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From: tos@psc70.UUCP (Dr.Schlesinger)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Business Cycles -- Note to Gadfly:Re to DKmcK
Message-ID: <135@psc70.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 31-May-85 06:13:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: psc70.135
Posted: Fri May 31 06:13:33 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Jun-85 23:25:27 EDT
References: <1146@ratex.UUCP> <632@whuxl.UUCP> <1976@topaz.ARPA> <637@whuxl.UUCP>, <2006@topaz.ARPA>
Organization: Plymouth State College, Plymouth, NH
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   The folks carrying on the sometimes interesting discussion about
"systems" seem sometimes to forget (and then it gets
not-so-interesting) that "systems" don't "exist" at all. They are
ideas created by various scholars who define a phenomenon which lends
itself to chronological analysis -- usually something like a graph --
and which on that basis then gives evidence of some regularieties,
some recurring pattern of behavior. Change your definition of the
phenomenon, and the apparent regularity or recurrence changes.
   To treat "systems" as reality is simply another crude reification.
The folks who get awards for the articles and books which announce the
"discovery" of the systems would be the first to object reification of
what are, and should remain, no more than hypotheses... ways of
depicting reality to be used as intellectual tools to better sort it
out, and learn about it... most optimistically to predict future
behavior.
                                            Tom Schlesinger
                                            Plymouth State College,
                                            Plymouth, NH