have gone from order to disorder, but it is still orderly if analyzed carefully. Using the concept of complex information systems can give a good answer in the essence.

Trapezountian Pontic Greek in Etoloakarnania

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Spyros Armostis ◽  
Louiza Voniati ◽  
Konstantinos Drosos ◽  
Dionysios Tafiadis
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Black Sea ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Standard Term ◽  
The One

The variety described here is Pontic Greek (ISO 639 name: pnt), and specifically the variety that originates from Trapezounta in Asia Minor (present-day Trabzon in Turkey) as spoken today in Etoloakarnania, Greece by second-generation refugees. The term ‘Pontic Greek’ (in Greek: ) was originally an etic term, while Pontians called their language by other names, mainly [ɾoˈmeika] ‘Romeika’ (Sitaridou 2016) but also [laziˈka] ‘Laz language’ (Drettas 1997: 19, 620), even though Pontians and Laz people do not share the same language, the latter being Caucasian. Nowadays, is the standard term used not only by researchers, but also by native speakers of Pontic Greek born in Greece to refer to their variety (but see Sitaridou 2013 for Romeyka in the Black Sea). Pontic Greek belongs to the Asia Minor Greek group along with other varieties, such as Cappadocian Greek (e.g. Horrocks 2010: 398–404; Sitaridou 2014: 31). According to Sitaridou (2014, 2016), on the basis of historical reconstruction, the Pontic branch of Asia Minor Greek is claimed to have been divided into two major dialectal groups: Pontic Greek as spoken by Christians until the 20th century in Turkey and Romeyka as spoken by Muslims to date in Turkey. Triantafyllidis (1938/1981: 288) divides Pontic varieties, as were spoken in Asia Minor, into three dialectal groups, namely Oinountian, Chaldiot, and Trapezountian, the latter consisting of the varieties that were spoken at Trapezounta, Kerasounta, Rizounta, Sourmena, Ofis, Livera, Tripolis, and Matsouka in Asia Minor (Trabzon, Giresun, Sürmene, Of, Yazlık, Tirebolu, and Maçka respectively in present-day Turkey). However, Triantafyllidis does not explain his criteria for this classification (Chatzissavidis 2012). According to one other classification (Papadopoulos 1955: 17–18; Papadopoulos 1958: $\upzeta$ ), the variety that was used in Trapezounta belongs to the dialectal group in which post-stressed /i/ and /u/ delete along other varieties, such as e.g. the ones that were spoken in Chaldia (present-day Gümüşhane), Sourmena, and Ofis (as opposed to the rest of Pontic varieties, such as the one of Kerasounta, in which those vowels are retained). Trapezountian Pontic Greek can also be classified with the group of varieties that retain word-final /n/, such as the varieties of Kerasounta and Chaldia, as opposed to the varieties that do not retain it, such as the ones of Oinoe (present-day Ünye) and (partially) Ofis (Papadopoulos 1958: θ).

The Body in Theory

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Investigations ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.

Spiritual Crisis of the Beginning of the 20th Century: From Philosophical to Religious Interpretations

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-88
Author(s):  
Alexander V. Koltsov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Religious Consciousness ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Spiritual Crisis ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
The One

The paper is an attempt to narrow down the notion of spiritual crisis which is now widely applied in research on history of culture of the 19th–20th centuries, with respect to history of German philosophy and observation of modern reli­giosity. The shift from the history of philosophy to the religious context is ful­filled through analysis of texts of two religious thinkers, A. Reinach and S. Frank, whose thought clearly demonstrates strong interconnection between the both fields. Analysis of contemporary studies on history of phenomenological philos­ophy (C. Möckel and W. Gleixner) lets firstly observe ways of application of Koselleck’s notion of crisis to investigations in the history of philosophy. Sec­ondly it discovers two possibilities of philosophical contextualization of the con­cept of spiritual crisis – on the one hand, as a constituent rhetorical element of the philosophical statement (Möckel), on the other hand, as a term which de­scribes the uniqueness of an intellectual situation of the beginning of the 20thcentury (Gleixner). Then these aspects of the rhetoric of crisis are applied to reli­gious philosophy of Reinach and Frank, what leads to interpretation of their works as a particular statement discovering the divine (or the holy) as a new cat­egory of religious consciousness.

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