SCIENCE AND THE SYSTEMS PARADIGM†

Abstract

We live in a world which is largely man-made, one which has been created in the last 350 years by modern science. The power of science is the power of its method, which we may summarise in terms of three concepts; reductionism, repeatability and refutation. We may reduce the variety of the real-world in experiments validated by their repeatability; and we may make intellectual progress by the refutation of hypotheses. It seems beyond the power of science, however, to cope with the unstructured problems of the real-world, as opposed to the explicitly defined problems of the laboratory. In the "unrestricted" sciences progress is slow and methodological problems abound. Other ways of thinking need to be explored. One line of advance may be that of “systems thinking” which accepts that at the level of complexity observed in the real world there will be emergent properties characteristic of wholes. The systems movement seeks relations between emergent properties and the wholes which-exhibit them. Work in the systems tradition is illustrated by an account of an attempt to use systems concepts as a means of tackling real-world problems without distorting them to fit techniques which happen to be available. The 300 year tradition of science and the 30 year tradition of systems thinking are not foes. We need both analysis such as science may provide and the integration which systems thinking may provide. The two movements complement each other.