General
Systems Theory - My Father's (Richard Ferdinand Ericson) passion
was the Society for General
Systems Research. The basic idea being that the same rules apply
to any systems, whether they be biological, electrical/electronic,
political, religious, physics or whatever. A fascinating study
(if you have a very good dictionary handy ;) GWU Prof, teacher at
Annapolis
Just like my Daddy did!! (lol - hardly - they lost me at
trigonometry ;)
See his
GWU
Professor Emeritus profile
Marcel Douwe Dekker has put up a
Wikipedia
article
about my Dad
and some more info under the General Systems heading at -
http://www.uia.be/node/150?kap=4
Since 1956, the Society for General Systems Research has produced a
yearbook,
General Systems, which collects together significant
papers, often originally published in journals of a wide variety of
disciplines. This is a very valuable source for the location of
concepts and their definitions. (A former director of the Society,
Richard Ericson, has himself prepared two tentative versions of a
"Selected
glossary of terms with particular reference to concepts associated with
cybernetic management and information technology"). Oran Young has
carried out a survey of the use of general systems concepts (
General
Systems, 1964, p.61-80, 239-253). In 1979 a further survey of the
movement was carried out for the Society (Cavallo, 1979). The many
books on general systems naturally also offer definitions of concepts.
It is appropriate to ask why general systems has not been able to
respond as effectively as might have been hoped to the challenges of
the times. Attempts have been made to render general systems relevant
to the issues raised by the global problematique (Ervin Laszlo, 1974
and R F Ericson 1979), but there has been little follow-up.
Learn more at the
International
Society for the
Systems Sciences
