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Flowing
Author(s) -
Kooistra Jan
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
systems research and behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 1092-7026
DOI - 10.1002/sres.459
Subject(s) - dilemma , terminology , narrative , epistemology , social system , order (exchange) , outcome (game theory) , quality (philosophy) , sociology , computer science , philosophy , mathematical economics , mathematics , social science , economics , linguistics , finance
‘The absence of a terminology is not a problem of the absence of truth for things that cannot be named, but the problem of the incompatibility in principle between, on the one hand, the need to order and, on the other, the result of an ordering, as this incompatibility is expressed in the procedure of particular inclusion and exclusion’. Formulated this way one could summarise the dilemma de Zeeuw was—and still is—trying to by‐pass during his scientific life. How to judge the quality of reasoning in the social sciences when you are part of the same system? Flowing was written on the occasion of the superannuation of de Zeeuw. It is showing the kind of escape from this dilemma that systems theory is offering—at least the kind of escape de Zeeuw is offering from his view of systems theory. Flowing refers to a special kind of systems. The structure of these systems is simultaneously both the means and the outcome of the social practices associated with elements of the system. Flowing is a narration—a narration about the social practice of survival. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.