An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (Silver Anniversary Edition) - Softcover

Weinberg, Gerald M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0932633498 ISBN 13: 9780932633491

Publisher: Dorset House, 2001

Synopsis

For more than twenty-five years, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking has been hailed as an innovative introduction to systems theory, with applications in computer science and beyond. Used in university courses and professional seminars all over the world, the text has proven its ability to open minds and sharpen thinking.

Originally published in 1975 and reprinted more than twenty times over a quarter century -- and now available for the first time from Dorset House Publishing -- the text uses clear writing and basic algebraic principles to explore new approaches to projects, products, organizations, and virtually any kind of system.

Scientists, engineers, organization leaders, managers, doctors, students, and thinkers of all disciplines can use this book to dispel the mental fog that clouds problem-solving. As author Gerald M. Weinberg writes in the new preface to the Silver Anniversary Edition, "I haven’t changed my conviction that most people don’t think nearly as well as they could had they been taught some principles of thinking.”

Now an award-winning author of nearly forty books spanning the entire software development life cycle, Weinberg had already acquired extensive experience as a programmer, manager, university professor, and consultant when this book was originally published.

With helpful illustrations, numerous end-of-chapter exercises, and an appendix on a mathematical notation used in problem-solving, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking may be your most powerful tool in working with problems, systems, and solutions.

About this title

From the Publisher

Makes the most generally applicable insights from general systems theorists and from disciplinarians available to the widest audience possible.

From the Author

“When I set out to write An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, I had already written a half-dozen books on thinking -- but all in the context of thinking about computer programming. . . . I decided to leave the programming language business to others and to concentrate on more general principles of thinking. As a result, I first published The Psychology of Computer Programming and then this book. Now, more than a generation later, both books are still around, quietly doing their work.”

--from the preface to the Silver Anniversary Edition

Edition details

• Publisher: Dorset House
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0932633498
• ISBN 13: 9780932633491
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320