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Systems Thinking: Difference between revisions
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Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the world's complexity by looking at it <u>in terms of wholes and relationships rather than splitting it into parts</u>. It has been used to explore and develop effective action in complex contexts, <u>enabling systems to change</u>. Systems thinking draws on and contributes to [[Systems Theory]] and the [[System Sciences]]. | Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the world's complexity by looking at it <u>in terms of wholes and relationships rather than splitting it into parts</u>. It has been used to explore and develop effective action in complex contexts, <u>enabling systems to change</u>. Systems thinking draws on and contributes to [[Systems Theory]] and the [[System Sciences]]. | ||
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|style="padding: 10px" | '''Classical approach''' | |||
|*Informed by a single disciplinary perspective; i.e., restricted by relatively arbitrary disciplinary boundaries (von Bertalanffy 1956, Boulding 1956). | |||
* Apply reductionist methods, which break phenomena into component parts so they can be studied or addressed independently (von Bertalanffy 1968). | |||
* Ignores the importance of appreciating the interactions between the parts, and between phenomena. | |||
* Ignoring interactions can bring about systemic resistance to reductionist 'solutions'. | |||
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|style="padding: 10px" |'''Systems Thinking''' | |||
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Reductionist scientific and management methods often embody two other potentially pernicious assumptions: | |||
Mechanism | |||
Viewing the world as a predictable machine (Prigogine 1987), where human beings are regarded as mindless cogs within it instead of self-conscious actors whose choices (based on subjectively or inter-subjectively relevant purposes and values) may be different to those that a supposed 'expert' might make. | |||
Value conflicts may therefore confound supposedly 'optimal' or 'objectively rational' solutions (Vickers 1983, Checkland 1985). | |||
Subject/object dualism Conceptual splitting of the ‘subject’ (who observes things and is the holder of knowledge about them) from the ‘object’ (which is observed and known). | |||
If, following this split, the subject comes to be hidden, the illusion of perfect objectivity is created, as if we can have knowledge without a knowing subject (Fazey et al 2018). | |||
Mechanism and subject/object dualism often walk hand in hand, as the former involves the denial of agency to human beings, which is consistent with removing the knowing subject (who has agency) from the picture. | |||