Here are the questions that came up while I was reading chapter 1:
Critical Questions:
Should we understand the scope of interconnected systems as a large, infinite system, or is there a massive, superordinate system that encompasses it all?
Is the focus of studying systems to further our understanding of the world or for more practical purposes such as improving the efficiency of systems?
Is there a system to everything? In other words, is all chaos organized in some way and do chaos and disorder even really exist?
How do we go about expressing systems that are so large and complex that diagrams will actually confound, not help our understanding of the system?
Is it always better to perceive things as parts of a larger system or are there circumstances where it is more practical, useful, or easier to perceive something on a more basic level?
Some of these questions are reminding me of what I'm planning to have as a topic on Wednesday - chaos theory!
ReplyDeleteI was having a conversation with a friend on the overall use of psychedelics and the purpose within the use- which is essentially to see the patterns in our world and ourselves. And I couldn't help but see all the main points of that conversation reflected in chapter 1. My point is that there totally DO seem to patterns in everything, especially because you can come to the same conclusions on "things" with or without the drugs.
ReplyDeleteAldous Huxley is a famous author (he wrote Brave New World) who wrote a book - The Doors of Perception - about his experiences taking mescaline, and related it to your points here, about insight into the world's patterns and our own consciousness.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors_of_Perception