Aristotle employs systems thinking to elucidate the nature of body and soul and the relationship between individuals and State (Russell, B., 1961, History of Western Philosophy, George Allen and Unwin, London.). Just as a hand can only fulfill its purpose, of grasping, when joined to a body, so an individual must be a part of a State in order to fulfill his purpose. In Aristotle's philosophy the whole is clearly prior the parts and the parts only obtain their meaning in terms of the purpose of the whole - they are not separable.
There is Greek word, kybernetes, which means the art of steersmanship. The word referred principally to the piloting of a vessel but Plato used it to refer to steering the ship of State. Both usages imply regulation which was why, as we shall see, the name cybernetics was given to the new science of "communication and control" in the 1940s.
Spinoza believed that the universe as a whole consisted of a single substance and that it was illogical to try to break this whole down into parts that could exist on their own (Honderich, T., ed., 1995, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford)
Kant eager to push rational thought to the limit in order to free man from prejudice and illusion. His philosophy is a reflection on these restrictions in terms of the "categories" we have to use in thinking.
Hegel believed that nothing was real except the whole. His whole, called "The Absolute", is however more complex than that of Spinoza. Separate things do exist but they are only aspects of a complex whole. An appreciation of " The Absolute" can be approached through the "dialectical" method, which consists of a movement between "thesis", "antithesis" and "synthesis." Eventually the dialectic can take us close to an understanding of the whole in which each of the superseded theses is understood in its proper place in relation to the whole.
(Jackson, M.C., 2000, Systems Approaches to Management, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, NY. P44)
沒有留言:
張貼留言