Abstract:
The paper was written in response to an invitation from Emesto Grun, of Buenos Aires,
Argentina to participate in a Festschrift volume to be published in honor of Charles Francois.
In it, Warfield identifies seven challenges for system scholars and practitioners. Warfield then goes through the seven with suggestions for dealing with them. The challengers are
• To incorporate and apply the results of more than 2,300 years of study of second-order
thought (i.e., thought about thought)
• To incorporate and apply the results from at least 20 studies of behavioral pathologies
which, if not incorporated, will always affect adversely the quality of systems practice
• To contribute to the development of an essential discursivity in the language of systems
science, without which no significant advances can be made in this science
• To recognize and insist on the application of available quality-control principles in
modeling, in design, and in strategy development
• To use available metrics of complexity for purposes of comparison of different
problematic situations, and for interpretation ofthe metrics in applications
• To recognize and implement physical infrastructure requirements for working with
complexity
• To gain the composite effect of accepting all these challenges, i.e., to enhance the
conduct of effective systems practice, and to help establish and maintain systems
programs in education that are demonstrably based in systems science John N. Warfeld Collection 94.20
