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2012 | Buch

Systems Thinking

Intelligence in Action

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Über dieses Buch

The core belief underlying this book is that the most useful and effective models to strengthen our intelligence are system ones, developed following the logic of Systems Thinking. Such models can explore complexity, dynamics, and change, and it is the author’s view that intelligence depends on the ability to construct models of this nature. The book is designed to allow the reader not only to acquire simple information on Systems Thinking but above all to gradually learn the logic and techniques that make this way of thinking an instrument for the improvement of intelligence. In order to aid the learning and practice of the Systems Thinking discipline, the author has abandoned a rigid formal language for a more discursive style. He writes in the first person, with an ample number of citations and critical analyses, and without ever giving in to the temptation to use formal mathematics.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. The Kingdom of Circular Processes: The Logical Foundations of Systems Thinking
Abstract
The emergence of systems thinking was a profound revolution in the history of Western scientific thought. The belief that in very complex system the behavior of the whole can be understood entirely from the properties of its parts is central to the Cartesian paradigm. This was Descartes’s celebrated method of analytic thinking, which has been an essential characteristic of modern scientific thought. In the analytic, or reductionist, approach, the parts themselves cannot be analyzed any further, except by reducing them to still smaller parts. Indeed, Western science has been progressing in that way, and at each step there has been a level of fundamental constituents that could not be analyzed any further.
Piero Mella
Chapter 2. The Arrow That Constructs the World: The Causal Loop Diagrams Technique
Abstract
This chapter introduces the formal language through which Systems Thinking – in following the five general rules presented in Chap. 1 – builds qualitative models of dynamic systems made up of temporal variables that are connected by loops.
Piero Mella
Chapter 3. Systems Thinking for the Control of Phenomena: How to Construct a Control System
Abstract
A very relevant and useful class of systems that Systems Thinking deals with are control systems. This chapter examines the concept, structure and typology of control systems by using the logic and language of Systems Thinking.
Piero Mella
Chapter 4. Systems Thinking Applied to Problem Solving: System Levers
Abstract
Systems Thinking warns us that a problem must not be identified with the evident symptoms, proposing the following general rule: we must not limit ourselves to viewing problems as undesired symptoms of immediate causes to discover and eliminate (symptomatic solution) but as the undesired effects of the functioning of some system that must be recognized, specified and controlled (definitive solution).
Piero Mella
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Systems Thinking
verfasst von
Piero Mella
Copyright-Jahr
2012
Verlag
Springer Milan
Electronic ISBN
978-88-470-2565-3
Print ISBN
978-88-470-2564-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-2565-3

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