Re: STIA: About Interventions?? LO3135

Michael Scudder (scudder_michael@jpmorgan.com)
Wed, 11 Oct 1995 17:27:41 -0400

Replying to LO3078 --

Michael McMaster wrote:

>If so, then is the manager of the team part of the system of the team
>or part of the environment of the team? Might it be useful to say
>that there is another system as well which is "team" and "team with
>manager" which are both in and part of the larger system
>"organisation"?

The entities comprising a system participate in many systems
simultaneously. So, many different systems may -- indeed, must -- exist at
the same time and place. Which is to say that systems interpenetrate and
participate in each other (and therefore affect each other). A team
manager participates in the team system and the team's environment
simultaneously.

That entities may be entities in one context and systems in another
suggests an entity/system duality of being, analogous to the wave/particle
duality of light. Which is to say that things have "entity" and "system"
properties not perceptible simultaneously, and that different qualities
are revealed depending on whether we regard something (or someone) as an
entity or a system.

Appropos of this is an earlier post (Subject: Re: STIA: About
Interventions?? LO3048), in which Michael McMaster wrote:

>I suggest the view of systems offerred by Warfield in a paper on
>complexity recently written where he quotes Gibbs as
>defining systems as "any portion of the material universe which we
>choose to separate in thought".

I quite agree that this is a useful definition (and also with Michael
McMaster's extension of it to include the non-material).

Does anyone have publication information on the Warfield paper?
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Host's Note: John Warfield is an active participant here on learning-org
and perhaps he'll provide the reference.
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--
Michael Scudder
mscudder@jpmorgan.com