We are surrounded by systems - the economic system, our social system and the ecological system in which they are both situated. So if systems have distinct patterns and phases, how will we experience this as a community. Dr ROBERT BIEL investigates
Systems thinking - and in particular game theory - can provide startling new insights into how and why liberal economics is leading to a fatal depletion of ecological landscapes. It can also provide 'an alternative pathway', writes DR ROBERT BIEL
General Systems Theory can be a useful tool for understanding nature, and how society can exist in harmony of nature. The seminal book Limits to Growth used a systemic analysis - but was itself limited. Dr ROBERT BIEL examines how the systemic view can shed light on the colonial history of the North / West and the role it plays in the world's extractive present
Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations, is sometimes credited as the first political economist and many of his followers today advocate free market, laissez-faire, policy. Here Dr ROBERT BIEL argues that Smith was also an early systems theorist - but also sets out why Smith's theory and the system he described are a threat to our ecology
Capitalism casts nature as a resource which is to be exploited, squeezed and discarded. This is in part because of a linear, reductive understanding of the world. But there is an alternative. Dialectical, systems thinking views nature and society through the lens of complexity, contradiction and phase transitions. DR ROBERT BIEL investigates
The Ecologist was an early adopter of systems theory after its launch in 1971. The way of thinking has come to influence a range of disciplines, from ecology to change management. In the first in a series of articles on systems theory, Dr ROBERT BIEL argues that its application can be effective in healing the rift between society and nature
