Re[2]: New Paradigm Thinking

GAWNE, SEAN (gawnesm@songs.sce.com)
Wed, 16 Nov 94 13:53:59 pst

There's a lot that bothers me about this thread. Probably this is mostly due to
my cynical nature. But I really object to the use of the word "New". This is
certainly not new stuff. Perhaps it was not always fashionable, but there have
been systems thinkers for all of history, as best I can tell. Some of the best
statements I've seen on the importance of the whole are from Buddha.

And not all scientists were so vain as to suggest they could ever know the
truth: many claimed nothing more than to observe and try to explain what was
observed to the best of their ability. They left "truth" to the politicians and
religious.

Perhaps "newly fashionable" is a better term?

Sean Gawne

>1. The Shift from Part to Whole
>
>In the old management it was believed that a complex
>organizational system could be understood from the
>properties of its parts.
>
>In the new management, the relationship between the
>parts and the whole are reversed. The properties of
>the parts can only be understood from the dynamics of
>the whole. Ultimately there are no parts at all. What
>we call a part is merely a pattern in an inseparable
>web of relationships.