Re: <nettime> Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...

[Newmedia@aol.com]

John:
 
> Although I am haven't the time to promote and explore the 
> application a wholistic approach like 'living systems theory' 
> or 'general system theory' to such issues . . .
 
Thanks for bringing this up!  However, in this case, the key  individual is 
probably Kenneth Boulding.  Central to his work is the entire  literature 
on the "Image" -- which he called "Eiconics" and which (sorta) later  became 
"mimetics."
 
He organized the Ford Foundation funding for the Society for General  
Systems Research, from a plan that was hatched at the Center for the Advanced  
Study of Behavioral Sciences (also Ford funded.)
 
He also *did* read McLuhan (and Carpenter, along with their predecessor  
Harold Innis, who had been involved in Rockefeller social science funding in  
Canada) and tried to incorporate what he learned into his own work on  
economics.
 
When Boulding left Univ. of Michigan (where he was associated with the  
Group Dynamics center that had moved there from MIT after Lewin's death) in the 
 early 70s, he (and his wife Elise) went to UofColorado at Boulder, where 
they  published 5 volumes of his "collected papers."  Little read nowadays, 
they  are a trove of details about the "issues" being worked on in the  
1950s/60s.
 
Boulding also contributed to the McLuhan/Carpenter "Explorations" journal  
in the 50s and wrote a fascinating review of McLuhan's two early 60s books 
in  1965 (reprinted in Vol 4 "Toward a General Social Science").
 
_http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Papers-Kenneth-Boulding-E/dp/0870810537/ref
=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358865800&sr=1-5&keywords=boulding+collected+pa
pers_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Papers-Kenneth-Boulding-E/dp/0870810537/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358865800&sr=1-5&keywords=boulding+collec
ted+papers) 
 
Elise was also very active in movements for "change" and how those  efforts 
relate to history, as shown in her comments appended to the  infamous 1974 
SRI/Center for the Study of Social Policy "Changing Images of Man"  --
 
_http://ce399.typepad.com/files/changing_images.pdf_ 
(http://ce399.typepad.com/files/changing_images.pdf) 
 
A "retrospective" review of this *manifesto* would be a good idea for an  
early issue of "Man and the Economy" -- if Coates/Wang ever succeed in  
getting their journal off the ground.
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY


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