Hi Mark
Although I am haven't the time to promote and explore the
application a wholistic approach like 'living systems theory'
or 'general system theory' to such issues . . .
Thanks for bringing this up! However, in this case, the key individual is
probably Kenneth Boulding. Central to his work is the entire literature
on the "Image" -- which he called "Eiconics" and which (sorta) later became
"mimetics."
Thanks for the references, I don't know how you can keep track of all that
information!!!! There is a nice book out by Debora Hammond
Hammond, D., 2003. The science of synthesis: Exploring the social implications
of general systems theory, Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.
that explores the history, including, of course, Boulding, Rapoport, Gerard,
Bertalanffy and the others I mentioned. It occurs to me that I should ask around
here at UofColorado about Boulding, while I am teaching here...
The submersion (perversion!) of much general systems thinking into the
cybernetic/military-industrial was an unfortunate result of crossovers between
all these people (and others) at the time. But certainly some of the ideas are
extremely powerful (as illustrated by the fact that our social system as it is
rests largely on a technocracy constructed from that worldview!). I prefer the
more wholistic open-system sensibility of Bertalanffy and the Millers. This is
no coincidence as my father was a senior systems analyst & engineer deep in the
MIT-MITRE-DOD-RAND circuit between '41-'69 -- it seemed incumbent to move in
another direction :-|
(An aside -- the psychological state that such thinking imposed,
workday-after-workday, beginning in 1940, and eventually subsuming huge numbers
of (mostly) men engineers had/has a direct formative effect on the entire social
fabric that we are part of now... on personal, family, community, and national
levels)
Cheers,
JH
--
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Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow!
http://neoscenes.net/
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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