p.11 Thus we can sense, though we cannot yet explain or understand,
a circular causal process, by which the goals of a society are set. They are continually under revision; factors which make
for constancy are overcome by new demands, resulting from new experiences. This process cannot be explained without
taking into account the verdict of the individual conscious mind. 'I like it', 'I hate it', 'I want it', 'I fear it'. These
dynamic value judgments are both a product and a cause of the ceaseless process of goal-formulation.
p.12 (We must ask) what causes an individual or a society to see and value
and respond to its situation in ways which are characteristic and enduring, yet capable of growth and change? A rational
ideology, a professional ethic, an individual personality, resides not in a particular set of images but in a set of readinesses
to see and value and respond to its situation in particular ways. I call this an appreciative system...
"I do not accept the view that all norm-holding can be reduced to the pursuit of an endless succession of goals."
p.20 Geoffrey's status as a non-professional outsider in some of his fields of study opened his
eyes to problems the specialist fails to perceive. There is of course another side to this: such non-attachment
makes it difficult for one's ideas to penetrate professional barriers, and it must be admitted that Geoffrey's work
has not yet received the full response it deserves.
p.36 Geoffrey's approach... was a systemic one; in his view a system was "a regulated set of relationships,
and the key to its understanding is the way in which it is regulated".
p.36-37 I start from the proposition that, in the dynamic, space-time
world of which we are part, all activity, including our own, must be ultimately explicable as the effort to maintain or re-establish
a relationship or to escape a threshold beyond which such relationship is in danger of straying. The relationship
concerned may be either between the forces which compose the system under observation, or between that system and its environment.
p.39 Every decision - itself an act of adaptation - is governed no less by the needs of inner coherence
than by the needs of external adjustment. This, however, merely underlies how complex is the process of choosing.
It does no explain how we choose.
p.39-40 If, now, I try to state the nature of a decision, I say with confidence that it is always
the expression of what seems to me to matter most at the time... if I try to represent to myself how this calculus
works, I find my conceptual analysis to be defective in two respects... First, I have no dynamic model to represent
the resolution of these manifold pushes and pulls. It is obviously far more complex than the resolution of physical
forces within the laws of mechanics, yet this is the only model I have... Secondly, I have no structural model
to represent that inner world which I build up and to which I alone respond... it must bear such a relation to what is happening
'out there' as to make my conduct adaptive enough to be viable... The dynamic and the structural models are
inseparable.
p.134 [Lowe writing to Vickers] "...As you say on p.2:human systems are in principle unstable and 'of infinite
complexity'. Now as I understand the intention of systems analysts it was their dream to be able to reduce both the
instability and complexity to, at least intellectually, manageable proportions - possibly by way of quantification..."
