How can we encourage more widespread adoption of systems thinking?

[Michelle]

The book discusses promising applications in a number of areas. How can we promote these and related applications, and help them go mainstream?

[Geoff]

Hi, Michelle. Thanks for starting this discussion. I think there are a lot of various groups and people that are already trying to promote systems thinking (I'll list a few in a moment); the question to me is why hasn't it yet been adopted more widely and deeply. This perspective or paradigm is crucially necessary to getting our global society on a sustainable path.

Others who are promoting this paradigm:
The Creative Learning Exchange http://clexchange.org/
The Balaton Group http://www.balatongroup.org/
The Waters Foundation www.watersfoundation.org
John Sterman and his Business Dynamics
Linda Booth Sweeney http://lindaboothsweeney.net/blog/?p=152
- and Sterman and Sweeney's work on Bathtub Dynamics
Andy Ford and his Modeling the Environment
Gene Bellinger et al http://stiatemenos.com/systems-thinki...
iSee Systems http://www.iseesystems.com/
the System Dynamics Society http://www.systemdynamics.org/
the IPCC and Climate Interactive http://www.climateinteractive.org/too...
etc...

As to why this paradigm isn't being adopted widely, see George Marshall's recent book, Don't Even Think About It, and Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything.

[Michelle]

Geoff wrote: "Hi, Michelle. Thanks for starting this discussion. I think there are a lot of various groups and people that are already trying to promote systems thinking (I'll list a few in a moment); the ques..."

Hi Geoff! Thanks for all the intriguing links and book recommendations.

[Geoff]

Hello again. Well, I've gotten the book, and very I'm surprised to see no mention of system dynamics in it, nor any mention of any of the above in it, nor of Jay Forrester, Dennis and Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Peter Senge, and others, nor of Limits to Growth and its various updates and offshoot works. Capra and Luisi have missed out on a huge and central body of work related to systems, from Forrester's 1961 book Industrial Dynamics and his 1968 books Principles of Systems and Urban Dynamics, through all the works I cited above, to Meadows et al's Limits to Growth - the 30-year Update and Jorgen Randers' 2052. I don't get it; how could Capra and Luisi miss all this?

[Geoff]

Here's an excellent link to many system thinking resources and thinkers, including a list of many related books (most of which I didn't mention earlier, but could have...) http://www.balatongroup.org/books/

[Ariane]

By pointing towards books which make of system thinking a part of our mental and emotional life. May I point to my own books ? Love them back to LIFE and to be soon released (February 2022) Paradigm Lost.