THE EMERGING SYSTEMS PARADIGM: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

As part of humanity's inexorable quest for knowledge, modern science has significantly enhanced people's ability to understand and deal with their increasingly complex world through its development of sophisticated means for producing empirically-verifiable information about reality. Scholarly enquiry proceeds in the context of prevailing paradigms or world-views that define the legitimate problems and methods of investigation, with progress coming through what Thomas Kuhn calls "paradigm shifts" or scientific revolutions. In the years since World War II there have been indications of just such a shift from what Russell Ackoff calls "Machine Age" enquiry to "Systems Age" enquiry as the effects of the Information Revolution become more apparent. A study was made of the historical development and essential characteristics of this emerging systems paradigm as a unified metadisciplinary approach for addressing complexity. Special emphasis was placed on examining its major epistemological, metaphysical, and methodological insights and evaluating its relevance and value to scholarly enquiry.