infonet-economy

In a previous work the philosophical concept of Mechanism was
proposed in order to characterize the kind of scientific explanations
provided by the system dynamics approach. That earlier paper
positioned such idea epistemologically contrasting it with the
traditional view used by mainstream management research and
developed a different ontological ground based on the structuralist
approach of Bertrand Russell. However, it seems to be needed an
emphasis on the epistemological nature of the Mechanism thesis
because of its common association with reductionism and the view of
mechanistic thinking as supposedly opposed to holism and
emergentism. This paper constitutes a second part; it underlines the
epistemic status of Mechanism which explains why it is in no way
opposed to ideas like holism or emergentism, on the contrary it is
consistent with such worldviews. Based on this condition the paper
explores the repercussions of such characterization for philosophy of
science and for system dynamics by developing a research agenda for both fields around this topic.