Whole Systems: From Bertalanffy to Bateson and Beyond   [Archived Catalog]
2017-2018 Academic Catalog and Student Handbook with Summer Addendum
   

HS 1620 - Whole Systems: From Bertalanffy to Bateson and Beyond


Aristotle is reputed to have said, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," but that perspective on the inter-relationship of things was not reclaimed in the West until the development of systems thinking in the 20th century. We now realize that it is essential to ground our thinking about being human in an understanding of the systems, natural and social, that are the context of human experience. This course includes some earlier ideas about the universe and interconnectedness, but the evolution of systems theory really begins in the 1940s with Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy and the origins of General Systems Theory (GST). Ervin László and the development of evolutionary systems theory and the transition to the Human Systems Theory of Erich Jantsch and Conrad Waddington are explored and the natural and human systems thinking of Gregory Bateson is introduced with its application to current systems thinking and current research approaches to addressing environmental and social change challenges. 3 credit(s)