Peter Checkland: Complex

Peter Checkland is British management scientist. Explore interesting quotes on complex.

Peter Checkland: 20 quotes0 likes

“We reduce the complexity of the variety of the world in experiments whose results are validated by their repeatability, and we may build knowledge by the refutation of hypotheses.”

Peter Checkland

Source: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, 1981, p. 51 cited in: Rosário Macário (2011) Managing Urban Mobility Systems. p. 52

“Making drawings to indicate the many elements in any human situation is something which has characterized SSM from the start. Its rationale lies in the fact that the complexity of human affairs is always a complexity of multiple interacting relationships; and pictures are a better medium than linear prose for expressing relationships. Pictures can be taken in as a whole and help to encourage holistic rather than reductionist thinking about a situation.”

Peter Checkland

Source: Systems thinking, systems practice: includes a 30-year retrospective, 1999, p. 16

“Cursory inspection of the world suggests it is a giant complex with dense connections between its parts. We cannot cope with it in that form and are forced to reduce it to some separate areas which we can examine separately.”

Peter Checkland

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Source: Systems thinking, systems practice: includes a 30-year retrospective, 1999, p. 60 cited in: Frederik Pretorius (2008) Project Finance for Constructions and Infrastructure. p. 36

“In an unrestricted science such as biology or geology, the effects under study are so complex that designed experiments with controls are often not possible. Quantitative models are more vulnerable and the chance of unknown factors dominating the observations is much greater.”

Peter Checkland

Source: Systems thinking, systems practice: includes a 30-year retrospective, 1999, p. 65