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
NICK BREEZE, co-founder of the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series, responds to Dr Robert Biel's article on systems theory to discuss climate change and the failure of one generation and the agency of the next
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