On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 16:57:51 +0000 (GMT) "Mr P.A. Van Heusden"
<pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk> writes:
>On Wed, 3 Nov 1999, James Farmelant wrote:
>
>[snip]
> The fact that the reductionist ideology
>> encourages researchers and policy makers not to push
>> their investigations of the chain of causality further to
>> take into account what is going on at the environmental
>> and social levels can be seen as constituting an ideological
>> distortion of science of the sort that I have pointed to
>> in earlier posts.
>
>James, if dialectics can lead us further by 'taking into account what
>is
>going on at the environmental and social levels', then how is
>dialectics
>better for this task than systems theory?
As Sam has suggested, dialectics can be thought of as a type of systems theory. BTW you might wish to take a look at the Fall 1998 issue of *Science & Society* which was devoted to dialectics. In particular you might wish to see Richard Levins' article "Dialectics and Systems Theory" in which Levins recounts his discussions with John Maynard Smith of the relationships between dialectics and systems theory and why in his opinion that systems theory despite its usefulness cannot displace dialectics.
Jim Farmelant
>
>[snip]
>
>Peter
>--
>Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available
>Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that
>man
>shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off
>the
>chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
> NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.
>
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