Nature - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 10

Figure 1-6. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
It's not easy. Our society is organized around the opposing principle that the whole equals the
sum of the parts. Reductionism, the idea that any system can be understood by studying its
parts, was introduced by the ancient Greeks and formalized by French philosopher René Des-
cartes in the 17 th century. During the ensuing scientific and industrial revolutions, reductionism
and specialization were so spectacularly successful, they became embedded within our culture.
In school, we divide knowledge into subjects and kids into grades. In business, we put special-
ists in silos and progress in quarters. Our categories are like water to a fish, so ubiquitous and
“natural,” we don't even know they're there.
Again, it's not that it's all wrong. Reductionism is truly valuable. In fact, its value is part of the
problem. Success blinds us to alternatives. And, we're reaching its limits. Optimizing for effi-
ciency through specialization eventually compromises overall effectiveness. Plus, some prob-
lems can't be solved as parts. Economic volatility, political corruption, crime, drug addiction,
lifestyle disease, and environmental degradation are systemic. Nobody creates these problems
on purpose or wants them to continue. They emerge from the system and are wholly immune to
the quick fix.
That's where systems thinking comes in. While conventional thinking uses analysis to break
things down, systems thinking relies on synthesis to see the whole and the interactions between
parts. As Russell Ackoff, a pioneer in systems thinking and business management, explains:
Systems thinking looks at relationships (rather than unrelated objects), connectedness, process (rather
than structure), the whole (rather than just its parts), the patterns (rather than the contents) of a system,
and context. Thinking systematically also requires several shifts in perception, which lead in turn to dif-
ferent ways to teach, and different ways to organize society. viii
There's a subversive dimension to systems thinking with hints of danger and risk. And this talk
of change can overwhelm. We can't have everyone thinking this way. But, at times, we need act-