The world is unstable. New communication technologies (Internet), new services, new production methods, demographic changes, new geopolitical configurations put to test the existing theories, models and ways of operation of organizations, communities and countries. Actions proposed on the basis of previous achievements and experiences do not bring any noticeable improvement. The world is not becoming more stable, more predictable. There are no prospects for a new order in the surrounding chaos of sudden changes.
Existing theories and models on how to permanently improve the world cease to be successful. It is highly probable that they are based on incorrect, out-of-date assumptions that do not correspond with today’s processes and social needs. The world must be different, much richer than its today’s universally accepted image. Man, struggling with his surroundings, succeeded in trying to explain and model them. These successes have always been of limited durability. The today’s widely accepted ways of perceiving and modeling the world seem to be operating worse and worse. They provide explanations less and less applicable to the observed events and processes. The adopted measures and methods of evaluating actions taken do not offer us valuable information that helps correcting these activities.
At the same time for many years, independently from each other, new ways of describing, modeling and explaining the world have been developing. They are connected, in my opinion, by consilience, understood as the consonance of several scientific fields
As a result, differences of opinion deepen. Positions of conflicting parties are getting ever easier to polarize. Discussions and debates are getting more emotional. The continuity of international and intra-state institutions, interstate and intra-state agreements, social agreements, of interpretation of law within states and between countries is broken. Political systems of the most stable countries in the world, functioning for generations, cease to suit politically active citizens. And new political entities, looked upon with hope, are subjects to quick erosion.
In my study, while questioning the theories and models in place until now, I want to point out that at the same time for many years, independently from each other, new ways of describing, modeling and explaining the world have been developing. They are connected, in my opinion, by consilience, understood as the consonance of several scientific fields, usually analyzed separately. I find it in theories that revolve around the perception and analysis of the world and related issues of uncertainty, unpredictability and risk. I am referring to broadly understood behavioral sciences, the theory of complexity, the theory of constraints and the theory of probability. Consilience (consistency, consonance) of various theories is defined by me after Edward O. Wilson’s book Consilience. The Unity of Knowledge as the convergence of knowledge by combining facts and based on them empirical theories in various fields into one common explanatory theory (Wilson, based on the William Whewell’s work The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences from 1840)1.
The goal that I set out when writing this study is to share my hope that the new ideas of perceiving the world and their consonance can be used to make the world – as an anthropogenic complex system – work better and better, overcoming the unbalance and instability prevailing today.
There are ways to make the world, our world, work better with each successive generation – giving us both personal and social satisfaction.
In the first four chapters I briefly describe – evolving independently of each other – ways of perceiving and modeling the reality that surrounds us. Afterward, I present the problem of modeling the world – enterprises, organizations, institutions and societies – by comparing, still commonly used, „classic” modeling ideas to new ways of looking at reality. In the next points I discuss the problems with modeling reality that one approaches while struggling in this direction and attempting to deal with these problems. And finally, in the ending points I discuss the consequences of new ways of looking at the world, new ways of modeling it using the phenomenon of consilience, consonance of behavioral sciences, complexity theory, the theory of constraints and probability theory. I present, after Nassim Nicholas Taleb, proposals for new measures of assessment of undertaken activities, a new – proposed by me – definition of the theory of constraints. Finally, I share my hope that, although our perception and modeling of the world can never be changed in a radical and ultimately correct manner (see point “The Bell and the Fractal”), still there are ways to make the world, our world, work better with each successive generation – giving us both personal and social satisfaction.
And now it is time to present new ways of describing, modeling and explaining the world.