Analysis, synthesis, systems thinking and the scientific method: Rediscovering the importance of open systems

Systems Research and Behavioral Science

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 143-155

  Barton, John ^a   Haslett, Tim ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Analysis; Open systems; Scientific method; Synthesis; Systems thinking

Indexed keywords

ANALYSIS; ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS; INPUT-OUTPUT SYSTEMS; ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE; SCIENTIFIC METHOD; SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL; SYSTEM THINKINGS; SYSTEMS THINKING;

COGNITIVE SYSTEMS; OPEN SYSTEMS; SYNTHESIS (CHEMICAL);

SYSTEM THEORY;

EID: 34249742124     PISSN: 10927026     EISSN: 10991743     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/sres.816     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (91)

1. Ackoff R. 1981. Creating the Corporate Future. Wiley: NY.
2. Ackoff RL, Emery FE. 1972. On Purposeful Systems. Tavistock Publications: London.
3. Arthur CJ. 1998. Systematic dialectic. Science & Society 62(3): 447-459.
4. Atwater BJ, Kannan V, Stephens AA. 2005. Teaching systemic thinking: educating the next generation of business leaders. Systems Thinker 16(5): 1-5.
5. Bateson G. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Intex Books: London.
6. Bawden R. 2005. Systemic development at Hawkesbury: some personal lessons from experience. Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences 22: 151-164.
7. Beer Stafford. 1985. Diagnosing the System. Wiley: Chichester.
8. Blum FH. 1955. Action research - a scientific approach? Philosophy of Science 22(1): 1-7.
9. Bochner S. 1969. Eclosion and Synthesis. W.A. Benjamin: New York.
10. Bunge M. 1989. Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Ethics: The Good and the Right, Vol. 8. Reidel: Dordrecht.
11. Checkland P. 1981. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. Wiley: Chichester.
12. Checkland P. 2000. Soft systems methodology: a thirty year retrospective. Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences 17: S11-S58.
13. Churchman CW, 1979. The Systems Approach and its Enemies. Basic Books: New York.
14. Churchman CW. 1981. An Appreciation of Edgar Arthur Singer, Jr. The First Singer Lecture. S3 Papers, Social Systems Sciences Department, The Wharton School. University of Pennsylvania.
15. Crick F. 1994. The Astonishing Hypothesis. Simon & Schuster: New York.
16. Crombie A. 1997. Active maladaptive strategies. In The Social Engagement of Social Science. Vol. III, The Socio-Ecological Perspective, Trist EL, Emery F, Murray H (eds). University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia; 115-135.
17. Culliton JW. 1962. Age of Synthesis. HBR. Sept-Oct: 36-39: 180-184.
18. De Bary WT (ed.). 1958. Sources of Indian Tradition, Vol. 1. Columbia University Press: NY.
19. Dewey J. 1938. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Holt, Rinehart and Winston: NY.
20. Dunning SN. 1997. Dialectal Readings: Three types of interpretation. The Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park, Pennsylvania.
21. Emery M. 1999. Searching. John Benjamins Publishing Co.: Amsterdam.
22. Emery M. 2000. The current version of Emery's open systems theory. Systemic Practice & Action Research 13(5): 623-644.
23. Emery F, Emery M. 1997. Toward a logic of hypotheses: everyone does research. Concepts and Transformations 2(2): 119-144.
24. Emery F, Trist E. 1965. The causal texture of organizational environments. Human Relations 18: 21-32.
25. Emery FE, Trist EL. 1973. Towards a Social Ecology. Plenum: London.
26. Fairbanks M. 1970. Peirce and the positivists on knowledge. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 6(2): 111-122.
27. Flood RL. 1990. Liberating Systems Thinking. Plenum: New York.
28. Flood RL. 1999. Rethinking the Fifth Discipline. Routledge: London.
29. Flood RL, Jackson MC. 1991. Creative Problem Solving: Total Systems Intervention. Wiley: Chichester.
30. Flood RL, Komm NRA. 19%. Diversity Management - Triple Loop Learning. Wiley: Chichester.
31. Gibson JJ. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erbaum Associates: Hillsdale, New Jersey.
32. Griffiths TL, Tenenbaum JB. 2006. Optimal predictions in everyday cognition. Psychological Science 17(9): 767-773.
33. Gross N, Jones RA (eds). 2004. Durkheim's Philosophy Lectures: Notes from the Lycee de Sens Course, 1883-1884. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
34. Guastello SJ. 1995. Chaos, Catastrophe, and Human Affairs - Application of Nonlinear Dynamics to Work, Organizations, and Social Evolution. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, New Jersey.
35. Hammond D. 2002. Exploring the genealogy of systems thinking. Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences 19(5): 429-439.
36. Hammond D. 2003. The Science of Synthesis. University Press of Colorado: Boulder.
37. Hampden-Turner C. 1990. Charting the Corporate Mind: Graphic Solutions to Business Conflicts. The Free Press: New York.
38. Hampden-Turner C. 1994. Corporate Culture. Piatkus: London.
39. Hausman CR. 1993. Charles S. Peirce's Evolutionary Philosophy. Cambridge University Press: NY.
40. Heider F. 1930. Thing and medium. On perception and event structure and the psychological environment. Psychological Issues 1(3): 35-52.
41. Holton G. 1998a. The Advancement of Science and its Burdens. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass.
42. Holton G. 1998b. The Scientific Imagination. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.
43. Houser N (ed.). 1998. The Essential Peirce - Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol. 2. Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
44. Johanssen J-A, Olaisen J. 2005. Systemic philosophy and the philosophy of social science - part I: transcendence of the naturalistic and the anti-naturalistic position in the philosophy of social science. Kybernetes 34(7/8): 1261-1277.
45. Johnson DJ. 1996. Information Seeking - An Organizational Dilemma. Quorum Books: Wesport, Connecticut.
46. Josephson JR, Josephson SG (ed.). Abductive Inference - Computation, Philosophy, Technology. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
47. Kahneman D, Tversky A (eds). 2000. Choices, Values, and Frames. Cambridge University Press: New York.
48. Koestler A, Smythies JR (eds). 1969. Beyond Reductionism: New Perspectives in The Life Sciences. The Beacon Press: Boston.
49. Kolb DA. 1984. Experiential Learning: Experience as The Source of Learning and Development. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
50. Lakoff G. 2004. Don't Think of an Elephant: Know your values and frame the debate. Scribe Short Books: Melbourne.
51. Lakoff G. 2006. Whose Freedom ? The Battle over America's Most Important Idea. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York.
52. Lewin K. 1942/1997. Field Theory and learning, Resolving Social Conflicts & Field Theory in Social Science: 212-230. American Psychological Association: Washington, DC.
53. Lilienfeld R. 1978. The Rise of Systems Thinking. Wiley: Chichester.
54. Linstone HA. 1984. Multiple Perspectives for Decision Making: Bridging the Gap between Analysis and Action. North-Holland: NY.
55. Maturana HR, Varela FJ. 1972/1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. D. Reidel Publishing Company: Dordrecht, Holland.
56. Midgley G. 2000. Systemic Intervention: Philosophy, Methodology, and Practice. Kluwer: New York.
57. Midgley G (ed.) 2003a. Systems Thinking (Vol. I-IV). Sage: London.
58. Midgley G. 2003b. Science as Systemic Intervention: Some Implications of Systems Thinking and Complexity for the Philosophy of Science. Systemic Practice and Action Research 16(2): 77-97.
59. Mitroff II, Linstone HA. 1993. The Unbounded Mind: Breaking the Chains of Traditional Business Thinking. Oxford University Press: NY.
60. Nersessian NJ. 2002. The cognitive basis of model-based reasoning in science. In The Cognitive Basis of Science, Carruthers P, Stich S, Siegal M (eds). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; 133-153.
61. Odum EP. 1977. The emergence of ecology as a new integrative discipline. Science & Society 195(4284): 1289-1293.
62. Parker KA. 1998. The Continuity of Peirce's Thought. Vanderbilt University Press: Nashville, Tennessee.
63. Peirce CS. 1931-35. Extracts on abduction. Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce. Vol. I-VI, edited By Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 1931-1935, Volumes VII-VIII, edited by Arthur W. Burks, 1958. Harvard University Press: Cambridge Mass. Cited by Vol. and paragraph.
64. Pepper SC. 1934. The conceptual framework of Tolman's purposive behaviorism. Psychological Review 41(2): 108-133.
65. Pepper SC. 1942. World Hypotheses. University of California Press: Berkeley.
66. Powell Thomas C. 2001. Competitive advantage: logical and philosophical considerations. Strategic Management Journal 22: 875-888.
67. Powell Thomas C. 2002. The philosophy of strategy. Strategic Management Journal 23: 873-880.
68. Powell Thomas C. 2003. Strategy without ontology. Strategic Management Journal 24: 285-291.
69. Proffitt DR. 1999. Inferential versus ecological approaches to perception. In The Nature of Cognition, Sternberg RJ (ed.). The MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass; 447-473.
70. Ritchey T. 1996. Analysis and Synthesis. On Scientific Method- Based on a Study by Bernhard Riemann. http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/anaeng-r.pdf. [September 2006].
71. Schwaninger M. 2006. System dynamics and the evolution of the systems movement. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 23: 583-594.
72. Selsky JW, Goes J, Barbüroǧlu ON. 2006. Contrasting Perspectives of Strategy Making: Applications in 'Hyper' Environments. Organization Studies Online-First as DOI: 10.1177/0170840606067681 [August 15, 2006].
73. Senge P. 1990. The Fifth Discipline. Doubleday: NY.
74. Sharpe R. 1970. Induction. Abduction, and the Evolution of Science. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society VI(1): 17-33.
75. Simon HA. 1981. The Sciences of the Artificial (2 edition). MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
76. Singer EA. 1954. Dialectic of the Schools (I). Philosophy of Science 21(3): 175-192.
77. Sloman SA. 1999. Rational versus arational models of thought. In The Nature of Cognition, Sternberg RJ (ed.), MIT Press: 557-586.
78. Sterman J. 2000. Business Dynamics. Irwin-McGraw Hill: Boston.
79. Sternberg RJ (ed.). 1999. The Nature of Cognition. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.
80. Tolman EC. 1932. Purposive Behaviour in Animals and Men. Century: NY.
81. Trist E, Murray H (eds). 1993. The Social Engagement of Social Science. Vol. II. The Socio-Technical Perspective. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.
82. Trist E, Emery F, Murray H (eds). 1997. The Social Engagement of Social Science. Vol. III. The Socio-Ecological Perspective. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.
83. Trompenaars F, Hampden-Turner C. 2001. 21 Leaders for the 21st Century. Capstone: Oxford.
84. Tsouvalis C, Checkland P. 1996. Reflecting on SSM: the dividing line between 'real world' and 'systems thinking world'. Systems Research 13(1): 35-45.
85. Tuomi J. 1992. Evolutionary synthesis: a search for the strategy. Philosophy of Science 59: 429-438.
86. Ulrich Werner. 1983. Critical Heuristics of Social Planning. Paul Haupt: Berne.
87. Vennix JAM. 1996. Group Model Building - Facilitating Team Learning Using System Dynamics. Wiley: Chichester.
88. Von Bertalanffy L. 1950. The Theory of open systems in physics and biology. Science 111(2872): 23-29.
89. Warren K. 2002. Competitive Strategy Dynamics. John Wiley & Sons: Chichester.
90. Weiss PA. 1969. The living system. In Beyond Reductionism: New Perspectives in the Life Sciences, Koestler A, Smythies JR (eds). Beacon Press: Boston; 3-55.
91. Wheeler RH. 1935. Organismic vs. mechanistic logic. Psychological Review 42(4): 335-353.