sciences007

GAS

Eric J. Lindblom PhD

credit:

Frog Photostudios

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The

GAS

House

G.A.S.

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In regard to systems thinking,

The General Science Laboratory of San Francisco

is interested in a wide range of issues that affect the whole or each member of a class or set of parts. (Science is an art part and art is a science part.)

It is a GENERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES LAB (GAS).

The emphasis is NOT on the parts but in the relationships between the parts. (It is a relationship, a relativity.)

The parts are not the focus. The set is the focus. It is the whole in relationship. In particular, issues that are universal in nature are considered closely.

As such, a General Systems Laboratory has projects. Each project has an overall goal based on the idea that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Each project, then, represents a whole.

Lindblom

What, then, is a whole?

About the whole Ludwig von Bertalanffy said

"The whole is more that the sum of its parts" is simply that constitutive characteristics are not explanable from the characteristics of the isolated parts...General system theory, therefore, is
a general science of wholeness"...

 http://www.isss.org/quotelvb.htm

THEREBY,

"Von Bertalanffy proposed that there are linkages between parts and to understand the workings of the whole it was crucial to understand how the process or linkages worked."

Eleanor Craven Brennan⁺, The Qualitative Report, Volume 3, Number 2, July, 1997 (http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-2/bren.html), Principles of Chaos, Uncertainty, and Fractals, What is Chaos? An Overview, Interconnectedness...

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