What Is Systems Science?

Abstract

A most natural view is that systems science is a science dealing with systems and their systems properties. What, then, is science that it can deal with systems properties which by nature are deeply penetrating also into the systemic nature of our conceptual processes, of language, and of science itself. We start out from an independent view of the concept of science. Namely, that sciences are deductive in the sense that the results of scientific activity are deductively presentable as in descriptive theories. This is what allows wide communication of scientific propositions, necessary for their accessibility, examination and tests by other scientists, eventually to be intersubjectively accepted. On the other hand, the scientific activity is in general a process which is beyond full deductive description. We examplify a tendency. The more introspectively oriented the domain of inquiry for a science is, the more difficult is it to isolate the deductive result part of a science from the scientific activity. A systemic view of science arizes with science referring not only to the deductiveresult part of science but also to the scientific activity. We make it explicit that “science” in “systems science” be systemically conceived, and develop the concepts of systems science, general systems, and system, accordingly.