From the course: Sustainability Foundations: Core Concepts
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Systems approach
From the course: Sustainability Foundations: Core Concepts
Systems approach
- Ever tried to solve a jigsaw puzzle by examining just one piece at a time without looking at the bigger picture? It's a challenging task, right? Often people take a similar approach to understanding the world around them, looking at individual pieces without fully understanding their place in the larger puzzle. This is known as reductionist thinking, but to address the complexity of today's sustainability challenges, we need a different approach, systems thinking. Reductionist thinking has been a dominant method in science and problem solving for centuries. It's the idea that we can understand complex systems by breaking them down into their individual parts, and it's been incredibly successful. For instance, by isolating and studying individual chemical reactions, we've made advances in medicine that have saved millions of lives. However, reductionist thinking has its limitations, especially when applied to complex…
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