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ISSS Special Integration Groups

The integration and synthesis of knowledge is an important goal of ISSS. How do the various bodies of thought fit together? How are they similar? How do they differ? And, do they together form new and important insights to understand and comprehend our universe of knowledge? One
means of facilitating this process is to form Special Integration Groups (SIGs).

In some cases members form SIGs that concern the integration of a specific discipline (e.g. philosophy or accounting) with other bodies of thought and the development of those disciplines through that interaction. In other cases, members may form SIGs concerned with more general
conceptual frameworks (e.g. General Systems Theory, Living Systems Theory, or Hierarchy Theory) that are designed to integrate ideas of many different disciplines. The SIGs organize joint projects among themselves, forming a mosaic of integrative learning.

This system of synthesis is often misunderstood by those members who come and go as their particular interests are stimulated and wane. Many organizations have SIGs, but that acronym stands for special interest groups in most. We all know that special interest groups tend to fragment organizations as well as knowledge. The ISSS is not a conglomerate that grows by fragmenting into special interest groups as members specialize in limited aspects of a discipline. It is the opposite. Through special integration groups, our society synthesizes diverse disciplinal knowledge into cohesive wholes, systemically integrating that knowledge.

Although we are drawn to our Society as generalists, our bread and butter jobs are mostly specialties. We are hybrids; and when we move outside our general theories, we often revert to our specialist ways. In our search for a systems science core, we overlook it because of its simplicity. We fail to find the core of knowledge that we seek because we seek it as specialists among specialists. The core is simply that all things real and imagined may be viewed as systems (sets of related and interacting elements) and, consequently, all things may be known by their relations and interrelations with all other things. But that statement is not enough to define a specialty and so the specialist in us persists in developing a special core of general knowledge.

Our specialist compulsions are not all bad. They serve us well in testing, developing, and applying successful general theories. In fact, without them, we might be content to bask in the infinite leisure of the general and the abstract. Our specialist compulsions draw us to dirty our hands in the complex problems of humanity and to seek solutions through our simplifying general theories. Within our Society, these compulsions are expressed in the SIGs. There each general theory is tested, developed, and applied to disciplines, professions, and problems and integrated with other general theories. In the absence of a specialist-styled core of knowledge, the SIGs act as search engines within the ISSS, providing orderly paths for newcomers to find their way into the diverse but systemically integrated body of knowledge that constitutes systems science. Within SIGs, pre-embryonic systems science cores develop and cross-fertilize with those of other SIGs. I predict that out of these activities an embryonic science of the general will emerge, drawing together the less general cores of various systems sciences.

Curiously enough, as organizations of special interest groups grow by increasing the number of their special interest groups, the ISSS grows as we increase the number of our special integration groups. These groups form the tentacles that reach into the diverse disciplines of human investigations to build the bridges among them for the unifying of the arts and humanities as well as the sciences. Those bridges are not built from one discipline to another through informal analogy and the forced-fitting of methods and models as often occurs in grand umbrella interdisciplinary organizations.

Instead, as 2,000 years ago all roads were said to lead to Rome, the interdisciplinary bridges we build all lead through systems science. And, as with the great transportation hubs of today, you can go anywhere from there.

When the bridge is built between systems science and a discipline, the whole world is open to that discipline and that discipline to the whole world.

Please browse through the following brief descriptions of the SIGs listed. (This section is under construction, so you may want to visit it again from time to time.) You may become a member of as many SIGs as you choose by becoming a member of ISSS (see membership application) and indicating the SIGs of your interest on the membership application. SIGs vary in their degree of activity, but all are responsible for sponsoring papers sessions at the ISSS Annual Meetings.