Wednesday, May 03, 2006

General Systems Theory

Certainly economists compete with one another to become stars in their own field, but the discipline as a whole still suffers from a monopolistic mindset. When it comes to fixing spending priorities, economists still seem to think there's only one game in town, namely Economics.

General Systems Theory aims to compete with Economics, by covering some of the same territory with a newer map, sort of the way astronomy gradually took over from astrology, when it came to such challenges as putting humans on the Moon. We needed to be more scientific, more deeply appreciative of nature's role. GST owes more to ecology than economics.

Contributors to our field include Kenneth Boulding, Ludwig von Bertelanffy, James Schlesinger, Barbara Marx Hubbard, R. Buckminster Fuller, Jack Urner and myself (plus many more).

For further reading:

General Systems Theory: Brainstorming New Scenarios for our Global University (Oct. 1996)

New Circuit Designs for Motherboard Earth (CyRev Journal, Issue 3, 1995 etc.).