This folder began with a post by Barry O’Reilly on claims made by a self-proclaimed Systems Thinker over the merits of his ideas. It is a stance quite contrary to Churchman’s plea for epistemic humility - a point made by many other Systems Thinkers and a few Complexity Thinkers.

To reference George Box’s dictum:

“Remember that all models are wrong” - which applies to all Systems Thinking & Complexity Science approaches

and the second line

… “the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful”’

George Box produced a rather apposite response to the barriers of ‘being useful’ based on the work of fellow statistician Ronald Fischer.

Cookbookery and Mathematistry

The maladies which result may be called cookbookery and mathematistry.

The symptoms of the former (cookbookery) are a tendency to force all problems into the moulds of one or two routine techniques, insufficient thought being given to the real objectives of the investigation or to the relevance of the assumptions implied by the imposed methods.

Concerning the latter (Mathematistry), Fisher’s apparently bivalent attitude towards mathematicians has often been remarked and has been the cause of perplexity and annoyance. He himself was an artist in the use of mathematics and emphasized the importance of mathematical training for statisticians - the more mathematics known the greater the potential to be a good statistician. Why then did he sometimes seem to refer so slightingly to mathematicians? The answer I think is that his real target was “mathematistry” It is to make the distinction that the word is introduced here.

Mathematistry is characterized by development of theory for theory’s sake, which since it seldom touches down with practice, has a tendency to redefine the problem rather than solve it.