Studies on the Conceptual Foundations

Studies on the Conceptual Foundations
Author: Ervin Laszlo
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1483151565

Goals in a Global Community: The Original Background Papers for Goals for Mankind: A Report to the Club of Rome expounds on the idea of a global community by analyzing the human predicament in terms of the diverse images of possibility that drive our differing national and social behaviors. More specifically, it asks whether humanity can create a global community with apparently conflicting, and yet so fundamentally similar, goals. This volume is comprised of 12 chapters and opens with a discussion on long-term trends and the evolution of complexity, suggesting that socioeconomic systems may be more effectively understood in light of dissipative systems. The following chapters explore the historical evolution of mankind's inner and outer dimensions; how to make sustainable economic growth a global possibility; the possibilities of changing motivation as well as finding motivation to change; and why social motives are the strongest driving forces behind change of goals for the global community. The book also proposes solar energy as a permanent clean source of abundant energy in a fully ordered and economically feasible global transition. The final section argues that the Club of Rome must continue to risk advocacy and recognize that human values are a fact of human existence. This monograph will be a useful resource for sociologists, social scientists, and psychologists.

The Objectives of the New International Economic Order

The Objectives of the New International Economic Order
Author: Ervin Laszlo
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2017-05-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1483152944

The Objectives of the New International Economic Order focuses on the role of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the resolution of issues in world economy, international trade, economic policies, trade relations, and business practices. The manuscript first offers information on the objectives of the NIEO in historical and global perspectives, as well as the political relevance of the NIEO, historical factors in the emergence of the NIEO, and contrary perceptions and vicious circles. The book also takes a look at the objectives of the NIEO regarding issues in world economy. Concerns include renegotiating the debts of developing countries, attaining United Nations development assistance targets, and using funds from disarmament for development. The publication discusses international trade and world economy issues. Topics include adjusting the economic policies of developed countries to facilitate the expansion and diversification of the exports of developing countries; improving and intensifying trade relations between countries having different social and economic systems; and increasing the transfer of resources through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The text also elaborates on industrialization issues, technology transfer, and business practices and social issues. The book is a vital source of information for readers interested in the role of NIEO in the resolution of issues in world economy, international trade, economic policies, trade relations, and business practices.

Is Future Given?

Is Future Given?
Author: Ilya Prigogine
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2003
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9789812385086

In this book, after discussing the fundamental problems of current science and other philosophic concepts, beginning with controversies between Heraclitus and Parmenides, Ilya Prigogine launches into a message of great hope: the future has not been determined. Contrary to globalisation and the apparent contemporary mass culture society, individual behaviour is beginning to increasingly become the key factor which governs the evolution of both the world and society as a whole. It is a message that challenges existing widespread views, implicitly or explicitly, through mass communication; moreover the importance of the individual's actions implies a reflection of each person on the responsibilities that each one assumes when taking or acting upon a decision. This responsibility is associated with the freedom of thought as well as a critical analysis of fashions, customs, preconceived ideas, and ideologies, externally imposed: exactly contrary to the ideas of those who wish us to be ?perfect consumers? in a world dominated only by monetary wealth.Challenging this drive towards the elimination of freedom of thought in the individual is now imperative if we are to save man and his planet from catastrophe, which seems to be ever imminent and (unfortunately) irreversible.This last book of Ilya Prigogine provides a small, disputable, but nonetheless valuable contribution towards that end.

Embracing Complexity

Embracing Complexity
Author: Jean G. Boulton
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2015-07-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0191061476

The book describes what it means to say the world is complex and explores what that means for managers, policy makers and individuals. The first part of the book is about the theory and ideas of complexity. This is explained in a way that is thorough but not mathematical. It compares differing approaches, and also provides a historical perspective, showing how such thinking has been around since the beginning of civilisation. It emphasises the difference between a complexity worldview and the dominant mechanical worldview that underpins much of current management practice. It defines the complexity worldview as recognising the world is interconnected, shaped by history and the particularities of context. The comparison of the differing approaches to modelling complexity is unique in its depth and accessibility. The second part of the book uses this lens of complexity to explore issues in the fields of management, strategy, economics, and international development. It also explores how to facilitate others to recognise the implications of adopting a complex rather than a mechanical worldview and suggests methods of research to explore systemic, path-dependent emergent aspects of situations. The authors of this book span both science and management, academia and practice, thus the explanations of science are authoritative and yet the examples of changing how you live and work in the world are real and accessible. The aim of the book is to bring alive what complexity is all about and to illustrate the importance of loosening the grip of a modernist worldview with its hope for prediction, certainty and control.

A Developing Discipline

A Developing Discipline
Author: Margaret A. Newman
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Learning
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1995
Genre: Health
ISBN: 9780887376382

Margaret Newman is one of the most influential forces in nursing theory and practice today. Here is the definitive collection of her articles, papers, and lectures. This remarkable resource showcases the progression of her ideas, capturing her revolutionary impact on nursing and health care. The book included now-famous articles on nursing's shift away from subordination to medicine, a vision for a professional doctorate in nursing, the growth of nursing science, health as the expansion of consciousness, and much more.

No Limits to Learning

No Limits to Learning
Author: J. W. Botkin
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2014-05-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1483297330

This book reconsiders global problems such as energy and the arms race, as well as more recent issues like cultural identity, communications and information. Attention is primarily focused on human problems and potential, rather than on material constraints to growth. The analysis places particular importance on new forms of learning and education, for individuals and especially for society, as indispensable for laying the groundwork to deal with global issues, and for bridging the gap between the complexity and risks of current global issues and our presently inadequately developed capacity to face up to them. This is the first Club of Rome report to authors from socialist and Third World countries as well as from the West

System Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception

System Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception
Author: J.S. Jordan
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 383
Release: 1998-04-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0080542212

This book takes as a starting point, John Dewey's article, The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, in which Dewey was calling for, in short, the utilisation of systems theories within psychology, theories of behaviour that capture its nature as a vastly-complex dynamic coordination of nested coordinations. This line of research was neglected as American psychology migrated towards behaviourism, where perception came to be thought of as being both a neural response to an external stimulus and a mediating neural stimulus leading to, or causing a muscular response. As such, perception becomes a question of how it is the perceiver creates neural representations of the physical world. Gestalt psychology, on the other hand, focused on perception itself, utilising the term Phenomenological Field; a term that elegantly nests perception and the organism within their respective, as well as relative, levels of organisation. With the development of servo-mechanisms during the second world war, systems theory began to take on momentum within psychology, and then in the 1970s William T Powers brought the notion of servo-control to perception in his book, Behavior: The Control of Perception. Since then, scientists have come to see nature not as linear chain of contingent cause-effect relationships, but rather, as a non linear, unpredictable nesting of self referential, emergent coordinations, best described as Chaos theory. The implications for perception are astounding, while maintaining the double-aspect nature of perception espoused by the Gestalt psychologists. In short, system theories model perception within the context of a functioning organism, so that objects of experience come to be seen as scale-dependent, psychophysically-neutral, phenomenological transformations of energy structures, the dynamics of which are the result of evolution, and therefore, a priori to the individual case. This a priori, homological unity among brain perception and world is revealed through the use of systems theories and represents the thrust of this book. All the authors are applying some sort of systems theory to the psychology of perception. However, unlike Dewey we have close to a century of technology we can bring to bear upon the issue. This book should be seen as a collection of such efforts.