On Managing Science in the Systems Age: Two Schemas for the Study of Science as a Whole Systems Phenomenon

Ian I. Mitroff, Frederick Betz, Louis R. Pondy and Francisco Sagasti
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Ian I. Mitroff: Graduate School of Business, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in Information Science, and The Philosophy of Science, Center University of Pittsburgh
Frederick Betz: The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Louis R. Pondy: School of Business, University of Illinois, Urbana
Francisco Sagasti: Department of Scientific Affairs, Organization of American State, Lima, Peru

Interfaces, 1974, vol. 4, issue 3, 46-58

Abstract: In the Machine Age science not only took the world apart, but it took itself apart, dividing itself into narrower and narrower disciplines. Each discipline represented a different way of looking at the same world. Shortly before World War II science began to put itself back together again so that it could study phenomena as a whole, from all points of view. As a result, a host of new interdisciplines emerged such as Operations Research, Cybernetics, Systems Engineering, Communications Sciences, and Environmental Sciences. Unlike earlier scientific disciplines which sought to separate themselves from each other and to subdivide; the new interdisciplines seek to enlarge themselves, to combine to take into account more and more aspects of reality. Systems Science is the limit of this process, an amalgamation of all the parts of science into an integrated whole. Thus, Systems Science is not a science, but is science taken as a whole and applied to the study of wholes.

Date: 1974
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