Economics
Romanyuk N. K., Yerysh L. A.
Donetsk national University of Economics
and Trade named after M. Tugan-Baranovsky, Ukraine
Genesis
of the system-based approach
The 1st ideas of a system as regular and whole system go back
to antique philosophy. But for a very long time the usage of the „system“ term
had a clear ontological connotation. What is more important, the formation of
the „system“ concept being derived from the „system“ term went through
understanding the wholeness and subdivision of both natural and artificial
objects. That is the root of understanding a system to be the whole stuff made
up of separate parts.
Exactly in that ontological
meaning the understanding of the system to be the integrity of whole and
simultaneously structured objects of the real world penetrates from antique
philosophy to those of the New Times (Rene Descartes, B. Spinoza), French materialists to the
natural science of the 19th century being the outcome of the
mechanistic vision of the world.
It is worth mentioning that
gnosseological pathways of system knowledge treatment having made great
contribution into the development of the „system“ term and a range of essential
attributes has been mixed in the XX century with ontological line of system
based research. A.D. Hall was the first to make an attempt of methodological
summarization of system-based concepts. According to Hall assumptions are «a system is the multiplicity of objects
taken together with the links between the objects and their attributes» [1, p.
73].
We can’t but mention the greatest achievements of the Renaissance’s
scientific thought that is the method of analytical thinking developed by the
famous R. Descartes, the essence of which being to break up the complex
phenomenon into separate part in order to understand the behaviour of the whole
on the basis of those parts properties. It was a great idea but this method
fails to take into account links between those parts. Analytical approach
breaking the whole into separate parts emerged as rejecting intuitive method of
cognition and appeared to be one of the greatest outcomes of the Enlightenment
Epoch. «Perceptions of the systematic character of the existence drawn from
the ancient Greek philosophers were further developed within Spinoza’s concepts
and G. Leibniz works as well as within constructions of scientific systematics
of XVII-XVIII th centuries trying to
naturally interpret the system nature of the world» [2, p. 144].
Hereby the basic approaches
to the study of the complexity of the studied objects were connected with two
principal methodological positions. One was presented by elementarizm reflected
by classical mechanistic atomism whereas the second reflected different types
of modifications of the holizm concept.
Quite another concept of the
integral unity supported the views of impossibility to bring together complex and simple and explain the
unity using its simple parts. The concept
intended to prove that integral complex object possesses such features
and qualities which by no means can be peculiar to its components or parts.
Those ideas were extremely popular at the end
of XIX th and beginning XX century,
when they gave birth to the separate scientific directions i.e. organicism.
Definite failures of the elementarizm and holizm concepts felt by
scientist even at the age of Descartes and Lock were manifested within the
cognitive theory of Kant and other representatives of the German Classical
Philosophy. New principles of cognition of the system, internal integrity and
mutual dependence of parties, parts and different aspects of the object to be
studied were perceived by the natural scientists of the New Times and were
developed within its frameworks from the natural science positions. The most
significant progress within the development of purely scientific methods
of description of systems having
different nature and various levels of complexity within the science of the XIX
th and early XX th century were made by the following: the theory of Ch.
Darwin, statistical physics, analysis
of the psychological unity of gestalts, structural linguistics etc.” [3, p. 9].
Such specialists as V.N.
Sadovsky, I.V. Blauberg, E.G. Yudin identify two premises of formation of “system approach methodology”.
The 1st stage of SA premises formation was connected with formulating and
content filling up the principles of approach
to the objects of scientific cognition. It ended with the development of
statistical methods. Next step undertaken at the XX th century was connected
with the attempts to build up scientific concepts being based upon those
principles [4, p. 10].
So, a systematic approach has been studied by scientists from different
historical periods.
Bibliography:
1.
Холл А.Д. Опыт
методологии для системотехники. – М.: Советское радио, 1975. – 448 с.
2.
Василенко А.В.
Менеджмент устойчивого развития предприятий: Монография. – Киев: Центр учебной
литературы, 2005. – 648 с.
3.
Садовский В.Н. Основания
общей теории систем. – М.: Изд-во «Наука», 1974. – 278 с.
4.
Блауберг И.В., Садовский
В.Н., Юдин Э.Г. Системный подход: предпосылки, проблемы, трудности. – М.:
Изд-во «Знание», 1969. – 48 с.