Systems and Scholarship: The Need to Do Better

Abstract

Although conscious organized systems thinking stems only from the 1940s, and is hence a very young field, it is more primitive than it ought or needs to be. Evidence for this is given in three areas: the exposition of systems ideas; the relation between systems epistemology and ontology; and the style and tone of presentation of systems work. The first area can be improved rather easily; the second defines the work systems thinkers ought to be doing; the third will be improved only by the adoption of a more modest mien.