Taking the Perspective of the Third. A Contribution to the Origins of Systems Thinking

Abstract

Robert K. Logan, Annette Grathoff and I agreed in late summer 2017 to start a research project on the origins of systems thinking. About a year later, we moved the project from the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science to the only recently re-established Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society (GSIS), of which I had become Director. Bob was a member of the Advisory Committee and Annette was a researcher. It was a GSIS project without funding and has been fed by voluntary contributions so far. The basic hypothesis was that systems thinking did not start with, say, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, but has been part and parcel of mundane thinking and, as such, goes back to the early days of mankind. The presentation at hand outlines three steps of anthroposociogenesis and how systems thinking might have emerged step by step. It connects to my Triple-C Model (Cognition—Communication—Co-operation) and to my characterisation of the current world situation as Great Bifurcation, making use of the term “Third” to depict an evolving anthropological feature.

Keywords

• systems thinking
• anthropogenesis
• meta-level
• concepts
• normativity
• dyads