ISSS2021 Pre-conference Workshop: The complexity and directions of Ancient-Modern East-West systems thinkings 探討古今中西系統思維的複合性與發展性

Papernumber: 3805

Title of Paper

The complexity and directions of Ancient-Modern East-West systems thinkings (Pre-conference Workshop)

Name of Author(s)

TSL WONG

Kent PALMER

Deeanna BURLESON
E C Yan HUANG

 

Text of abstract

ISSS has been interested in the Ancient-Modern East-West systems thinking for many years, and in 2016 established the first Larry Goldberg memorial award for the integral East-West systems thinking. When the different kinds of Ancient, modern, east, west systems thinking meet, they themselves become a complex system. We now wish to explore the possibility of employing systems thinking itself to deal with this Ancient-Modern East-West complex system of different theories, enabling them to integrate with each other harmoniously, and consequently creating new systems as applications to cope with modern wicked problems. What are the possible directions of research in such an area? We hope to gather together great systems scientists to interact with the new systems thinkers for new systems and new knowledge to emerge.

We started with the investigation of the systemic theories within Traditional Chinese Medicine, and under the mentor guidance of ISSS, we were able to refine our TCM model in the direction of both how the human system works, and how to diagnose and fine tune the human body for stability and efficiency. In the process of trying to understand more on the methodology, we received personal tuitions from professionals of ISSS in understanding Systems of Systems processes, Duality theory, Relational-Theory, Viable Systems Model, DSRP systems, Schemas Theory, and other General Systems Theories. In the research and learning processes, we discovered that all these modern GST have structures and functions similar to that of the theories of TCM and other ancient Chinese general theories in the teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Lately we even found that these similarities also exist in an ancient western theory, namely the Jewish Tree of Life theory.

In the research of TCM and WM, we encountered the properties and disadvantages of reductionist thinking. The reductionistic approach to problems is to go far into the left side of the spectrum and employ the findings to represent the whole spectrum. Spectrum has two sides and any point on it exists only on a relative basis. However, reductionist treat the left side of the findings to be absolute. On the other hand, systems sciences found that going into the other side of the spectrum would produce many layers of additional emergence effect, which makes the situation more and more complex. Our research discovered different spectrums such as microscopic vs macroscopic and objective vs subjective. However, it would be equally disadvantaged if the findings on the right side of the spectrum is to be employed to represent the whole spectrum or any specific point of the spectrum.

We wish to invite your input and discussion on our work, and to share with us your findings related to Ancient-Modern East-West systems thinking. We hope to eventually formulate a possible systemic workshop to go through this Innovation and Continuous Improvement process. The objective is to design and implement some prototypes for different systems scientists and systems learners to work and integrate, forming a possible Ancient-Modern East-West Systems Thinking Special Integration Group SIG, which hopefully could provide information and knowledge for other SIG to develop their theories as well.

Supporting Agencies:

Ancient Balance Medicine Research and Education Fund Foundation Ltd. 古中醫科研教育基金會;

Citizen of Macau SAR of China 中國澳門市民