We haven't started on this section yet. If you know of any systemic power tools, write it up and send it to the editor.
Hal Linstone has a power tool he calls TOP. It is a kind of meta-system in that he outlines three different perspectives that people adopt - the Technical, the Organizational and the Personal. These are to be looked at as three aspects or facets of their whole. They are all interrelated and cannot be separated. However, seems people want to emphasize one of the three anyhow, that is, they think of the technical aspects, OR they think of the Organizational aspects OR they think of the Personal aspects. This creates a problem. Apparently it is possible that the three different people, each coming from a different perspective can talk about the same thing, but think that they are in total disagreement.
Zinchang Zhu developed an oriental version independantly, coming up with essentially the identical meta-system. He describes it as the WuLiShiLiRenLi approach. He paper can be found in the working papers section. Li is something like "essense" while Wu is like material or matter. Shi is like relations, and Ren is like human affairs. Thus he speaks of the essense of matter, relations and human affairs.
Both of these "meta-systems" were developed in the field, that is, from observation rather than theory first.
A third meta-system, multi-modal perspectives is also described by deRaddt, but he has a comprehensive listing of perspectives. You might say that deRaddt describes the meta-system from the technical viewpoint, Linstone describes it from the relational viewpoint and Zhu describes it from the human affairs viewpoint.
Geometry can also be considered a power tool because it is somewhat discipline independant. Emergence is a difficult concept to grasp, witness the newness of it, but it can easily be explained geometrically: Starting with Space, we place a point in that space. Thus we have "location." The second logical type is created by adding a second point and a new logical type emerges -- the Line. A third point creates an area, a new emergent logical type, and the fourth logical type, volume, emerges with four points.
General semantics provides us with a valuable tool - "The map is not the territory." Variations of this include "The word is not the thing" and The menu is not the dinner."
General systems has it's own power tool -- the property of the whole. Seems that emergence creates new properties which cannot be seen by looking at the parts. Bela puts it like "Looking at
a ball bearing, one does not see a car."
All of these require a change in consciousness to use. That's where the "power" comes from.
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