International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

J.W. SUTHERLAND stated in the following way the original research program of the Society for General System Research (now International Society for the Systems Sciences):

"- to investigate the isomorphy of concepts, laws, and models in various fields, and to help in useful transfers from one field to another

"- to encourage the development of adequate theoretical models in fields which lacks them

"- to minimize the duplication of theoretical effort in different fields

"- to promote the unity of science through improving communication among specialists". He added: "The key is the search for isomorphisms among real world phenomena for these, when identified, permit the development of explanatory models or allegories via analogy- building" (1973, p.20).

A growing number of systemists deplore that these aims have not been pursued in a really efficient manner. While "systems" – whatever the meaning given to this term – were introduced in a number of Universities departmentss, they were in many cases dismantled (D. McNEIL, 1993a). There seems to exist two principal causes:

- The general transdisciplinarian systems worldview is not a classical subject to be teached as for example micro-biology or astrophysics. As such it does not fit well in any specific curriculum.

- Systemics have been frequently confused with much more limited approaches or subjects, as for example Systems Dynamics, Operation Research, or Systems Engineering. It has also at times been presented as a vague general philosophy, without much specific content.

It seems urgent to go back to the original program, as described by SUTHERLAND, avoiding reduction to some specialized applications, as well as academic seclusion. Moreover, systemics, as a methodology to understand and manage complexity, is for everybody, i.e. for businessmen, politicians, economists, ecologists, etc… and also for John and Jane Citizen, from childhood on, in order to enable them to find their way in this ever more complex world.

It should be noted that, since the time SUTHERLAND wrote these lines, a quite different process has covered a growing importance: Abstract models invented principally by mathematicians and logicians, as for example catastrophes, fractals, fuzzy sets, or percolation in composite systems, led to the discovery of new phenomena, or new interpretations of phenomena, already known, but until then ill understood.

But again, the very general isomorphies so discovered remain shrouded in specialized mists, unassimilated in their general meaning and mostly ignored even by many systemists.