Debora Hammond

File:Deborah Hammond.jpg

Debora Hammond down the Green River in Canyonlands National Park

Debora Hammond is an American systems theorist, working as an Associate Professor professor Interdisciplinary Studies of the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at the Sonoma State University.

Biography

Debora Hammond got her B.A. in history in 1974 at Stanford University. She studied during the Vietnam War era, spending half of her time studying systems theory, and exploring ways of thinking about complex systems that might support more participatory and inclusive forms of social organization.

In 1991 she got her M.A. in history of science at the University of California in Berkeley, and in 1996 she got an appointment to Sonoma State University. In May 1997 she completed her Ph.D. in the history of science again at the University of California at Berkeley with Professor Carolyn Merchant. Her dissertation research focused on the history of systems thinking, specifically the lives and work of the five founders of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), formerly the Society for General Systems Research: Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, James Grier Miller, and Anatol Rapoport.

Dr. Hammond then joined the Hutchins faculty in the fall of 1997. In addition to teaching courses in the lower division integrated general education sequence, she has taught upper division seminars on such topics as "The Global Food Web"; Oikos; Ecology and Economics; Health and Healing; The Dharma of Complex Systems; Technology, Ecology, and Society; and about the "Systems View of the World". Her teaching revolves around the core issues of ecological sustainability and social justice how to create a healthy society that works for everyone.

In 2004 and 2005 Debora Hammond participated in the Complex Systems Summer School at Santa Fe Institute. Her primary purpose was to enhance the quality of the conference program by integrating current developments in the field of complex systems.

From 2005 to 2007 Dr. Hammond also been coordinating the Northern California Earth Institute, an organization that nurtures community dialogue on themes relating to the environment and sustainable living. In 2005-2006 Debora Hammond is the President of ISSS, in the year that the annual ISSS meeting is held on the Sonoma State University. In 2007 she is associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University

Debora Hammond finds much of her inspiration in the wilderness, which is reflected in her work on environmental philosophy and ethics. She believes that social justice depends upon our ability to find more harmonious ways of living with the natural world.

Work

Debora Hammond spend half here life studying systems theory, writing about it, organizing and representing the field of systems science, clearify the original ideas of general systems theory from risen prejudements, and given it new meaning in the 21th centrury especially for the ecology and healthcare environment. She furher teaches seminars that examine the role of science in society, focusing primarily on ecological and health-related topics.

The General Systems movement

Debora Hammond can been seen as a typical representative of the third generation of general systems scientists. The founders of the systems movement like Bertalanffy, Boulding, Gerard, Miller and Rapoport were born between 1900 and 1920. They all came from different natural and social science disciplines and joint forces in the 1950s to established the general systems theory paradigm. Along with the organisation of their efforts a first generation of systems scientists rise. Among them were other scientists like Ackoff, Ashby and Churchman, who popularized the systems concept in the 1950s and 1960s. They inpsired and educated a second generation with more famous scientist like Ervin Laszlo (1932) and Fritjof Capra (1939), who wrote about systems theory in the 1970s and 1980s. Hammond got acquinted and started studying these works in the 1980s and started writing about it since the 1990s.

Debora Hammond was inspired by Fritjof Capra in the early 1980s, who had written The Turning Point about systems thinking. Capra was looking at societal problems like poverty, crime, environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation. He stated, that these problems are systemic and can’t be solve in isolation. There is a crisis in perception rooted in the mechanistic world view we’ve inherited from the scientific revolution. He called this the sort of reductionist, atomistic paradigm. What's needed is a more holistic, a more ecological, more systemic way of understanding the world. Fritjof Capra would become Hammonds primary mentor in the theory and practice of systems.

When Hammonds started here Ph.D. research on the history of systems thinking, she found a variety of divergent traditions, which were hard to handle. It was C. West Churchman in the spring of 1993, who gave here an opening. He told here, that it all had began with the four people Bertalanffy, Boulding, Gerard, and Rapoport, who met in 1954 at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. They where sitting around a lunch table one day in the fall of 1954, and it became clear that they all converging on something like general systems from different directions. Bertalanffy's thoughts certainly seeming to be the most advanced. At that table the plan was made to start a society for the development for general systems theory.

In those days Hammond found further support by different members of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, who shared their ideas of systems and the history of the systems movement. Among them was Bela H. Banathy, who invitated here to presenting here ideas on the ISSS meetings and in the systems science journals.

Debora Hammond wrote her first articles 1995-97 during the time she completed het PhD at Berkeley. These articles draw upon this research on the history of the general systems movement.

The Science of Synthesis

File:The Science of Synthesis.jpg

Bookcover, 2003.

Debora Hammond’s The Science of Synthesis explores the development of general systems theory through the life and work of the five founding members of the Society for General Systems Research around the mid-twentieth century: Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph W. Gerard, James Grier Miller, and Anatol Rapoport. Systems ideas emerged according to Hammond from a broad range of disciplines: biology, ecology, social, psychology and technology. The founders had in common that they were seeking ways to overcome the reductionism and mechanism of classical science. This science focused on the discrete, component parts of reality given by the analytic approach.

The founders worked together at the University of Chicago, where people like Robert Hutchins since the early 1920s had fostered innovative interdisci­plinary approaches to scholarship and teaching. All five founders were nurtured in this intellectual environment around 1954 and continued working together, except Bertalanffy, at the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. This institute published the first annual journal General Systems Yearbook on general systems theory starting in 1956.

With a general systems theory the founding members wanted to replace that analytic approach with a more holistic approach. By focusing on the creation of a General Systems Theory they wanted to create a collaboration and integration between different disciplinary perspectives. The systems concept became a metaphor and a framework that remains relevant for our times.

In the following decades Systems thinking developed in interaction with fields as engineering, management, organismic biology, cybernetics, information, ecology and social theory. Among these theories systems theory was the one metaphor according to Hammond that highlights the relationships and interconnections among the biological, ecological, social, psychological, and technological dimensions of our increasingly complex lives.

In this work Hammond expresses dismay and some perplexity at the frequently heard charge nowadays, that general systems theory amounts to "an updated version of positivism, an attempt by technocrats to manipulate human beings to meet the demands of a systemic whole, ignoring in the process their essential humanity." Such a view would certainly have surprised the pioneers of systems theory, who saw themselves as bringing human values and concerns back into the scientific enterprise.

Whole systems perspective on health care

Besides here work on the history and practice of general systems theory, Debora Hammond is involved in the dialogue around health care. She wants to offer a broader sort of whole systems perspective into this discussion. She thinks that the health care crisis is part of a much larger problem that is related to the sort of deterioration of the social fabric in our country and perhaps in the whole world right now. It seems to here, that some of the greatest health problems are rooted in poverty, stress, environmental toxins, and lifestyle issues. And those are not issues that can be addressed sort of in a narrow medical framework. So she think while we need to address some of the immediate health issues that our health care system is presented with, it’s important that we begin to sort of look beyond that, and that prevention is not just sort of at an individual level but rethinking our whole social structure. Hammonds systems perspective on health care is more concrete in the objectives of here "health and healing" course in 2003. In this course she wants:

• To develop a greater awareness of economic, political and social factors in the practice of medicine as well as in the experience of illness and disease;
• To explore the parallels between individual health and the health of the environment;
• To gain a basic understanding of the organ systems of the body;
• To examine the scientific assumptions inherent in modern medicine and to contrast these with alternative approaches to healing, particularly with regard to the connection between mind and body;
• To practice mindfulness regarding one’s own state of well-being, including physical, emotional, and mental dimensions

With this systems perspective Hammond searches for a syntheses between the Western and Orienatal health care. In here course she draws on the Western scientific and medical tradition, as well as perspectives drawn from Eastern traditions, and focusses specifically on the East Indian chakra system and the Chinese meridian system. By contrasting the foundations and approach of the modern medical model with those of alternative approaches to healing, a road opens to explore the mind/body connection through an inquiry into the psychological and spiritual components of wellness and disease. An important consideration in this process is according to Hammond, to explore the way in which each tradition defines the key elements in the human system.

International Society of Systems Science

Hammond first attended the annual International Society of Systems Science (ISSS) meeting in 1994 and becomes an active member. She works in the Special Integration Groups on the Medical and Health System and becoms the Chair of that group. In 2005-2006 Debora Hammond was the President of ISSS, where she helped organize the annual ISSS meeting held on the Sonoma State University.

Hammond starts as president of the ISSS at the annual Conference in Cancun, Mexico. In the incoming she brought up several questions address to both the field of systems thinking in general and to the ISSS in particular:

• What has systems thinking to contribute to the challenges facing humanity at this juncture in our evolution,
• Which role can the ISSS play in fostering more systems approaches in education, business, technology and government.
• Where are the systems that condition our lives themselves headed?

According to Hammond the current state of the world is highly unstable. Ecological there is the loss of biodiversity and climate change, and sociopolitical there is the increasing disparity in wealth, heightened tensions between nations, and threats of nuclear proliferation remain. A questions for systems scientists is in what way might systems approaches can contribute to resolving the increasing polarization between individuals and living conditions in different parts of the world? One of the primary goals of the ISSS is to foster the unity of science. The question remains how the ISSS might effectively pursue this quest and what might it mean in the context of our times?

After here presidency Debora Hammond continues to discust the goals of the ISSS. The society has been devoted to interdisciplinary inquiry into the nature of complex systems for half a century. Hammond states that the need remains for exploration of this half-century of interdisciplinary collaboration and synthesis to give it new meaning. Things have to been done against the growing dysfunctioning of our political, environmental, medical, agricultural, and educational systems. The ISSS accoring to Hammond should remain focussed on the goal to explore common patterns of organization in different kinds of complex systems. It should facilitate collaborative inquiry between scholars and practitioners from across the disciplinary spectrum. It's the interdisciplinary focus of the systems sciences, that offers diversity of perspective between different disciplines.

New approaches to systems thinking

In the new millenium Debora Hammond continues to exploration into the roots of systems thinking, and hopes to discover new inclusive and participatory approaches to systems thinking.

In the article "Beyond Systems Design as we know it" (2002) Hammond consider the possible need to synchronise design efforts with nature. Where intervention is considered it will be important to retain the self-correcting, self-healing and survival mechanisms which are present in physical systems. The power to influence nature through bioengineering should alert the risk of facing consequences of not understanding the complexity we may be disturbing. To make sure that this enhances these natural immune system-like properties, and does not destroy them, we need a new form of so called homeopathic design.

In the paper "Philosophical and ethical foundations of systems thinking" (2005) Hammond presents an inquiry into philosophical and ethical considerations growing out of recent developments in systems thinking. Ludwig von Bertalanffy distinguished three general developments: systems technology, systems science, and systems philosophy. He said that these three dimensions of systems thinking have widely divergent theoretical and practical orientations. These orientations cultivates an ethic of integration and collaboration that has the potential to transform the nature of social organization. Although humanity still has a lot to learn about living more harmoniously and sustainably, systems thinking has made significant contributions in this direction in many fields, both theoretical and practical. Science is a form of social feedback; it has created an enormous body of knowledge about the world and shaped humanity’s understanding of the nature of our collective reality. The challenge is to integrate what we have learned and to nurture institutional practices that honor the ethical principles of the systems view.

In "Exploring the genealogy of systems thinking" (2006) Hammond continues here interactive exploration into the roots of systems thinking. She conducted research at from the 2001 Annual ISSS Conference in Asilomar, California until the international 2006 Fuschl conference to underpinning the core concepts of systems thinking. On these conference she asked the attendents to consider their own understanding of the meaning and significance of systems thinking. How where they introduced to systems ideas? What theoretical or practical problems motivated them? And on a more theoretical level who can we integration of different approaches to systems thinking, including worldviews, ethics, and the acceptance of differences. The quest remains against overspecialization, while still recognizing the importance of specialization, using transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.

Literature

Books

• 2004, The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, June 2003.

Articles

A list of some of her articles:

• 2006, Debora Hammond & Jennifer Wilby, The life and work of James Grier Miller, in: Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Volume 23, Issue 3 , Pages 429 - 435.
• 2005, Timothy Foxon, Debora Hammond and Jennifer L Wells, Can Complexity Studies Advance Sustainability?, Paper Complex Systems Summer School 2005, Santa Fe Institute.
• 2005, Debora Hammond, Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Systems Thinking, in : Triple C, Issue Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 20-27.
• 2002, Dyer, G., Hammond, D., Horiuchi, Y., Otsubo, M., Rowland, G. , Towards a new Meta-Systems Paradigm for Y3K, in: Journal of Administration and Informatics vol 15 (1).
• 2002, Debora Hammond, Exploring the genealogy of systems thinking, in: Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Volume 19, Issue 5 , Pages 429 - 439.
• 1998, Debora Hammond, Historical Perspectives on the ISSS: Concluding Reflections, paper presented at the 42nd Annual Conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences July 18 - 25 1998, Held at Georgia Tech, Atlanta Geogia
• 1997, Debora Hammond, The Use of Biological Metaphor in the Behavioral Sciences: Society as Organism, Ecosystem, or Irreducible Emergent. paper presented at the biennial conference of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology in July 1997.
• 1997, Debora Hammond, Ecology and Ideology in the General Systems Community, in: Environment and History, Volume 3, Number 2, June 1997 , pp. 197-207
• 1995, Debora Hammond, Perspectives from the Boulding files, in: Systems Research, Volume 12, Issue 4 (1995), p 281-290.
• 1995, Debora Hammond, Cultural Diversity and the Systems View, in: Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 2: 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 7-12.

External links

• Homepage Debora Hammond at the Sonoma State University, 2007.
• Source ISSS Incoming Presidential Address and preview of ISSS Cancun 2005 by Debora Hammond in: Conference program and abstract ISSS 49th annual meeting in Cacun 2005. , p.56.