Reframing Reality

Report on General Systems Theory I, CSA 411/490, December 14th, 2006

Comparative Systems Analysis 411/490: General Systems Theory I

Len Troncale, PhD, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Fall Term, 2006.

One of the difficulties of being systems practitioners is that we don’t fit into the recognized categories or disciplines in corporate, governmental, or academic settings. Also, we experience different aspects of systems thinking and systems practice, but rarely have an opportunity or the time to consider the various systems processes, what exactly they are and how they work together.

This course offered its participants the luxury to focus together on the basics, a few processes at a time, on what will eventually be recognized as the taxonomy of systems science. The invitation to the course described it as “a comprehensive introduction to the emerging new field of systems science.” For the Fall term, 2006, on Fridays at 1 p.m., Pacific time, nine people from four different states met by telephone bridge line to discuss readings from systems workers as diverse as Strogatz, Barabasi, Prigogine, Wolfram, Allen, and, of course, Troncale.

The current form of this class emerged from last year, when Brian Meux, Todd Bowers, and I (and a few other CSU Pomona students) began Len Troncale’s CSA 411 course following the 2005 ISSS meeting in Cancun. We spent the 2005-2006 academic year, three terms, focusing on 11 or 12 systems processes and touching upon the more than 80 processes found in Troncale’s system of systems processes (SSP). There were no textbooks and no set curriculum. Meeting by telephone (I’m from Hawaii), using Blackboard, wiki technology, and the CSU Pomona online library, we formed the curriculum in the process of doing the work. We produced a series of posters and presentations and a workshop for the annual ISSS meeting in Sonoma. After a year, we felt we were just getting started.

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