THE INTEGRITY PAPERS UIU Group http://www.ceptualinstitute.com
International Society for the Systems Sciences
ISSS-TORONTO July 15~23, 2000
Paper for the Special Integration Group : Research Toward a General Theories of Systems
General Systems: The Successor to Copernicus
James N Rose
Ceptual Institute
1271 Bronco Circle
Minden NV 89423
integrity@ceptualinstitute.com~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Abstract
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As much as there is important focus on the similarities of mechanisms and processes in the promotion of General Systems theories, the discipline represents a truly significant shift - advancement - of human thought. To merge every known system or potential system or field of study into a singular and viable Schema of Existence is no less an astounding event than the Copernican shift away from a Ptolemeic cosmology.
Imagine for a moment that all current human science and concepts stand juxtaposed to General Systems notions as Ptolemeic thinkers once stood antecedant to Copernican minds. As grand and accomplished as conventional wisdom and knowledge are .. because both alternate viewpoints cope with the same information set .. it just might be that being inside the older mindset - even if that includes the advanced notions of quantum mechanics, superstring theories and complexity, etc.- it is difficult, but not impossible, to guage or jump into a truly revolutionary perspective of existence. As close as we think we are to understanding the synchrony of existence by way of these already advanced principles, we might have one more plateau to rise to in order to make the transition permanent and real.
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The Paper
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~The Copernican Revolution represents a shift in how human thinking reorganized the information it held. And even though Thomas Kuhn coined the phrase ‘paradigm shift’, identifying the general conditions necessary for noetic transformation is different from the information that makes such a shift happen.
Entering the 21st century, General Systems Thinking has the potential to make the next quantum shift in human thinking a reality. Humanity once recognized that existence is a rule driven phenomenon, not an 'edict driven' one officiated by gods or happenstance. Next, the Copernican/Kepler/Newtonian repositioned human ego away from the vertex of celestial and providential mechanics. Third, the joint Relativity/Quantum paradigm shift removed humanity away from a deterministic existence.
Now, with General Systems, humanity has the opportunity to knit this flexible free-floating event called universe back into an intelligibly formed embodiment of entangled co-woven processes, where amorphous boundaries root into each other and create firmaments of identities and communities of being.
But the challenge is great. Because such a shift, to be truly different in scope and accomplishment requires more than divining and identifying shared mechanisms which diverse systems have in common. That’s only a starting point. Those metaphors have existed for as long as minds have experienced one process or event and had it remind them of something else they experienced elsewhere in some other situation, or condition, or process.
To rise to this historical opportunity, GST will have to identify and justify a whole new underscoring perspective that truly re-arranges and re-architectures the information we already have of the world. We must take the exact same information that exists in conventional scientific/perceptual paradigms of the 20th/21st centuries and totally reconfigure them. Even going so far as to show that previous paradigms were valid in their own way - to the extent that they were capable of coordinating information and knowledge. Yet the new system must shine as an eminent improvement not just a replacement.
That is because an unvoiced fundamental of General Systems thinking is that pluralities of perspectives co-exist. This is a condition no less true for broad paradigms than it would be for local viewpoints, systems or cultures.
The performance-laws of nature aren’t in place by accident or serendipity. They are there and valid and shared because of larger meta-laws. And it is those that only General Systems thinking is capable of identifying and bringing to sentient access.
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