Structure and Resolution of Systemic Problems

Abstract

The dichotomy of 'production' and 'product' or the means of progression from one 'equilibrium state' to another is suggested. This phenomenon runs throughout both the natural and artificial words. As shown in Figure 1, nearly all human intellectual endeavour has been concerned with understanding the notion of product which is closer to immediate human interests. Humanity has achieved producing products, physical, intellectual or artefacts, and works of arts of ever-increasing complexity because its ability to construct production systems or structures is innate. Organised approaches to understanding the workings of structures or systems have only been attempted during and after the 2nd WW when control theory was developed followed by more 'general systems thinking' initiated by von Bertalanffy beginning with the 1950's. These approaches, although inspiring and ground breaking, lack the fundamentals of the structural view of the world, fragmented, mostly speculative with superficial effort to help problem solving or design thinking and do not fit into branches of accepted knowledge and teaching schemes. The purpose of this study is to address these issues using the methodology of conventional science with 'systemic content'. The study has produced a generalised structure of problem solving for the resolution of systemic problems which can be expressed in 'testable', operational form through the symbolism of 'linguistic modelling'. The suggested criteria reach out to other symbolisms to filter out those which do not satisfy this condition. The symbolism of linguistic modelling is amenable to computing when software is available, supported by applications and passed the test of debate.