June 14, 2023  daviding

The 1969 publication of Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by Fred E. Emery as a Penguin Modern Management paperback, can be regarded as a milestone.  The articles date from the 1940s to the 1960s, when the first wave of systems thinking was on the rise.

For the June session of Systems Thinking Ontario, we stepped through a wiki digest of the book highlights, with two invited discussants.  David L. Hawk (Ph.D. 1973) and John Pourdehnad (Ph.D. 1982) were both graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania.  In the Social Systems Science program led by Russell Ackoff, eminent visitors such as Fred Emery were frequent guest lecturers.

This session covered some basic idea in sections of the book, filled with colour commentary on personal history associated with systems researchers in the 1970s.

link https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/systems-thinking-1969-hawk-pourdehnad/

Book excerpts at https://st1969.daviding.wiki.openlearning.cc/…/systems…

Systems Thinking Ontario https://wiki.st-on.org/2023-06-12