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Whether considering the first systems of written communication with Sumerian cuneiform to Mayan numerals, or the feats of engineering with the Egyptian pyramids, systems thinking can date back to antiquity. Differentiated from Western rationalist traditions of philosophy, C. West Churchman often identified with the I Ching as a systems approach sharing a frame of reference similar to pre-Socratic philosophy and Heraclitus.[20] Von Bertalanffy traced systems concepts to the philosophy of G.W. Leibniz and Nicholas of Cusa's coincidentia oppositorum. While modern systems can seem considerably more complicated, today's systems may embed themselves in history. Figures like James Joule and Sadi Carnot represent an important step to introduce the systems approach into the (rationalist) hard sciences of the 19th century, also known as the energy transformation. Then, the thermodynamics of this century, by Rudolf Clausius, Josiah Gibbs and others, established the system reference model as a formal scientific object. The Society for General Systems Research specifically catalyzed systems theory as an area of study, which developed following the World Wars from the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Kenneth E. Boulding, William Ross Ashby, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, C. West Churchman and others in the 1950s, had specifically catalyzed by collaboration in. Cognizant of advances in science that questioned classical assumptions in the organizational sciences, Bertalanffy's idea to develop a theory of systems began as early as the interwar period, publishing "An Outline for General Systems Theory" in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol 1, No. 2, by 1950. Where assumptions in Western science from Greek thought with Plato and Aristotle to Newton's Principia have historically influenced all areas from the hard to social sciences (see David Easton's seminal development of the "political system" as an analytical construct), the original theorists explored the implications of twentieth century advances in terms of systems. People have studied subjects like complexity, self-organization, connectionism and adaptive systems in the 1940s and 1950s. In fields like cybernetics, researchers such as Norbert Wiener, William Ross Ashby, John von Neumann and Heinz von Foerster, examined complex systems mathematically. John von Neumann discovered cellular automata and self-reproducing systems, again with only pencil and paper. Aleksandr Lyapunov and Jules Henri Poincaré worked on the foundations of chaos theory without any computer at all. At the same time Howard T. Odum, known as a radiation ecologist, recognized that the study of general systems required a language that could depict energetics, thermodynamics and kinetics at any system scale. Odum developed a general system, or universal language, based on the circuit language of electronics, to fulfill this role, known as the Energy Systems Language. Between 1929-1951, Robert Maynard Hutchins at the University of Chicago had undertaken efforts to encourage innovation and interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, aided by the Ford Foundation with the interdisciplinary Division of the Social Sciences established in 1931.[21] Numerous scholars had actively engaged in these ideas before (Tectology by Alexander Bogdanov, published in 1912-1917, is a remarkable example), but in 1937, von Bertalanffy presented the general theory of systems at a conference at the University of Chicago. The systems view was based on several fundamental ideas. First, all phenomena can be viewed as a web of relationships among elements, or a system. Second, all systems, whether electrical, biological, or social, have common patterns, behaviors, and properties that the observer can analyze and use to develop greater insight into the behavior of complex phenomena and to move closer toward a unity of the sciences. System philosophy, methodology and application are complementary to this science.[5] By 1956, theorists established the Society for General Systems Research, which they renamed the International Society for Systems Science in 1988. The Cold War affected the research project for systems theory in ways that sorely disappointed many of the seminal theorists. Some began to recognize that theories defined in association with systems theory had deviated from the initial General Systems Theory (GST) view.[22] The economist Kenneth Boulding, an early researcher in systems theory, had concerns over the manipulation of systems concepts. Boulding concluded from the effects of the Cold War that abuses of power always prove consequential and that systems theory might address such issues.[23] Since the end of the Cold War, a renewed interest in systems theory emerged, combined with efforts to strengthen an ethical view on the subject.[citation needed] Precursors Saint-Simon (1760–1825), Karl Marx (1817–1883), Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888), Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928), Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950), Robert Maynard Hutchins (1929–1951), among others Founders 1946-1953 Macy conferences 1948 Norbert Wiener publishes Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine 1954 Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Ralph W. Gerard, Kenneth Boulding establish Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, in 1956 renamed to Society for General Systems Research. 1955 W. Ross Ashby publishes Introduction to Cybernetics 1968 Ludwig von Bertalanffy publishes General System theory: Foundations, Development, Applications Other contributors 1970-1980s Second-order cybernetics developed by Heinz von Foerster, Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana and others 1971-1973 Cybersyn, rudimentary internet and cybernetic system for democratic economic planning developed in Chile under Allende government by Stafford Beer 1970s Catastrophe theory (René Thom, E.C. Zeeman) Dynamical systems in mathematics. 1977 Ilya Prigogine received the Nobel Prize for his works on self-organization, conciliating important systems theory concepts with system thermodynamics. 1980s Chaos theory, David Ruelle, Edward Lorenz, Mitchell Feigenbaum, Steve Smale, James A. Yorke 1986 Context theory, Anthony Wilden 1988 International Society for Systems Science 1990 Complex adaptive systems (CAS), John H. Holland, Murray Gell-Mann, W. Brian Arthur |
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