Adresse/Home
| Wissenschaftlicher Werdegang
| Publikationsliste
| Forschungsschwerpunkte
| Artikel im Volltext«
| Lehre
Eberhard Umbach
Systems Science and its Critics
Contribution to the session “General Aspects of Systems Science” at the conference Systems Science 2000 on March 20-22, 2000Systems science in its modern form originated in the 1930s, and expanded its claims until the 1970s. In the 1960s, under the term systems analysis, it was a compulsory tool in the US Federal Administration, and cherished in some administrations of other countries, like Western Germany. The present contribution aims at dressing inventories of the claims made by systems scientists, confronting them with the critical literature, and drawing conclusions as to the feasability of the different claims.
The analysis comes to the following conclusion: Systems science ought to set its priorities in those domains where it can serve scientific progress and societal benefits. Both of these aims can be fulfilled if it concentrates its methods on networking the specialised sciences. Here the systems concept offers a set of conceptual and methodological instruments; there is a demand for this in science and society; and there is a prevalent recognition in science and the public that systems science is suited for that and has sufficiently demonstrated its capacity. Systems science if it is concentrated on the central function of networking for the specialised sciences is not seriously questioned by the critical analyses and evaluations included in this text.
E-Mail: Eberhard.Umbach@usf.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE