I think it was Ben Compton who originally said, "I'd add to this
thread that the likelihood that anyone ever sees the _entire system_ is
fairly low, and therefore, even when we think systemically or
holistically, we're still only thinking about part of the system."
I've time to chime in only occasionally anymore. But I do so now
to agree. What we tend to perceive as "entire systems" will be subsets of
particular sociocultural systems, for these are the most comprehensive
meaningfully integrated systems of which we have knowledge.
But I'd also maintain that our tendency to focus on system
fragments isn't a particularly difficult problem to solve, that it's
possible to design a general education curriculum that models the whole
systems of which institutions and organization are a part, not only making
the systems and their dynamics far more comprehensible to the average
adolescent, but achieving, as a by-product, the long-sought goal of total
integration of knowledge.
Marion
- --
Marion Brady
<mbrady@digital.net>
<http://ddi.digital.net/~mbrady>
4285 N. Indian River Drive
Cocoa, FL 32927
--Marion Brady <mbrady@digital.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>