[ExI] systems thinking

[ben]

Jef helpfully suggested:

On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 1:44 PM, ben<benboc at lineone.net> wrote:
 > > Jef bemoaned:
 > >
 >> >>Oh, for a world where systems-thinking were taught to children
 >> >>alongside fairy tales, fables, mythology and pop-culture.
 > >
 > > If one wanted to give oneself an education in systems-thinking, 
what would
 > > you recommend?
 > > And is it necessary or desirable to be maths-educated, or even 
particularly
 > > numerate, for this?

 > One might begin here:

 > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking>


OK, I'm a bit confused.  I assumed that the term 'systems thinking' 
denoted something new and specific, some particular discipline that was 
worth investigating and maybe learning about. Your "Child's Garden of 
Conceptual Archetypes" seems to be just stuff we learn as we go along, 
distilled from electronics, economics, physics, neurology, biology, etc. 
I would add a few things to it myself, more general things that I've 
always thought were lacking from traditional basic education, but I 
don't see how this is different or special, and deserving of a special 
name.  It seems that the label "Learning about stuff" or "Learning about 
the world" would be just as valid.  Am I missing some perspective that 
links this list together, and separates it from learning about 
population dynamics, reading and writing, plotting and interpreting 
graphs, how to design an experiment, interpreting shakespeare's plays, 
metabolic pathways, woodwork, the causes and effects of world war 1, 
etc. etc, etc.?

/Maybe/ it would be a good idea to separate the general principles from 
their specific usual context that people first encounter them in 
(Hysteresis is a good example), but is this actually necessary?  Once 
you learn about Schmitt triggers, you can easily understand the same 
concept applying to many different areas, from economics to cell biology.

So are you saying we should explicity extract the general principles 
that apply across many domains, and call them 'systems thinking'?

Reading that wiki article, my response is "Der!".  Why does this deserve 
a special name?  Isn't it blindingly obvious?  Things affect other 
things. So what's new?

If children actually take any notice of their education, they _are_ 
taught 'systems thinking', it seems to me.  It's just not called that, 
it's distributed among many bits and pieces of the curriculum.

I thought there was something new to learn, but it seems not.

Am I missing something?

Ben Zaiboc