[Dialogue] Social Process Triangle Roots?

[steve har]

I suspect the intelectual origin of the Social Process Triangles  was with
Kenneth Boulding.

I guess it is widely known that Boulding contributed 2 items to our "lore"
-the image theory regarding behavior change
-the invisible college

not widely known was that he was an originator of general systems thinking.

But, I guess he influenced the development of the triangles, something like
this quote:
Partly, as Kenneth Boulding warned, we must be careful not to expect too
much from a single theory. "General System Theory does not seek to establish
a single, self-contained general theory of practically everything." Such an
attempt would be absurd. "All wúe can say about practically everything is
almost nothing," Instead, he suggests, that general systems theorists search
for an "optimum degree of generality" for each level of abstraction. This
optimum degree is not normally reached in classical scientific approaches.
His contribution to hierarchy theory is a set of what he calls "levels of
theoretical discourse," quoted in "A Paradigm for Complex Systems
http://n4bz.org/gst/gst9.htm

Raul Caruso, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Institute of Economic
Policy has written about rediscovering his his "triangular theory" of social
interactions http://works.bepress.com/raul_caruso/25/ [translate in google]

Lately, I've been studying on and off how the field has evolved. Lately
there is a lot of new work constructing simple system models in software
like iThink and Stella that are not static but dynamic -you can change a
value in one place and it has an impact in other places something like a
"pressure point".

There is a lot of curriculum going on in elementary and high schools that
replaces linear and static models with feedback loop logic, that have enough
clarity that you can quantify variables and make charts of change in things
like population. Here are some articles:
http://www.iseesystems.com/Resources/Whitepapers.aspx

It will be interesting to see what John Eps has been working on in his
Social Process Triangles workshop in San Antonio for the ToPs network.

-- 
Steve Harrington
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