THE FUNDAMENTAL TASKS OF SYSTEMS SCIENCE

摘要

Systems science in its modern form originated in the 1930s, and expanded its claims until the 1970s. In the 1960s, under the term systems analysis, it was a compulsory tool in the US Federal Administration, and cherished in some administrations of other countries, like Western Germany. The present contribution aims at dressing inventories of the claims made by systems scientists, confronting these claims with critical literature, and drawing conclusions as to the feasability of the different claims. The analysis comes to the following conclusion: Systems science ought to set its priorities in those domains where it can most serve scientific progress and societal benefits. Both of these aims can be fulfilled, if it concentrates its efforts on networking the specialised sciences. Here the systems concept offers a set of conceptual and methodological instruments; there is a demand for this in science and society; and there is a prevalent recognition in science and the public at large that systems science is suited for that and has sufficiently demonstrated its capacity. Contributing to this main task of networking the specialized social and natural sciences is the task of finding integrative concepts. Beyond the systems concept and the feed-back concept, the concept of information, and their derivatives, a number of concepts have come to the fore, e.g. self-organization, hierarchy, evolution. Also epistemology and model theory must be included. All these concepts are applicable to analysis and synthesis beyond the specialized sciences, but theses concepts, and the systems concept itself, are also part of the latter, in the sense that they are used there and cannot be claimed as being specific to systems science.