3.2.1 Systems Theory - Introduction

The reason that systems theory is of interest to us is that it describes systems in terms of relationships – and relationship has huge importance in our work with people in distress.

Scientists, sociologists and philosophers are all interested in systems theory and its applications are both widespread, and with the world shrinking, increasingly relevant to us all.

For example I mentioned in the Introduction that one of the things that influenced me to change my thinking on the world (and what I wanted to do with my life) was reading the magazine Resurgence in the mid 1980’s.  It was in this magazine that I first came across James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis which proposed that the Earth was a living organism, and every part of it influences, and is influenced by, every other part.  This, I found fascinating and even though it was quite novel at the time it is now widely accepted.

Of course, like many modern studies, an intuitive understanding of systems theory has been with us as long as mankind has been in existence.

It could actually be argued that ancient peoples, who seemed to have an appreciation of the inter-relatedness of all living things, were far more in tune with, and appreciated the importance of systems, than our current technological world.

So like many similar phenomena that are ‘discovered’, the Gaia type thinking has actually been with us in many different cultures for thousands of years but was largely forgotten about in our rush to modernise our world over the past 300 years or so. 

I will say a lot more about this in the Chapter on Research and Evaluation.

As I described more fully in the Chapter on Cause, Effect And Nurture, mostly, in our technological world, we are so used to breaking down (reducing) problems to solve them that the entirety, or the whole of the problem, i.e. its systemic dimension is often not treated as being all that important – if it’s thought about at all.

Systems theory challenges this, implying that the whole is indeed important – particularly in entities that are growing.

If we break a growing entity down into smaller bits, our understanding of its complicated-ness might be enhanced, but our understanding of its processes and even its nature, and indeed its complexity might be diminished.

Everything that is living and/or growing, from the smallest bacteria to the entire planet is a whole and therefore is a living system.  Since it is living, it is constantly changing.  These changes can be subtle and barely noticeable but are changes nonetheless.  When we think systemically we think in terms of process, our interactions with each other, the (above-mentioned) cause and effect, growth, and universal solutions (which will be explored in the next Chapter).

Just a quick little word of warning!

As we embrace the principles of systems theory (and holism, which will be described in the Chapter on Modalities of Helping) it is important that we don’t forget the great strides that the world has made by reducing problems to their component parts.  (That is, when we look in the bathwater before throwing it out – we may find some babies)! 

The babies that we find in the reductionist bathwater are the brilliant minds of the many scientists and mathematicians that brought us the great technological advances in the world over the past 400 years or so.

I believe that reductionism [1] and its attendant scientific rigour greatly complements systems theory, and, of course, vice versa.

Simply put, it might be helpful to think that reductionism helps us to understand the minutiae and the detail etc. of life, and systems theory gives us an appreciation of how life has potential and purpose.

[1]. This will be expanded once again in Sub-Chapter on Complexity.