Institute for 21st Century Agoras

Dialogic Design Sociotechnologies for a Democratic Civitas

Menu
  • About Us
    • Executive Board
    • Staff
    • Agoras of the Global Village
      • DEMOSOPHIA Observatorium announced in Cyprus
      • Agoras of the Global Village Concept: ISSS 2003
      • Retrospective View of the Club of Rome Problematique
  • What We Do
    • Agora Reseach
      • Linking SDD as a methodology for Action Research
      • SDD in psychiatric therapy
    • Agora Training
      • 3rd International Facilitators Training School
      • Online University Credit Course, March 2011
    • Agora Tools
      • WebScope® Technology
      • Structured Dialogic Design CS I Software
      • Structured Dialogic Design CS II Software
        • SustainableFuturesStudent
  • Publications
    • Monograph series: A Social Systems Approach to Global Problems
      • V1: Strategic articulation of actions to cope with the huge challenges of our world today
    • The Talking Point
    • A Democratic Approach to Sustainable Futures
    • Co-Laboratories of Democracy (Harnessing Collective Wisdom)
    • Article Library
      • Publications from the AIO
      • Body Wisdom in Dialogue
  • Projects
    • Faith and Culture
      • Community Futures Planning
      • Indigenous leaders from the Americas and New Zealand
      • International Systems Institute — Systems Design
      • Urban Neighborhood Centers Alliance of Louisville (UNCAL)
      • Case Study Note: a church merger
      • Boundary Spanning Dialogue in Japan
    • Education and Workforce Training
      • Aligning for leadership inquiry _ Michigan Dept. Ed.
      • Great Lakes Area Regional Resource Center / Michigan Dept. Ed.
      • National Mental Health Association
      • NPSF amublatory Surgery
      • NPSF Drug Safety Perspectives
    • Civic Health and Wellness
      • Collaborative Solutions for Patient Assistance Programs
      • Future of Energy Efficiency in the Pacific Northwest
      • Invasive Species Control Program Planning
      • USDA Forest Service Priority Setting _ 2003
Menu

Retrospective View of the Club of Rome Problematique

RETROSPECTIVE STRUCTURAL INQUIRY OF THE PREDICAMENT OF MANKIND PROSPECTUS OF THE CLUB OF ROME

Alexander N. Christakis was asked to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming book dedicated to the memory of C. West Churchman, the famous systems theorist and philosopher. The book is being edited by Janet McIntyre and will be published by Plenum. The TITLE OF SERIES: C.WEST CHURCHMAN LEGACY AND RELATED WORKS VOLUME 1: “RESCUING THE ENLIGHTENMENT FROM ITSELF: Critical and Systemic Implications for Democracy”.

Churchman dedicated his career to sensitizing systems scientists and other inquirers to the existence of what he referred to as “enormous problems.” In his view these are problems that cannot be addressed by a single discipline or a single inquirer but by interdisciplinary teams of inquirers. This chapter tells the story of how a group of researchers, in the context of the Club of Rome (CoR) prospectus on The Predicament of Mankind (http://web.archive.org/web/20070711134230/http://www.cwaltd.com/pdf/clubrome.pdff), proposed in the early 70s a very forward looking and innovative systems approach. It took over twenty years of research and development for the emergence of a paradigm of Structured Design Process (SDP) that has been tested in the arena of practice for the last fifteen years.

The CoR prospectus introduced the concept of the Problematique as the “enormous problem” of the 20th Century. In 1993, twenty-three years after the conceptualization of the Problematique, a small team composed of three of the original architects of the CoR proposal employed the SDP paradigm to conduct a retrospective inquiry of the global Problematique. The findings from this inquiry demonstrate that no significant progress had been made in terms of resolving the root causes of the Problematique in the ensuing twenty-thee years, i.e., 1970-1993. It is conjectured that a similar inquiry conducted today, i.e., ten years later, will reaffirm the lack of progress in resolving this enormous problem of humankind. The implications of these findings are significant for all systems scientists, and especially for students of Churchman’s work.

For a review of the chapter please click here.

1 thought on “Retrospective View of the Club of Rome Problematique”

  1. Pingback: Courage in Dark Times | Angle of Vision

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Posts

Heraklion DEMOSCOPIO

The Case for Citizen Think-Tanks

A Digital Approach to Democratic Dialogue

Systemic Barriers to Effective Societal Response to Terrorism

The Irony of the Predicament of Detroit

US EPA Taking Democratic Steps Toward Community Involvement

Policy is more than a product of process; policy is process itself

Hyperpartisanism: a consequence of mismanaged complexity?

Elinor Ostrom’s Legacy of the Commons

Planet under Pressure

Democracy as the Means to Discover the New Narratives for Sustainable Futures

What would a “national dialogue infrastructure” look like?

Reconnecting with the Club of Rome

Welcome to the Institute for 21st Century Agoras

Convening from Complexity to Action

About the Agoras Institute

Founded in 2002 by Aleco Christakis and Kenneth Bausch, the Institute for 21st Century Agoras is a globally networked non-profit organization dedicated to the democratic transformation of society and culture.

Practice Centers

Americans for Indian Opportunity
CWA Limited
Demosophia
Dialogic Design Int’l
Future Worlds Center
OCADU Strategic Innovation Lab

Search Archives

© 2023 Institute for 21st Century Agoras | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme