Economics

Romanyuk N. K., Yerysh L. A.

Donetsk national University of Economics

and Trade named after M. Tugan-Baranovsky, Ukraine

Genesis of the system-based approach

The 1^st ideas of a system as regular and whole system go back to antique philosophy. But for a very long time the usage of the „system“ term had a clear ontological connotation. What is more important, the formation of the „system“ concept being derived from the „system“ term went through understanding the wholeness and subdivision of both natural and artificial objects. That is the root of understanding a system to be the whole stuff made up of separate parts.

Exactly in that ontological meaning the understanding of the system to be the integrity of whole and simultaneously structured objects of the real world penetrates from antique philosophy to those of the New Times (Rene Descartes, B. Spinoza), French materialists to the natural science of the 19^th century being the outcome of the mechanistic vision of the world.

It is worth mentioning that gnosseological pathways of system knowledge treatment having made great contribution into the development of the „system“ term and a range of essential attributes has been mixed in the XX century with ontological line of system based research. A.D. Hall was the first to make an attempt of methodological summarization of system-based concepts. According to Hall assumptions are «a system is the multiplicity of objects taken together with the links between the objects and their attributes» [1, p. 73].

We can’t but mention the greatest achievements of the Renaissance’s scientific thought that is the method of analytical thinking developed by the famous R. Descartes, the essence of which being to break up the complex phenomenon into separate part in order to understand the behaviour of the whole on the basis of those parts properties. It was a great idea but this method fails to take into account links between those parts. Analytical approach breaking the whole into separate parts emerged as rejecting intuitive method of cognition and appeared to be one of the greatest outcomes of the Enlightenment Epoch. «Perceptions of the systematic character of the existence drawn from the ancient Greek philosophers were further developed within Spinoza’s concepts and G. Leibniz works as well as within constructions of scientific systematics of XVII-XVIII th centuries trying to naturally interpret the system nature of the world» [2, p. 144].

Hereby the basic approaches to the study of the complexity of the studied objects were connected with two principal methodological positions. One was presented by elementarizm reflected by classical mechanistic atomism whereas the second reflected different types of modifications of the holizm concept.

Quite another concept of the integral unity supported the views of impossibility to bring together complex and simple and explain the unity using its simple parts. The concept intended to prove that integral complex object possesses such features and qualities which by no means can be peculiar to its components or parts.

Those ideas were extremely popular at the end of XIX th and beginning XX century, when they gave birth to the separate scientific directions i.e. organicism.

Definite failures of the elementarizm and holizm concepts felt by scientist even at the age of Descartes and Lock were manifested within the cognitive theory of Kant and other representatives of the German Classical Philosophy. New principles of cognition of the system, internal integrity and mutual dependence of parties, parts and different aspects of the object to be studied were perceived by the natural scientists of the New Times and were developed within its frameworks from the natural science positions. The most significant progress within the development of purely scientific methods of description of systems having different nature and various levels of complexity within the science of the XIX th and early XX th century were made by the following: the theory of Ch. Darwin, statistical physics, analysis of the psychological unity of gestalts, structural linguistics etc.” [3, p. 9].

Such specialists as V.N. Sadovsky, I.V. Blauberg, E.G. Yudin identify two premises of formation of “system approach methodology”. The 1st stage of SA premises formation was connected with formulating and content filling up the principles of approach to the objects of scientific cognition. It ended with the development of statistical methods. Next step undertaken at the XX th century was connected with the attempts to build up scientific concepts being based upon those principles [4, p. 10].

So, a systematic approach has been studied by scientists from different historical periods.

Bibliography:

1. Холл А.Д. Опыт методологии для системотехники. – М.: Советское радио, 1975. – 448 с.

2. Василенко А.В. Менеджмент устойчивого развития предприятий: Монография. – Киев: Центр учебной литературы, 2005. – 648 с.

3. Садовский В.Н. Основания общей теории систем. – М.: Изд-во «Наука», 1974. – 278 с.

4. Блауберг И.В., Садовский В.Н., Юдин Э.Г. Системный подход: предпосылки, проблемы, трудности. – М.: Изд-во «Знание», 1969. – 48 с.