Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 11, No.

2, 1998

The Future of Systems Thinking

Lars Skyttner1
Received August 14, 1996; revised September 29, 1997.

Due to the diminishing popularity of systems thinking, an attempt is done to predict

its future in the university world. Two starting points are used: one in the traditional
scientific community, being its habitat; and the other in the surrounding society,
being its area of application. The investigation shows that systems thinking is highly
needed, although its nearest future seems bleak. The systemic challenge to the tra-
ditional academic world has unfortunately been taken as a threat against its existence.
The scientific and educational impact of systems thinking is therefore opposed as an
alternative to the old scientific paradigm. Furthermore, the resistance to new theories
moving across disciplinary boundaries seems stronger than resistance to theories
within the disciplines

KEY WORDS: systems thinking; General Systems Theory; systems science; holism;
positivism; metadiscipline.

1. INTRODUCTION
Some years ago, systems science as an independent discipline was abolished at
Swedish universities. This prompted the present attempt to predict the future of
systems thinking. To foretell the fate of a speciality which still has not celebrated
its fiftieth anniversary as a unified area of knowledge is, of course, extremely
difficult. In this paper one such effort is made from two starting points: one
with respect to the state of science in general, where systems thinking environ-
ment is to be found; and the other with regard to the state of the world we live
in, where it should be used. An assumption of this study is that the highest
purpose for the intellect is the search for general principles that would allow us
better to understand, predict, and manage the world's problems.

2. SCIENCE OF TODAY
From the beginning of the scientific revolution until our own days, it is
possible to see how the search for the general has involved the study of the

1Department
of Natural Science, University of Gavle, S-801 76 Gavle, Sweden, e-mail: [email protected]
Fax: + 046-26 648758.

193

!094-429X/98/0400l93$15.00/0 1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation

194 Skyttner

particular. However, the general has too often remained limited, hampered by
a skeptical attitude toward what today is called holism. Taking ourselves as the
starting point of all thinking, we have succeeded in being unaware of much that
is controlled by the surrounding context. Traditional European individual-cen-
tered heritage has held people to be exceptional and superior, the very owner
of nature. The supremacy of thought and reason, of cause and effect, as a guiding
star for the perfect rational person is still held as an ideal. Apparently, we have
a long-standing fear that rationality will be overwhelmed by chaos and the
spiritual by the sensual.
The same can be said of dualism or polarity, the traditional Western way
to arrange the world and life in mutually exclusive concepts. We think in terms
of body/mind, either/or, black and white, good and evil, defining things by their
opposites.
Society still holds specialization as natural, inevitable, and desirable, even
though people represent the least specialized creature on earth. The earlier sci-
entific and technological view of nature as a grand mechanistic machine, with
no intrinsic values, still persists. So do the traditionally positivistic attitudes
based on Frances Bacon's 16th-century ideas on the extraction of maximum
benefit from nature.
However, the worst thing is that the established scientific community has
such a strong resistance to change, which is fortified by deeply rooted private
interests. These interests still include militaryindustrial enterprises, influential
secret weapon laboratories, universities with military research grants, elitist
expert groups trying to control nuclear proliferation, and of course personal
patents rights. To these can be added a customary resistance to change from an
uninformed general public, from the unions which oppose the disappearance of
jobs, and from the politicians who strive for reelection. Without carrying things
too far, it is possible to say that our obsolete academical bureaucracy moves
into the 21st century with 20th-century thinking and 19th-century institutions.
To sum up, our traditional mentality continues to encourage business as
usual, that is, control, exploitation, and destruction of nature through scientific
"force." Short-term profit is permanently gained through neglect of the second
law of thermodynamics. The bill for these illusory benefits will, however, have
to be paid. Some of the consequences are already clearly visible and have
resulted in the entropy of global pollution and the collapse of nature (see Catton,
1982). It is therefore quite understandable that today's science and technology
often give rise to a deep distrust. The most discreditable to science is, especially
in the eyes of the younger generation, its engagement in military research.
Development, production, and stockpiling of the means to kill ever more people
at ever greater distances in an ever shorter time promotes a general distrust. The
same distrust exists with regard to civil nuclear science and technology. Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl are by no means forgotten.
The Future of Systems Thinking 195

3. THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

History has always witnessed self-destructive individuals and societies. The
dilemma of our generation is that destructive power has gained such devastating
strength. Not so long ago the human race was small and relatively powerless
and its actions could not significantly affect the grandeur of Nature. Today,
human beings have access to power which threatens their own habitat and exis-
tence. Modern industrial societies are so intertwined that the consequences of
bad decisions, harmful technologies, and self-destructive behavior will be felt
across all traditional boundaries.
Now, at the end of the 20th-century, people have taken over many of the
control mechanisms of the global system. In fact, today we are part of the
mechanism itself and problems earlier managed by nature are now a human
responsibility. In turn, the problems facing human societies have increased in
complexity and the stakes are set higher. All too often, mistakes cannot be
corrected and the defrayal of errors is impracticable. Very often short-range
solutions have shown themselves to be both risky and highly uneconomical.
Also, once second-order effectssuch as exhaust gases from motor vehicles-
have become primary problems influencing the global climate.
We have created for ourselves, in an overpopulated and overengineered
world, a multitude of systems, existing in a state of fragile stability rather than
natural balance, and demanding constant maintenance. A real understanding of
their interaction and complexity has shown many of these systems to be both
wasteful and dangerous.
This lack of a comprehensive view is one of the main reasons that, during
the 1980s, we witnessed an increasing number of ecological, social, and tech-
nological disasters. From an inventory of the 20th century's most serious threats
to life, the following stand out in our memory.
A nuclear war would pose the most extreme threat; the possible conse-
quences are convincingly analyzed (nuclear winter, etc.). Since the Cuba
crisis at the brink of such a war in the 1960s, the risk seems to have
diminished substantially. After the breakdown of the Soviet Empire and
the dismantling of the cold war, to so-called "holocaust clock" in Wash-
ington, DC, has been set back more than an hour.
The ecological catastrophe, of which local overpopulation is the major
imminent threat, relates reciprocally to most of the other problems occur-
ring throughout our environment. A significant change in the global
climate and a diminishing ozone layer are consequences of the activities
of the inhabitants of an inequitable world, seeking an ever-better life.
The same goes for food and water pollution and the spread of deadly
illnesses such as cancer and AIDS.
Social and economic degradation can be illustrated with pathological
196 Skyttner

examples from the former communist countries or in the Middle East,

where there are signs of the devastating potential of modern ideological
and religious fanaticism. The relatively rich and relatively stable Western
countries are, however, no exception: bureaucratic paralysis, alienation,
criminality, and political corruption are producing degenerative, even
fatal effects.
Social disasters have by no means come to an end. One typical example
is the 1992 riot in Los Angeles, with many dead and the destruction of
property running to billions of dollars.
Great planning disasters where the building of an Aswan Dam on the
Nile River is the most spectacular. It is a perfect example of the impact
of human-made systems on natural systems, initiated by political prestige
and realized as a demonstration of power. The motivation of the dam
was a solution of the age-old problem of the annual flooding of the Nile.
After the conclusion of the project several serious new problems arose.
In the eastern Mediterranean the food chain was broken, thereby severely
shrinking the fishing industry. Erosion of the Nile delta took place,
causing soil salinity in upper Egypt. In the absence of annual dryness,
the waterborne snail parasite Bilharzia grew explosively, initiating an
epidemic of intestinal disease along the Nile. All these side effects were
never considered by the responsible leaders of the project.
Technological breakdown is the most spectacular threat to modern peo-
ple, sometimes killing thousands. Such breakdowns are presented by the
media as front-page stories but are seldom given an adequate background
analysis. The strong correlation between social degradation and technical
disasters is obvious: even first-class passengers in the best of existing
worlds die when arrogance is the managerial lodestar of their Titanic.
One example fresh in our memory is the exploding spacecraft Challenger
spreading its burning wreckage off the coast of Florida while being
watched by millions on television screens around the world.
In 1989 an Iranian aircraft was gunned down by an apprehensive
crew aboard an American cruiser in the Persian Gulf. One year later a
bomb was hidden on board an American aircraft; it exploded over Lock-
erby and more than 500 people lost their lives. A similar tragedy, that
of the Korean aircraft blown up over the Kuriles by an overzealous Soviet
jet-fighter pilot, took the lives of nearly 300 people.
Traffic on the seas offers other examples. An English ferry departed
from a Dutch port with its stern gate open, took in water, and suddenly
sank, taking with it more than 400 passengers. When a Swedish passen-
ger ferry was set alight by a pyromaniac while at sea, the loss of life
exceeded 150. An overloaded passenger ship was hit by a storm in
The Future of Systems Thinking 197

Malaysian waters and went to the bottom with all of the more than 3500
people on boardthe world's largest peace-time ship disaster.
Another ferry, the Swedish Estonia, abruptly sank in stormy Baltic
waters during 1994, with 900 victims who lost their lives. According to
new sea-safety regulations, it had no radio officer on board, and its two
automatic satellite-operated emergency radio beacons were never acti-
vated during the catastrophe.
Being on land can be just as disastrous. One of the most horrifying
examples is the escape of poisonous gas at a factory in Bhopal, where
more than 300 persons were gassed to death. In a similar accident in
New Mexico in 1991, gas in culverts under the street exploded, destroy-
ing a whole main street and also killing several hundred people. Another
gas catastrophe occurred in the former USSR when a crowded train ran
into a cloud of gas leaking from a tube running parallel to the railway.
A spark from the train caused an explosion, which devastated a huge
area and killed more than 600 persons.
The Chernobyl disaster, in which a nuclear plant melted down with
immediate, long-term, and still unpredictable consequences, represents
the great number of still current, and potential, combined, ecological,
social, and technical catastrophes.

After the Chernobyl disaster some kind of "distrust movement" showed

itself in the daily press. Don't trust technology and don't trust those who trust
itespecially if it concerns nuclear plants, superferries, jumbo jets, or space-
ships. Many people express their private concern that anything whatsoever could
strike them at any timea fear related to that of medieval man waiting for the
Last Judgment. It would be a great mistake not to take this concern seriously
and not to admit its justification.

4. THE NEED FOR CHANGE

Our present worldview is the result of a 400-year-old scientific project. We
have traveled to the moon, split the atom, succeeded in transplantation of hearts,
and rebuilt genes. Nevertheless, we are not satisfied with the outcome of the
project. Apparently, its methods do not coincide with today's problemscom-
plexes of interrelated processes on multiple levelswhich are characterized by
a general air of being insoluble.
Both ordinary people and scientists feel that scienceand its offspring,
technologyno longer enhances the quality of their lives, but is in fact system-
atically reducing it. Even obstinate economists have begun to realize that national
figures of growth reflect only illusory economical progress. Somehow important
198 Skyttner

qualities like judgment, sense of proportion, respect, and responsibility are miss-
ing. With problems relating to the whole domain of human knowledge, from
philosophy to cellular biology, solutions have to be based on something more
than the old scientific paradigm.
Positivism, lacking in foresight and comprehensive views, now gives a
diminishing return in area after area, from social science to quantum physics.
Already in 1960 the well-known management scientist Russel Ackoff lamented;
"We must stop acting as though nature were organized into disciplines in the
same way that universities are." Modern cross-scientific research, which is
growing in popularity, does not change the situation. To place more and more
specialized areas side by side under the same thematic roof is inadequate, so
long as the involved disciplines depend upon their own methods and language.
After the end of the Cold-War era (1945-1990), tendencies toward disin-
tegration have grown strong in many former communist communities as well as
in some of the Western capitalist societies. No longer distracted by the Cold
War, the general impact of overpopulation, energy shortages, environmental
pollution, organized crime, deforestation, climatological deterioration, civil wars,
and global inflation has become visible, giving rise to new pressures on gov-
ernments and planners.
It is likely that the planet will meet serious instabilities in its natural, social,
and economic systems over the next 50 years. A collapse seems even probable
when the closely interlinked system parameters of time, consumption, and pop-
ulation are examined and related to each other (see, e.g., Forrester, 1974;
Catton, 1982).
Accelerated technological innovations are no longer a realistic solution
because the cost of developing new control systems to control the adverse impact
of old ones rises exponentially. Moreover, systems which have been neglected
for a long time have already been irreversibly changed. The traditional Western
business-as-usual policies will come to an inevitable halt with deteriorating
weather conditions, deforestation, desertification, and the extinction of plants,
birds, fish, and other animals. Contaminated oceans, seas, rivers, and soils and
pertinent health problems with decreasing life expectations will bring about a
very uncertain future.
To these problems must be added the impact of growing global unemploy-
menta phenomenon originating from the combined effects of overpopulation
and automation. This will rapidly increase the breach between both citizens and
countries and create hostile reactions, especially against the rich Western area.
A consequence will be an immigration pressure, already clearly visible in both
Europe and United States. Economists have calculated that, to reduce global
unemployment, there is the need for one milliard new jobs within a 5-year
period. This is more than all jobs existing today in the industrial countries taken
together and a completely unattainable goal.
The Future of Systems Thinking 199

The relation between humankind and the large-scale technological systems

seems to be of a dubious kind, something concluded in the previous section.
The common characteristic of the examples given was the unpredictable break-
down of these systems. What is remarkable is that the unpredictability is expe-
rienced by those outside the system more than by those inside it. From the
outside it seems reasonable to think, Why should Chernobyl not break down,
with its corrupt management, primitive technical solutions, and poorly trained
personnel?
Those on the inside ultimately responsible for the disasters are, as always,
technocrats, severely lacking in an imaginative ability to systematize the con-
sequences of malfunctions. New insights into the design of more sophisticated
humane systems as well as the redesign of earlier manual systems are high on
the agenda.
The world to be lived in is also waiting for a better relationship between
people and their environment. From the study of pollution, of the destruction
of natural resources and of the ecological balance has evolved an expectation
of something new. More and more, the whole earth is being seen as one and,
in a sense, as alive. A view is emerging where each individual is regarded only
as a part of an organized wholeness greater than him- or herself. Our environ-
ment is becoming a sphere no longer separated from human action, ambitions,
and needs.
Kenneth Boulding (1973) says the following with reference to a high-cost
prestigious project such as the building of a huge dam (possibly Aswan):
There are benefits of course, which may be countable, but
Which have a tendency to fall into the pockets of the rich,
While the costs arc apt to fall upon the shoulders of the poor.
So cost-benefit analysis is nearly always sure
To justify the building of a solid concrete fact,
While the ecologic truth is left behind in the abstract.

Ecological and systemic awareness is, however, not a new phenomenon.

Already the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) presented a metaphysical
vision of systemic and ecological order of nature in his biological systematics.
In our own era possibly the first comprehensive exposition of systemic thinking
was presented by the Boer general Jan Smuts (1850-1950) in his book Holism
and Evolution in 1926.
Origin of modern systems thinking is associated mainly with the German
biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972). Although his ideas were for-
mulated before the Second World War, he was not recognized until one of his
now classic papers on systems thinking appeared in the American journal Science
in 1950. Another prominent founding father of systems thinking is Kenneth
Boulding, whose well-known ballad has already been presented. [For other
prominent systems thinkers, see Skyttner (1996).]
200 Skyttner

Systems thinking was established in the pre-World War II optimism, in an

era of increasing resources, as an alternative answer to needs which were then
considered pressing. Now, 50 years later, both needs and answers are more
timely than ever. But with increasing international unemployment and decreas-
ing resources for both researchers and universities, the conditions for a shift of
paradigms have deteriorated. Today, global problems are seldom associated with
lack of awareness and knowledgeinstead they are regarded as questions of
will and political and economical power.

5. SYSTEMS THINKING AS AN ALTERNATE AND CRITICIZED

PARADIGM
A basic distinction of science is that it uses observations, measurements,
and experiments to answer questions associated with problems. But new and
relevant questions must be posed if one is to obtain new and useful answers. In
reality our old worldview has not been kept up to date to take account of
contemporary change.
All things considered, the great innovations of the 19th and early 20th
centuries are responsible for most of our problemssomething that technology
itself is currently trying to find solutions for. The objective, value-free position
of traditional science has erroneously been taken for good science. After two
world wars and a trip to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, humanity has probably
learned that science does not per se convey a survival advantage. As a realizer
of human interests, science has to be founded on transcendental values that exist
outside itself. A science that cannot address the values, needs, and questioning
of modern life and inspire its support will soon lose its public justification (see
van Gigch, 1978).
The heterogeneous groups of systems scientists are held together by the
predilection for what they see as new ideas, values, and a new way of thinking.
They try to transcend the limits of conventional science and reveal the order
underlying the messiness of nature and social life. Many of them have a rela-
tivistic attitude regarding the modern worldview with its instruments and pro-
cedures (Western science and technology). Our present worldview is seen as
one among many conceivable possibilities, and probably not providing the most
desirable course for humanity.
Systems thinking implies that science, technology, and all their institutions
must serve man, not man serve them. It will prove that the technological imper-
ativethat every technology which can be developed also ought to be devel-
opedhas long been both obsolete and harmful. It also tells us that if we decide
on an excessive standard of living, we have to choose a low quality of life. If,
on the other hand, we want a better quality of life, we have to give up an
excessive standard of living.
The Future of Systems Thinking 201

Systems scientists see common principles by which systems of all sizes

operate. By use of an overarching terminology and a common language and
area of concepts, they try to explain the origin, evolution, and stability of all
systems. For systems in which complexity is outstanding and too important to
be ignored, they offer methods for scientific understanding and treatment. An
interdisciplinary science with a body of comprehensive knowledge, attempting
for a universal application, to be used by collaborating researchers, is seen as
the prime means to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation
of specialists.
As a metadiscipline, systems science will transfer its content from discipline
to discipline and address problems beyond conventional reductionist boundaries.
Generalists may be fostered who are better qualified to manage today's problem
than the specialist. With these intentions, systems thinking and systems science
should not replace but add, complement, and integrate those aspects that seem
not to be adequately treated by traditional science (see also Skyttner, 1996).
Other researchers state that there are no other ways to solve human prob-
lems than by traditional science. Relativism is said to lead anywhere and nowhere
at all. They see no special systemic rules, and knowledge about systems, their
apparent patterns, and behavior may be both illusory and random. In the real
world almost everything interacts with everything. Neither the elements nor the
couplings nor the boundaries are uniquely definable. Thus human creativity
needs to go for invention more than for discovery. The world needs concrete,
immediate technical solutions of problems like AIDS, cancer, and traffic acci-
dents, and not general principles. Also, large-scale systems thinking in the shape
of social engineering supported by extensive computerization of the citizen's
everyday life has been erroneously associated with systems science.
Taking this last-mentioned fact as a starting point, one of the most aggres-
sive critics of the systems movement (and also one of the most zealous) has
been Robert Lilienfeld. In his book The Rise of Systems Theory (1978), he
conducts a general attack on its whole spectrum of ideas and methods. From
his critiques the following main points deserve to be mentioned.

Systems theory is the latest attempt to create a universal myth based on

the prestige of science. Earlier myths have been based on theology or
philosophy.
Systems thinkers have a special weakness for definitions, conceptual-
izations, and programmatic statements, all of a vaguely benevolent mor-
alizing nature, without concrete or even scientific substance. Rather arbi-
trary normative judgments are built into its technical apparatus.
In the eyes of the ''universality" of systems theory, all things are systems
by virtue of ignoring the specific, the concrete, and the substantive.
As as theory, systems philosophy is a mixture of speculation and empir-
202 Skyttner

ical data, neither of them satisfactory. It is an attempt to stretch a set of

concepts into metaphysics that extends beyond and above all substantive
areas.
Systems theory is a theory with applications which have never been really
tested.
The systems view of society as an organism appears attractive to intel-
lectuals, who will see themselves as the brain and nerve center of the
organism, dealing as they do with symbolic and conceptual matters.
Systems theory is not a genuine philosophy and is not a science; it is an
ideology and must be considered as such. As an ideology it promotes
meritocracy: freedom to command for those at the top of the hierarchy
and freedom to obey for those locked into the system. Its authoritarian
potential seems striking to all but the systems theorists themselves.

Lilienfeld does not appear to understand that systems science can help us to
explain why an omnipresent nomenclature is unable to let people alone. The
systems theorist knows that radical intervention in natural and social systems is
a certain way to achieve surprising effects or to initiate a breakdown. He/she
also knows that the solution of one problem often creates a new, more serious
one. Systems scientists are not social engineers, but on the other hand, they are
very capable of explaining why that discipline also often fails.
For the serious practitioners of systems science, Lilienfeld's declaration
that the area has ideological overtones makes little sense. That scientific truth
is not entirely objective does not imply that it is subjective and ideological. To
a certain extent, systemic knowledge must be considered produced, not discov-
ered. This will, however, not imply that it can be reduced to the social, political,
and economic circumstances in which it was originated. Kenneth Boulding (1964)
has formulated five postulates, representing the inner core of a systems thinking
with general application. They are presented below and it is difficult to see that
they invite ideological thinking.
Order, regularity, and nonrandomness are preferable to lack of order or
to irregularity (chaos) and to randomness.
Orderliness in the empirical world makes the world good, interesting,
and attractive to the systems theorist.
There is order in the orderliness of the external or empirical world (order
to the second degree)a law about laws.
To establish order, quantification and mathematization are highly valu-
able aids.
The search for order and law necessarily involves the quest for those
realities that embody these abstract laws and order their empirical
referents.
The Future of Systems Thinking 203

On the other hand, it is quite obvious that the systems movement embraces
certain ethical dimensions. These were reactivated as a necessary response when
humanity seemed to approach nuclear extinction during the most intense Cold
War era.
Another kind of criticism comes from Ida Hoos, who states that even the
systems approach has been obsolete, in her book Systems Analysis in Public
PolicyA Critique (1984). Systems thinking abstracts and idealizes, replacing
the real world with a simpler one. Its techniques have hitherto worked well,
yielding elegant and useful models. But today, the prime concern in science is
in areas which are seen as so complex that they defy this idealization process.
From her criticism, the following arguments are typical.
The so-called isomorphisms are nothing but tired truisms about the uni-
versality of mathematics, i.e., 2 + 2 = 4 prevails whether we consider
soap, chickens, or missiles.
Superficial analogies may camouflage crucial differences and lead to
erroneous conclusions.
Adherence to an alleged irreducibility doctrine renders the approach
philosophically and methodologically unsound because it can impede
analytic advances. . . . Isomorphisms have effected the reduction of
chemistry to physical principles and life phenomenon to molecular biol-
ogy.

Finally, Willian Thompson may be quoted with a sentence from his book Evil
and World Order (1976). "The tongue cannot taste itself, the mind cannot know
itself, and the system cannot model itself."
Systems thinking, like other alternatives to conventional positivist science,
has not been unaffected by serious criticism. Although its development is outside
the scope of this paper, an example of renewal may be mentioned. This is
"Critical Systems Thinking," based on social emancipation, critical reflexion,
complementarism, and ethical commitment. It is presented excellently by Flood
and Jackson in Critical Systems Thinking: Directed Readings (1991), and by
Flood and Romm in Critical Systems Thinking: Current Research and Practice
(1996). Unfortunately, there are no visible signs that this kind of development
has resulted in a more functional attitude in relation to systems thinking.

6. DISCUSSION
Researchers in systems science work in a sometimes difficult academic
environment. Both the subject matter and the methodologies of these scientists
are often in conflict with the methods and products favored by the academy.
The methods of traditional academic and scientific work seldom reflect the
204 Skyttner

properties of systems, and therefore systems science becomes incompatible with

the nature of traditional academic work and development.
Systems science is occupied with phenomena that deal with dynamic pro-
cesses like self-organization, self-reference, and autopoiesis that are still barely
dealt with in the international science community. Traditional analytic science
tends to focus on linear models with relatively few variables and simple causal
connections. It works with individual subsystems in isolation, while only occa-
sionally (and frequently inaccurately) extrapolating to more complex systems.
Temporal and physical levels of analysis are abstracted and isolated, and dis-
ciplinary divisions cut off consideration of their interaction. This inadequacy is
reflected in the actual products of academic and scientific works like papers,
lectures, and books, which are the coin in trade for academic workers. Such
works, ranging from short papers to long treatises, nearly always have a linear
structure in both argumentation and presentation, while the chosen problem is
far from linear.
As a university discipline, systems science has never striven for an edu-
cational monopoly, a fact that also probably has contributed to its decline. It is
in the nature of systems science that other areas can cross its indistinct bound-
aries and use its methods. Its territory does not comprise a specific area of
empirical reality and its specific methods are no more specific than the fact that
they are used by other disciplines.
In the university there is a widespread skepticism about the soundness of
interdisciplinary programs generally and systems program specifically. Further-
more the systemic challenge to the traditional academic world has been taken
as a threat to its existence. The scientific and educational impact of systems
theory has therefore been opposed as an alternative to the old scientific paradigm.
The established and well-entrenched academic world seems to have too
much to lose in accepting a new perspective and therefore regards a new para-
digm as a threat. Several of the well-established and still reductionist academic
disciplines of today seem to have forced relations to systems science. Further-
more, in the eyes of unsuspecting members of academia, systems science and
systems theory have always been a subset of computer science. This miscon-
ception has often been painstakingly cherished by computer scientists in order
to lay hands upon existing but diminishing funds.
Without strong external pressure, most department leaders are unlikely to
stake the precious resources on ventures going beyond known disciplinary
boundaries. A general impression is that resistance to new theories moving
across disciplinary boundaries is stronger than resistance to them within the
disciplines. Another phenomenon is that highly specialized scientists seldom
accept that some general theories claim to know their field. They don't like
interpretations of their findings with which they themselves are not familiar.
Some even state that further abstract theories can confuse their students in their
The Future of Systems Thinking 205

critical attempts to orient themselves in their own disciplinary track, which is

hard enough.

7. CONCLUSIONS
Isolated knowledge generated by a group of specialists in a narrow field
has no value in itself. Only its synthesis with the rest of existing knowledge
gives it a meaning. But as systems thinking undermines the legitimacy of those
claiming high status of their disciplines and building walls around their fields,
systems scientists are involved in an uphill fight. As a result, systems thinking
has lost much of its earlier popularity and it is no longer possible to study
systems science at Swedish Universities as an independent discipline. Perhaps
the Scandinavian outlook is short-sighted, but a general impression is that this
diminishing popularity is a universal trend.
At the time of this writing, the future of systems thinking seems bleak. Its
underlying principles may still be neglected for a number of years, but the
growing amount of international crises surely will compel the establishment to
resort to all means, including systems science. Necessity will force old thinking
and old methods be balanced by new ones taken from all human knowledge
areas including music, art, and philosophy. Finally, from the 400-year-long
history of Western science, we may learn that main paradigm shifts require a
time of centuries rather than decades.

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Boulding, K. (1964). General systems as a point of view. In Mesarovic (ed.), Views on General
Systems Theory, John Wiley, New York.
Boulding, K. (1973). A Ballad of Ecological Awareness. The War Industry. Transaction Books,
New Brunswick, N.J.
Catton, W. (1982). Overshoot, University of Illinois Press, London.
Flood, R. L. and Jackson, M. C. (1991). Critical Systems Thinking: Directed Readings, John
Wiley, Chichester.
Flood, R. L., and Romm, N. R. A. (1996). Critical Systems Thinking: Current Research and
Practice, Plenum, New York.
Forrester, J. W. (1971). World Dynamics, W. Allen, Cambridge, MA.
Hoos, I. R. (1983). Systems Analysis in Public Policy, A Critique, University of California Press,
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