Systems Thinking Fundamentals The history of systems thinking goes back to antiquity. This results in the recognition that a “system” is a cognitive construct for understanding complexity. From at least Greek times, and including the mediaeval period through to the enlightenment and the modern period, the system concept was associated with framing “systems of knowledge.” Indeed, after von Bertalanffy’s (1968) enormous contribution to science by his destruction of vitalism using his open systems hypothesis, his real contribution to systems thinking was his attempt to use his open-systems construct as a building block for defining isomorphisms between the disciplines. Regrettably, the anti-mechanistic rhetoric associated with the vitalists stayed alive and became the organizing focus of many contemporary “systems thinkers” so disenfranchising some of the greatest systems thinkers known to science (Barton and Haslett, 2007). Individual systems frames are associated with different (but not always distinct) metaphors. This can be made even more explicit by associating various systems approaches with Pepper’s (1942) “world hypotheses” and his four “root metaphors”:
In summary, it is argued that systems thinking and AR, rather than being at the margin of the scientific method, are in fact at the centre. Furthermore, Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy with its continuous world view (synechism and tychism), its pragmatic definition of meaning, its phenomenology based on three categories that provide a logical basis to semiotics, its modes of inquiry and rules of inference that define the scientific method, and finally, Peirce’s assumption of fallibility (which necessitates pluralism and team learning), provide a logical basis within which to consider contemporary systems thinking, and contemporary management practice. |