Systems Research for Behavioral Science: A Sourcebook

by Walter Buckley (Editor)

Overview

Systems Research for Behavioral Science will be of interest to those in any discipline concerned with developments in science. It is addressed principally to the student of human behavior as that study is approached from the social side.Previously, the study of human behavior was the general area of science that had been slowest to respond to the exciting challenge of the modern systems outlook. Yet it is behavioral science that stands to gain the most from insights into the workings of more complex systems.

The editor presents not only a fair selection of systems research in behavioral science, but also provides an extensive selection of important statements of general principles, including several already considered classics. Hence, this sourcebook may function in part as a principles text, exposing the initiate to original pioneering statements as well as later work inspired by them, and alerting the sizeable number of underexposed scholars who are over-familiar with the few terms such as feedback, boundary, input, and output, that there are much greater depths to plumb than meet the eye in semi-popular accounts of cybernetics.

This volume is an overview of thinking that reflects a trend toward the system point of view. Some of the chapters are philosophical: they discuss the significance of the trend as a development in the contemporary philosophy of science. Some are inevitably detailed and technical. Still other chapters discuss the relevance of concepts that are central in the system approach, to particular fields of research. The picture that emerges is far from that of a unified theory. It is an open question whether much progress can be made by attempts to construct a "unified theory of systems" on some rigorous axiomatic base.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780202362809
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	11/30/2008
Pages:	552
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Walter Buckley (1922-2006) was professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. He served as honorary chair of an International Sociological Association research committee dealing with socio-cybernetics. Buckley is also the author of Sociology and Modern Systems Theory and Society—A Complex Adaptive System: Essays in Social Theory.

Table of Contents

1: General Systems Research : Overview; 1: General Systems Theory—The Skeleton of Science; 2: General System Theory—a Critical Review; 3: Cybernetics in History; 2: Parts, Wholes, and Levels of Integration; 4: Parts and Wholes in Physics; 5: The problem of Systemic Organization in Theoretical Biology; 6: Units and Concepts of Biology; 7: Levels of Integration in Biological and Social Systems; 3: Systems, Organization, and the Logic of Relations; 8: Thoughts on Organization Theory; 9: Certain Peculiarities of Organisms as a “System” from the Point of View of Physics, Cybernetics, and Biology; 10: Definition of System; 11: A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity; 12: The General and Logical Theory of Automata; 13: Principles of the Self-Organizing System; 4: Information, Communication, and Meaning; 14: What is Information Measurement?; 15: Variety, Constraint, and the Law of Requisite Variety; 16: The Promise and Pitfalls of Information Theory; A: Entropy And Life; 17: Order, Disorder, and Entropy; 18: Life, Thermodynamics, and Cybernetics; 19: Communication, Entropy, and Life; 20: Thermodynamics and Information Theory; 21: The Entropy Concept and Psychic Function; 22: From Stimulus to Symbol: The Economy of Biological Computation; B: Behavior And Meaning; 23: The Application of Information Theory in Behavioral Studies; 24: A Behavioristic Analysis of Perception and Language as Cognitive Phenomena; 25: The Informational Analysis of Questions and Commands; 26: Towards a Behavioral Theory of Communication; 5: Cybernetics:Purpose, Self-Regulation, and Self-Direction; A: Cybernetics and Purpose; 27: Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology; 28: Comments on a Mechanistic Conception of Purposefulness; 29: Purposeful and Non-Purposeful Behavior; 30: Purposeful and Non-Purposeful Behavior: A Rejoinder; 31: Purposive Behavior and Cybernetics; 32: Purpose and Learning Theory; B: Homeostasis and Evolution; 33: Self-Regulation of the Body; 34: On the Parallel between Learning and Evolution; 35: Purpose, Adaptation and “ Directive Correlation ”; 36: Regulation and Control; 37: The Second Cybernetics: Deviation-Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes; 6: Self-Regulation and Self-Direction in Psychological Systems; 38: Feedback Theory and the Reflex Arc Concept; 39: Plasticity In Human Sensorimotor Control; 40: A Cybernetic Approach to Motivation; 41: Ego Psychology, Cybernetics, and Learning Theory; 42: The Open System in Personality Theory; 43: Note on Self-Regulating Systems and Stress; 44: The Concept of Stress in Relation to the Disorganization of Human Behaviour; 45: Towards an Information-Flow Model of Human Behaviour; 46: Plans and the Structure of Behaviour; 7: Self-Regulation and Self-Direction in Sociocultural Systems; 47: Toward a Cybernetic Model of Man and Society; A: Social Control: Internal Variety and Constraints; 48: Social Control and Self-Regulation; 49: Conformity-Deviation and the Social Control Concept; 50: Variety and Constraint in Cultural Adaptation; 51: A Behavioural Theory of Drug Taking; B: Social Control: Organizational Goal Seeking; 52: A Systems Analysis of Political Life; 53: The Cybernetic Analysis of Change in Complex Social Organizations; 54: Feedback Problems of Social Diagnosis and Action; 55: Control as an Organizational Process; 56: The Cybernetics of Competition: A Biologist’s View of Society; 57: Is Adaptability Enough?; C: Decision Processes and Group Structure; 58: Critiques of Game Theory; 59: Society as a Complex Adaptive System