Subject: Cognitive Maturity

Posted by Jack Harich on 11/16/2007
In Reply To:Cognitive Maturity Posted by Lees N. Stuntz on 11/16/2007

Message:

Lees,

Regarding: Barry Richmond's paper on "Systems thinking: critical thinking skills for the 1990s and beyond."

Impressive read. However, I chuckled at the names given the seven areas of expertise, Seems like Barry ran out of names, and tacked "structural thinking" on what appears to be "conservation of flow."

I liked the paper so much I searched around for more. This one:
http://www.iseesystems.com/resources/Articles/SDSTletsjustgetonwithit.pdf
surprised my by saying he introduced the term "systems thinking." So I have updated my web page on that term, at:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/SystemsThinking.htm
to start the page with his excellent definition.

Of interest is that in the "Let's Just Get On With It" paper, Barry said:

"I sat with a mounting frustration with the name "System Dynamics" for several years. Then, in 1985 when HPS was ready to release our first version of what became the STELLA® software, I was pressed to come up with a name for the product. After much thought, and only a little reverse engineering, I came up with the acronym: STELLA (Richmond, 1985). The acronym stood for "Structural Thinking, Experiential Learning Laboratory with Animation." Now that was a mouthful! At the time, the name "Structural Thinking" seemed to be a more accurate description of what we were about than System Dynamics. I still kind of like the name Structural Thinking because it points directly to what I consider to be the essence of System Dynamics (and, therefore, Systems Thinking).
Unfortunately, the term also is a pretty good characterization of what a civil engineer does when planning an apartment building or a dam.
Structural Thinking simply didn't capture enough of the story."

The sentence: "I still kind of like the name Structural Thinking because it points directly to what I consider to be the essence of System Dynamics (and, therefore, Systems Thinking)." was food for thought.

Thanks,

Jack Harich