A Philosophical Foundation of Systems Modeling: An Integrative Approach Combining Eastern and Western Thought

摘要

Western thought and Philosophical approaches have laid the foundation of most scientific disciplines and domains in the 19th century and continue to dominate scientific methodologies in many areas. Originating in the sciences, especially physics, the Cartesian or Newtonian worldview has shaped scientific paradigms in terms of problem identification, problem definitions, problem description and modeling, and problem solving methods. Adopting objectivity, reductionism, and deterministic modeling and classification approaches has helped advancing the sciences into the modern age and building engineering devices and projects of increasing complexity and utility. However, this mechanistic worldview is now increasingly showing its limitations in the understanding and mastering of intricate real-world phenomena. Modern science across all disciplines is beginning to see a certain paradigm shift moving towards a new worldview, which could be called systems thinking, that emphasizes concepts like uncertainty, imprecision, dynamics, process-orientation, qualitativeness, and multi-perspective, holistic thinking. In this paper, we develop a philosophical foundation for the new systems view in science. We show that Eastern thought, especially the principles of Taoism, can contribute significantly to the motivation and understanding of systems thinking. Taking a taoist perspective, we analyze systems and systems-related approaches in various scientific disciplines, and point out several newly emerging methodologies of scientific inquiry that bear closer relationships to Eastern philosophical principles than to the traditional model of Western science, including chaos theory, Gaia, soft computing and IS field.