SATM 1.2 The Systems Tradition

The systems approach, or holistic thinking, has a very long history. It was no until the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, with the publication of Wiener's work on cybernetics (1948) and von Bertalanffy's on "general system theory" (1950,1968), that it bagan to take on the form of a discipline. The approach was popular and immediately successful, and system thinking from the 1950s to the 1970s was far and away the most important influence on the management sciences and a number of other fields.

SATM 4.8 The Physical Sciences and Toward Synthesis

Frijof Capra (1975, The Tao of Physics, Shambhala, Boston) has been developing is that in all of the disciplines of the natural sciences - physics, chemistry, biology - it has been necessary for scientists to abandon the mechanistic and deterministic assumptions underlying the Newtonian world view. In order to understand the nature of reality they have had to forge a new perspective which recognizes relationships and indeterminacy; in short. a perspective that is much more systemic in character.

SATM 4.5 Sociology - Origins in the Systems Disciplines

It can be found in the work of Pareto, and his followers, in the belief that society is a system. Durkheim, Spencer and many others favored the organismic analogy: society was viewed as a system made up of interconnected parts functioning to maintain the whole. Aron is referring to Pareto's formulation of a general mechanism which underpins the movement of society. Four variables, called "interest", "residues", "derivations" and "social heterogeneity", are seen as being in a state of mutual dependence.