Scientific Revolution

[Richard Turnock richardturnock c]

Posted by ""Richard Turnock"" <richardturnock@comcast.net> Thoughts about System Dynamics

I'm studying the reference posted by Martin Kunc: ""Path Dependence, Competition, and Succession in the Dynamics of Scientific Revolution. Organization"" Science, Vol. 10, No. 3, May-June 1999. This paper lead me to buy ""The Road Since Structure"" with essays from 1970 to 1993 by Thomas Kuhn, edited by Conant and Haugeland. Also, I've studied an outline of Kuhn's original book ""The Structure of Science Revolutions.""

I've read ""From the Ranch to System Dynamics: An Autobiography"" by Jay W. Forrester, D-4197-3 (edited January 2000) that I found on the Internet. Quoting from this last reference:

""It now seems clear that we are asking for a paradigm transition of the kind discussed by Kuhn. Such a transition tends to be strongly resisted both because it contradicts past assumptions and because it is difficult to understand from within the prior perspective. A pessimistic, but not entirely unrealistic, picture of paradigm revision suggests that adherents to an older paradigm are seldom converted; instead they are in time replaced. If then we hope for a time when managers and political leaders possess a more effective grasp of how their actions affect the future, what are we to do?""

Next Forrester discusses how ""the education system compartmentalizes knowledge"" and how subjects are ""taught as if they were inherently different from one another even though dynamic behavior in each rests on the same underlying concepts."" Forrester goes on to discuss the intervention into K12 schools he and others have sponsored. (I have participated in teaching teachers SD and agree with his discussion about the education system.)

Quoting from ""The Road Since Structure"", page 119, an essay titled ""The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science"", Kuhn says: "".I've suggested that the plausibility of this view depends upon abandoning the view of science as a single monolithic enterprise, bound by a unique method. Rather, it should be seen as a complex but unsystematic structure <my
emphasis> of distinct specialties or species, each responsible for a
different domain of phenomena, and each dedicated to changing current beliefs about its domain. For that enterprise, I suggest, the sciences, which must then be viewed as plural, can be seen to retain a very considerable authority.""

My Opinion

System dynamics is the systematic structure of all domain specialties that Kuhn denies exists. Practitioners in domain specialties deny this systematic structure exists. In addition, system dynamics is not just another Kunian science revolution as suggested by Forrester. System dynamics is the unifying theory of domain specialties and threatens the authority of each. Also, system dynamics threatens the funding for each domain specialty. In the future, system dynamics will have a higher priority in funding for education, science research, government spending and business expenses. The system dynamics revolution has the potential to initiate a paradigm shift in all domain specialties, not just one, including revolutions in the institutions of education and science.

Richard Turnock
Posted by ""Richard Turnock"" <richardturnock@comcast.net> posting date Sat, 7 Jan 2006 19:35:57 -0800