SYSTEMS INQUIRY
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3467 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Human sciences, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
- “The full scope of activities by which we attempt to construct systems that are adequate models of some aspect of reality” (G. KLIR, 1991, p.77).
KLIR comments: “The purpose of systems inquiry is to understand some phenomenon of reality, to make adequate predictions or retrodictions, to learn how to control the phenomenon in any desirable way, and to utilize all these capabilities for various ends”…
- “We can say that in both systems inquiry and systems design, we ”construct systems that are adequate models of“ something” (Ibid).
There is of course the problem to define what we understand, as observers, by “adequate”, and as possible actors as “desirable”. A long experience demonstrates that opinions and viewpoints vary considerably on these aspects (in time as well as in space).
For more rigor about the first one, we should expand as much as possible our knowledge of the phenomenon, situation and system, using for instance WARFIELD's Interpretive Structural Modeling and/or KLIR's Reconstructability Analysis. As to the desirability aspect, we should furthermore “observe the observers”, in von FOERSTER's terms, or emulate ACKOFF's fables, to better understand our own and others' motivations.