Talk:Systems theory

First section as an abstract/brief overview
You said to write first in the talk page--but I've been writing on talk pages for 3 months. So I finally added something to the article. Why did I say it?

Yesterday I went over the article (Systems theory--Psychology Wiki) very carefully. You did the overwhelming majority of the editing and have expressed very well many of the basics of systems theory. But not until page 6 do you say Bertalanffy was proposing, "a new perspective, a new way of doing science." That should have been on the first page, as other essentials should be.

Why is it so hard to describe systems theory? It's been around for nearly a century! It's in the habits of mind that were established with the classical paradigm of science in the 1800s--to break complex systems down into little pieces and study 2 variables--and think linearly--and that this came to be considered the only way of doing science. This has caused heartbreaking problems for many--even Bateson, Bowlby and others who were trying to establish various scientific understandings that can only be understood properly through systems theory.

On page 10 you cite Raven saying, "...these sociocybernetic processes which consistently undermine well-intentioned public action (action as defined in terms of the classical paradigm of science) and are currently heading our species, at an exponentially increasing rate, toward extinction." It's not the dynamic order of nature that's at fault but our habits of thinking that stand in the way of finding effective ways of addressing these problems. And so many years have passed...

I've been asked various times about my references. I've read some of the same things others have read. But because my brain is wired to first see the interconnections that I've understood them differently. And that is not "original research."Margaret9mary 22:52, March 23, 2011 (UTC)