Impression of systems thinking about society^[1]

Systems science is an interdisciplinary field of science that studies the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science. It aims to develop interdisciplinary foundations, which are applicable in a variety of areas, such as engineering, biology, medicine and social sciences.

Systems sciences covers formal sciences fields like complex systems, cybernetics, dynamical systems theory, and systems theory, and applications in the field of the natural and social sciences and engineering, such as control theory, operations research, social systems theory, systems biology, systems dynamics, systems ecology, systems engineering and systems psychology.

Theories[link]

Since the emergence of the General Systems Research in the 1950s systems thinking and systems science have been developed into many theoretical frameworks.

Systems notes of Henk Bikker, TU Delft, 1991.

Systems analysis

Systems analysis is the interdisciplinary branch of science, dealing with analysis of systems, often prior to their automation as computer systems, and the interactions within those systems. This field is closely related to operations research.

Systems design

In computing systems design is the process or art of defining the hardware and software architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data for a computer system to satisfy specified requirements. One could see it as the application of systems theory to computing. Some overlap with the discipline of systems analysis appears inevitable.

System dynamics

System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time. It deals with internal feedback loops and time delays that affect the behaviour of the entire system.^[2] What makes using system dynamics different from other approaches to studying complex systems is the use of feedback loops and stocks and flows. These elements help describe how even seemingly simple systems display baffling nonlinearity.

Systems engineering

Systems engineering (SE) is an interdisciplinary field of engineering, that focuses on the development and organization of complex artificial systems. Systems engineering has emerged into all kinds of sciences, and universities nowadays offer all kinds of specialized academic programs.^[3]

Systems Methodologies

There are several types of Systems Methodologies, that is, disciplines for analysis of systems. For example:

• Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) : in the field of organizational studies is an approach to organisational process modelling and it can be used both for general problem solving and in the management of change. It was developed in England by academics at the University of Lancaster Systems Department through a ten year Action Research programme.
• System Development Methodology (SDM) in the field of IT development is a general term applied to a variety of structured, organized processes for developing information technology and embedded software systems.
• Viable systems approach (vSa) is a methodology usesful for the understanding and governance of complex phenomena; it has been successfully proposed in the field of management, decision making, marketing and service.

Systems theories

Systems theory is an interdisciplinary field of science. It studies the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science. More specificially, it is a framework by which one can analyze and/or describe any group of objects that work in concert to produce some result.

Systems science

Systems sciences are scientific disciplines partly based on systems thinking such as Chaos theory, Complex systems, Control theory, Cybernetics, Sociotechnical systems theory, Systems biology, Systems ecology, Systems psychology and the already mentioned Systems dynamics, Systems engineering and Systems theory.

Fields[link]

Systems sciences covers formal sciences fields like dynamical systems theory and applications in the field of the natural and social sciences and engineering, such as social systems theory and systems dynamics.

Systems scientists[link]

General systems scientists can be divided into different generations. The founders of the systems movement like Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, James Grier Miller, George J. Klir,and Anatol Rapoport were all born between 1900 and 1920. They all came from different natural and social science disciplines and joined forces in the 1950s to established the general systems theory paradigm. Along with the organization of their efforts a first generation of systems scientists rose.

Among them were other scientists like Ackoff, Ashby and Churchman, who popularized the systems concept in the 1950s and 1960s. These scientists inspired and educated a second generation with more notable scientist like Ervin Laszlo (1932) and Fritjof Capra (1939), who wrote about systems theory in the 1970s and 1980s. Others got acquainted and started studying these works in the 1980s and started writing about it since the 1990s. Debora Hammond can be seen as a typical representative of these third generation of general systems scientists.

Organizations[link]

The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) is an organisation for interdisciplinary collaboration and synthesis of systems sciences. The ISSS is unique among systems-oriented institutions in terms of the breadth of its scope, bringing together scholars and practitioners from academic, business, government, and non-profit organizations. Based on fifty years of tremendous interdisciplinary research from the scientific study of complex systems to interactive approaches in management and community development. This society was initially conceived in 1954 at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, and Anatol Rapoport.

In the field of systems science the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR) is an international federation for global and local societies in the field of systems science. This federation is a non-profit, scientific and educational agency founded in 1981, and constituted of some thirty member organizations from various countries. The overall purpose of this Federation is to advance cybernetic and systems research and systems applications and to serve the international systems community.

The best known research institute in the field is the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, dedicated to the study of complex systems. This institute was founded in 1984 by George Cowan, David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky. All but Pines and Gell-Mann were scientists with Los Alamos National Laboratory. SFI's original mission was to disseminate the notion of a separate interdisciplinary research area, complexity theory referred to at SFI as complexity science.

In India, the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan has set up a center of excellence in Systems Science, offering a research as well as an academic platform for students at undergraduate, post graduate and doctoral levels.

See also[link]

Systems science portal

• List of systems sciences organizations
• List of systems scientists
• Principia Cybernetica
• System engineering
• Systemics
• Systems theory
• Systems theory in archaeology
• Systems theory in anthropology
• Systems theory in political science
• World-systems theory
• System equivalence
• Antireductionism
• EGanges

References[link]

• [1]

Further reading[link]

• B. A. Bayraktar, Education in Systems Science, 1979, 369 pp.
• Kenneth D. Bailey, "Fifty Years of Systems Science:Further Reflections", Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 22, 2005, pp. 355–361. doi:10.1002/sres.711
• Robert L. Flood, Ewart R Carson, Dealing with Complexity: An Introduction to the Theory and Application of Systems Science, 1988.
• George J. Klir, Facets of Systems Science, Plenum Press, 1991.
• Ervin László, Systems Science and World Order: Selected Studies, 1983.
• Anatol Rapoport (ed.), General Systems: Yearbook of the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, Society for General Systems Research, Vol 1., 1956.
• Rugai, Nick, Computational Epistemology: From Reality to Wisdom, Book, Nitro Rigging LLC, ISBN 978-1-257-78505-6
• Li D. Xu, "The contributions of Systems Science to Information Systems Research", Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 17, 2000, pp. 105–116.
• Graeme Donald Snooks, "A general theory of complex living systems: Exploring the demand side of dynamics", Complexity, vol. 13, no. 6, July/August 2008.
• John N. Warfield, "A proposal for Systems Science", Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 20, 2003, pp. 507–520. doi:10.1002/sres.528

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: systems theory

• Principia Cybernetica Web
• International Society for the System Sciences
• UK Systems Society
• [2]

Bill Nye
Nye at Bridgewater State University in 2007
Born	(1955-11-27) November 27, 1955 (age 56)[1] Washington, D.C.[1]
Residence	Los Angeles
Fields	Mechanical engineering
Institutions	Boeing Cornell University Planetary Society
Alma mater	Cornell University (BS)
Known for	Bill Nye the Science Guy
Signature

William Sanford "Bill" Nye (born November 27, 1955),^[2] popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, mechanical engineer, and scientist. He is best known as the host of the Disney/PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998) and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.

Early life and career[link]

William Sanford Nye was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Jacqueline (née Jenkins; c. 1920–2000), a codebreaker during World War II, and Edwin Darby "Ned" Nye (died 1997), also a World War II veteran whose experience in a Japanese prisoner of war camp led him to become a sundial enthusiast.^[3][4][5] Nye is a fourth-generation Washington, D.C. resident on his father's side of the family. After attending Lafayette Elementary and Alice Deal Junior High in the city, he was accepted to the private Sidwell Friends School on a partial scholarship, graduating in 1973.^[6][7] He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, where one of his professors was Carl Sagan,^[8] and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977.^[9] He was awarded an honorary doctorate by The Johns Hopkins University in May 2008. In May 2011, Nye was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Willamette University where he was the keynote speaker for that year's commencement exercises.^[10]

Nye began his career in Seattle at Boeing, where, among other things, he starred in training films and developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor still used in the 747. Later he worked as a consultant in the aeronautics industry. Nye told the St. Petersburg Times in 1999 that he applied to be a NASA astronaut every few years but was always rejected.^[11]

The Science Guy[link]

Nye began his professional entertainment career as an actor on a local sketch comedy television show in Seattle, Almost Live!; Nye attempted to correct the host of Almost Live! after the host pronounced "gigawatt" as "jigowatt."^[12][13] The character name came from the host's comment "Who do you think you are—Bill Nye the Science Guy?" and Nye was thereafter known as such on the program. His other main recurring role on Almost Live! was as Speedwalker, a speedwalking Seattle superhero.

Coincidentally, in 1991–93 he appeared in the live-action educational segments of Back to the Future: The Animated Series with a nonspeaking role as an assistant to Dr. Emmett Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, in which he would demonstrate science with Lloyd's voice-over. The segments' national popularity led to Nye's hosting the educational television program Bill Nye the Science Guy from 1993 to 1998. Each of the 100 episodes aimed to teach a specific topic in science to a preteen audience, yet it garnered a wide adult audience as well. The show was very popular as a school resource and is still used to this day. He has written several books as The Science Guy. In addition to hosting the show, he was also a writer and producer for the series, which was filmed entirely in Seattle.

When portraying "the Science Guy", Nye wears a light blue lab coat and a bow tie and takes on the persona of an excited, jocular science educator. This popular image of Nye has been parodied by numerous sources, including the webcomic xkcd^[14] and the satirical news organization The Onion.^[15][16] In response to the fake headline "Crack Nearly Killed Me," Nye took the joke in good humor and sent The Onion an email thanking them for "dealing compassionately with this matter."^[17]

He appeared in his Science Guy persona alongside Ellen DeGeneres and Alex Trebek in Ellen's Energy Adventure, an attraction that has played since 1996 at the Universe of Energy pavilion inside Epcot at Walt Disney World. He also has a voice-over at the DINOSAUR attraction in Disney's Animal Kingdom park, where he tells guests about the dinosaurs while they queue for the ride. In addition, he appears in the "Design Lab" of CyberSpace Mountain inside DisneyQuest at Walt Disney World, where he refers to himself as "Bill Nye the Coaster Guy."

[edit] Post-Science Guy career

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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" and Executive Director of The Planetary Society received the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's "In Praise of Reason" Award at CSICON 2011 in New Orleans

Nye remained interested in science education through entertainment. He created a 13-episode PBS KCTS-TV series about science, called The Eyes of Nye, aimed at an older audience than his previous show had been. Airing in 2005, it often featured episodes based on politically relevant themes such as genetically modified food, global warming, and race.

He played a science teacher in Disney's 1998 TV movie The Principal Takes a Holiday; he made a hovercraft in order to demonstrate science in an unusual classroom manner. From 2000 to 2002, Nye was the technical expert in BattleBots. In 2004 and 2005, Nye hosted 100 Greatest Discoveries, an award-winning series produced by THINKFilm for The Science Channel and in high definition on the Discovery HD Theater. He was also host of an eight-part Discovery Channel series called Greatest Inventions with Bill Nye.

Nye has guest-starred in several episodes of the crime drama Numb3rs as an engineering faculty member. A lecture Nye gave several years ago on exciting children about math was an inspiration for creating the Numb3rs show.^[18]

Bill joined the American Optometric Association in a multimedia advertising campaign to educate parents on the importance of getting their children a comprehensive eye examination.^[19]

He was a regular in TV Land discussions. He has also made guest appearances on the VH1 reality show America's Most Smartest Model.^[20]

Nye appears in segments of The Climate Code on The Weather Channel, telling his personal ways of saving energy. He still makes regular appearances on the show, often asking quiz questions.

As of fall 2008, Nye also appears on the daytime game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as part of the show's reintroduced "Ask the Expert" lifeline. In 2008, he also hosted Stuff Happens, a show on the then new Planet Green network.

In November 2008, Nye appeared in an acting role as himself in the fifth-season episode "Brain Storm" of Stargate Atlantis alongside fellow television personality and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.^[21]

Nye has appeared numerous times on the talk show Larry King Live, speaking about topics such as global warming^[22] and UFOs.^[23] He argued that global warming is an issue that should be addressed by governments of the world in part because it could be implicated in the record-setting 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. On UFOs he has been skeptical of extraterrestrial explanations for sightings such as those at Roswell and Malmstrom Air Force Base in 1967.

In 2009, portions of Bill Nye's shows were used as lyrics and portions of the second Symphony of Science science education music video by composer John Boswell.

Nye recorded a short YouTube video (as himself, not his TV persona) advocating clean energy climate change legislation on behalf of Al Gore's Repower America campaign in October 2009.^[24]

Nye (as his TV persona) also made a guest appearance on The Dr. Oz Show.

On March 12, 2011, Nye made an appearance on CNN to discuss the evolving nuclear incidents in Japan as a result of the devastating earthquake and tsunami there. Nye erroneously stated that cesium is used to "slow and control" the nuclear reaction. ^[25] In reality, cesium (specifically cesium-137) is a nuclear fission product, not a control rod material. Nye also erroneously stated that the nuclear reactor involved in the Three Mile Island incident is still running and that the use of boron to slow the nuclear chain reaction is uncommon, when in fact boron-10 is commonly used in control rods, and is circulated in the coolant of reactors in the United States, as well as stored on site as a method of emergency shutdown.^[26][27]

A solar noon clock atop Rhodes Hall was gifted from Nye to Cornell on Aug. 27 following a public lecture that filled the 715-seat Statler Auditorium. Nye talked about his father's passion for sundials and timekeeping, his time at Cornell, his work on the sundials mounted on the Mars rovers and the story behind the Bill Nye Solar Noon Clock. ^[28]

Life outside television[link]

Nye speaking in 2010.

In the early 2000s, Nye assisted in the development of a small sundial that was included in the Mars Exploration Rover missions. Known as MarsDial, it included small colored panels to provide a basis for color calibration in addition to helping keep track of time.^[29] From 2005 to 2010 Nye was the vice president of The Planetary Society, an organization that advocates space science research and the exploration of other planets, particularly Mars.^[30] He became the organization's second Executive Director in September 2010 when Louis Friedman stepped down.^[31][32]

In November 2010, Nye became the face of a new permanent exhibition at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA. Bill Nye’s Climate Lab features Nye as commander of the Clean Energy Space Station, and invites visitors on an urgent mission to thwart climate change. Beginning with a view of Planet Earth from space, visitors explore air, water, and land galleries to discover how climate change affects Earth’s connected systems, and how to use the Sun, wind, land, and water to generate clean energy. In an interview about the exhibit, Nye said, “Everything in the exhibit is geared to showing you that the size of the problem of climate change is big. Showing you a lot about energy use... It’s a huge opportunity... We need young people, entrepreneurs, young inventors, young innovators to change the world.” ^[33]

He holds several United States patents,^[34] including one for ballet pointe shoes^[30] and another for an educational magnifying glass created by filling a clear plastic bag with water.^[35][36] From 2001–2006 Nye served as Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 University Professor at Cornell University.^[9][37] Nye supported the 2006 reclassification of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union.^[38]

Since 2006, Nye has lived in Los Angeles in a house with modifications, though has owned a house on Mercer Island.^{[citation needed]} As of July 2007, Nye and environmental activist Ed Begley, Jr. are engaging in a friendly competition "to see who could have the lowest carbon footprint," according to Begley.^[39] In a 2008 interview, Nye joked that he wants to "crush Ed Begley" in their environmental competition.^[40] Nye and Begley are neighbors in Los Angeles, and sometimes dine together at a local vegetarian restaurant.^[40] Nye often appears on Begley's Planet Green reality show Living with Ed.

Nye made an appearance in Palmdale's 2010 video "Here Comes the Summer"^[41]; the band's lead singer Kay Hanley is his neighbor.

Nye is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a U.S. non-profit scientific and educational organization whose aim is to promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.^[42]

Interviewed by John Rael for the Independent Investigation Group IIG, Nye stated that his "concern right now... scientific illiteracy... you don't [the public] have enough rudimentary knowledge of the universe to evaluate claims."^[43]

Personal life[link]

Nye announced his engagement during an appearance on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and was married briefly to his fiancée of five months, author Blair Tindall, on February 3, 2006. The ceremony was performed by Rick Warren at The Entertainment Gathering at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Yo-Yo Ma provided the music.^[44] Nye left the relationship seven weeks later when the marriage license was declared invalid;^[45] their impromptu ceremony, which preceded the license purchase, violated California state law, said Tindall in a radio interview.^[46] Nye later secured a temporary restraining order against Tindall after she entered his property late at night to pour weed killer in his garden.^[45]

Nye enjoys baseball and occasionally does experiments involving the physics of the game. As a longtime Seattle resident before becoming an entertainer, he is said to have been a fan of the Seattle Mariners, although recently he has voiced his preference (as a D.C. native) for the Washington Nationals.^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

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Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bill Nye

• Official website
• Bill Nye at the Internet Movie Database
• Bill Nye on Twitter
• Nye-Tindall wedding video
• An interview/discussion with Nye as guest on the radio show Loveline
• "Changing The World With Science Education" interview on Point of Inquiry.
• Seattle Times interview (April 26, 2004)
• Science Channel interview