Talk:Systems philosophy

The needs ambig. resolution
second paragraph, link to property needs ambig. resolution; link chosen deals with property (a possession) whereas what is intended is property (a characteristic) - being a feature that helps to distinguish a person or thing; distinctive.

i.e. in definition below, item 4 not item 1

Need to improve accuracy and completeness
Hello everyone I'm new to this so hope I'm going about this the right way.

I want to point out that the article is not fully representative of what Systems Philosophy is about. The explanation of what Systems Philosophy is, which is used in the first paragraph, actually describes part of what von Bertalanffy called “systems technology” in the Preface to the 1976 revised edition of his 1968 book “General System Theory” (the new preface was probably written in early 1972). As he discusses there, “systems technology” is a distinct domain within the systems disciplines, the others being “systems theory” which includes the systemics and GST, and “systems philosophy”, which is the new worldview that arises from applying the systems perspective to natural systems. In the same place von Bertalanffy describes Systems Philosophy as having three subdivisions, namely (1) “systems ontology”, which is about clarifying systems concepts and identifying the kinds of systems that actually exist, (2) “systems epistemology” which is about how to understand the real world in systems terms (the systemic worldview), and (3) what is nowadays known as “soft systems”, i.e. systems that embed “values” and “humanistic aspects”.

I think the present article mostly discusses aspects of “systems ontology”, which is only the background to “systems epistemology”, which is the essence of Systems Philosophy. The article treats Systems Philosophy as if it is merely the Philosophy of Systems, and thus, by analogy with any other “Philosophy of X”, only about the nature of systems and the disambiguation of systems concepts. But as Laszlo’s 1972 book “Introduction to Systems Philosophy” shows, and von Bertalanffy’s 1976 Preface affirms, it is really about the new worldview that emerges from looking via a systems perspective at Nature and our place in it.

I’m an experienced systems scientist, can I suggest some changes to make the article more representative and more complete?

--Brussellator (talk) 23:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Much better now, more to do...
I've cleaned up the article, removing irrelevant and incorrect material, and added material and citations to make it clearer and more accurate. I will add more material, but the main outline is looking okay now. --Brussellator (talk) 09:13, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Relevance of Ozbekhan to Systems Philosophy?
The section on Ozbekhan and the Club of Rome appears not to be relevant to the development of Systems Philosophy as conceived by Laszlo nor related to the worldviews integration work of Apostel. I have separated the additions into their own section to preserve the work but its relevance to the development of Systems Philosophy should be made clear or else it should be moved to another article. It is interesting material and important in the history of the systems sciences, but I think it belongs elsewhere - perhaps the article on the Club of Rome? Brussellator (talk) 21:30, 20 May 2013 (UTC)