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Systems Thinking: Difference between revisions
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Added: Reductionist scientific and management methods embody two other potentially pernicious assumptions
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{|class=wikitable | {|class=wikitable | ||
|style="padding: 10px" | '''Classical approach''' | |style="padding: 10px" | '''Classical approach''' | ||
|*Informed by a single disciplinary perspective; i.e., restricted by relatively arbitrary disciplinary boundaries (von Bertalanffy 1956, Boulding 1956). | |* 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). | * 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. | * Ignores the importance of appreciating the interactions between the parts, and between phenomena. | ||
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|style="padding: 10px" |'''Systems Thinking''' | |style="padding: 10px" |'''Systems Thinking''' | ||
|. | |* <u>Transdisciplinary:</u> Focus is on defining and redefining systems without conforming to disciplinary boundaries (von Bertalanffy 1968, Bailey 2001, Midgley 2001a). | ||
* <u>Avoids reductionism:</u> Focuses attention on interrelationships, how parts interact to form whole systems, how those systems are defined by boundary distinctions, and what these interrelationships, systems and boundary distinctions might look like from different perspectives (Cabrera et al 2008, 2015; Cabrera and Cabrera 2015). | |||
* <u>People seen as interactive parts of larger socio-ecological systems:</u> Can both change those systems and be changed by them (Gregory 2000). | |||
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===Reductionist scientific and management methods embody two other potentially pernicious assumptions=== | |||
Reductionist scientific and management methods | |||
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. | 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. | ||
{|class=wikitable | |||
|style="padding: 10px" | '''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). | |||
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|style="padding: 10px" |'''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). | |||
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The following are Frameworks and methodologies for systems thinking: | The following are Frameworks and methodologies for systems thinking: | ||
# [[System Dynamics]] (SD) developed originally in the late 1950s by [[Jay Forrester]]. | # [[System Dynamics]] (SD) developed originally in the late 1950s by [[Jay Forrester]]. | ||