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SYSTEMS
The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small. By John Gall. Published by General Systemantics Press, Walker, MN, 2002.
If you think EPA, DOT, Tea Tasters, OSHA or MSHA have any redeeming social value, quit now. You dared to keep reading. That probably means that your practical and philosophical life evaluation system has room for skepticism about government and its bureaucracy. If so, this enormously engaging, insightful and quizzical book is for you.
Look at the word "systemantics" carefully. It is not "systematics." To the biologically trained, systematics is the legitimate science of classification. In The Growth of Biological Thought, Ernst Meyer explains the dictionary definition of systematics as, "the classification and study of organisms with regard to their natural relationships."
This book is not an extension of systems analysis. That is a necessary and useful tool in confronting, understanding and using today's methods for getting business done. Systemantics is the grain of salt that is necessary to carry into today's confrontation with our systems (bureaucratic) dominated world. It explains why things don't get done.
Systemantics, according to Gall, is the study of the strange behavior ("antics") of complex systems. Gall demonstrates that systems "act up" time after time.
He practiced medicine, so he is likely to have known the word systematics. Therein lies the crux of the book. It...