Gary S. Metcalf - Handbook of Systems Sciences

The Handbook of System Science is not restricted to science in a traditional sense. The topics covered represent a broad spectrum of research activities related to systems, including systems thinking, systems theory, and systems practices. The scope of this handbook spans diverse intellectual research activities and studies which could be classified into three areas: philosophical foundations, scientific theories, and practical applications. Though it seems natural that any systemic research or study would span more than one area, it is helpful to clearly indicate how this handbook addresses those issues.

First, the handbook includes research and studies to develop, construct, and evolve theories, concepts, and models of systems. This relates not only to general systems theory (GST), but also cybernetics, and complexity theory, and underlying philosophical principles. According to Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the founding father of GST, systems philosophy attempts to capture the deeper reorientation or shift in paradigms caused by thinking in these terms.

Next, there are activities to describe, explain, and understand various phenomena and events that have been dealt with in the conventional academic fields from a systems viewpoint or systems framework. They are what Bertalanffy calls systems science (in a precise sense). Systems science is the use of systems theories in traditional disciplines, such as physics, biology, psychology, and sociology. This includes a search for isomorphisms which would connect the disciplines at higher theoretical levels (which is a part of the hope for a general system theory).

There is, on the one hand, a need to unify principles across the domains of science. On the other, there is a need to appreciate characteristics and phenomena that arise at some levels of organization (sometimes called emergent properties), which do not appear in more basic forms of organization. Some problems can be reduced to the most basic levels, but others can only be understood as parts of complex networks.

Thirdly, there is an area called system thinking, or a systems approach, which is applied to tackle and manage practical problems and events. Those have become common, almost generic terms, particularly in applied areas such as management consulting. Bertalanffy makes reference to a systems approach rather than systems thinking. What he calls systems technology is quite relevant to this area, since it is a way of addressing complexity, as he sees it arising in society through computerization and automation of many kinds, as well as the increasing amounts of data and concepts that need to be understood.