Some notes with regard to thought and wisdom

Abstract

I write in response to the passing of C. West Churchman. I am a relative newcomer to Critical Systems Thinking (CST) and so this paper is written as a somewhat naive investigation and exploration of a segment of the thinking of one of the more recent great contributors to CST. I have chosen to focus on C. West Churchman's 1982 contribution called Thought and Wisdom. In reading and exploring this book I acknowledge that I am only focusing on a specific point in the writers thinking, and my sense of the person of C. West Churchman suggests strongly that once challenged or queried on points of his argument(s) Churchman would have actively pursued thoughtful responses and changes. This said however, I believe that it is not infrequent in our Western culture of "progress and forward-ho-ness", that we neglect the ideas and thinking of past times, and presume that improvements have of course been unilaterally made. By doing this in fact we lose gems (and even whole truckloads!) of thought and wisdom. © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.