SYSTEMS THINKING

An articulating and integrating frame of reference, for understanding the paradigmatic changes taking place in Science, proposed by Maria José Esteves de Vasconcellos. Following the developments that happened within science itself – in Thermodynamics, Quantum Physics, Cybernetics, Biology, to name a few, – during the 20th century, we can clearly see how such developments pushed science towards its limits and made some scientists rethink their epistemological assumptions. We, then, associate the three new assumptions of the new-paradigmatic science – complexity, instability, and intersubjectivity – with what has been identified as a world systemic view: a view that, while scientific, focuses on the relations rather than on the artificially isolated elements, as it has been done by the traditional science.