Also distributed under the title: Distorted Understandings of Synthesis Reconfiguring the challenge of wholeness (1997)

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Since I can remember, "synthesis" has been a sort of prime directive. The challenge of how things are to be held or comprehended as a whole remains a prime concern – especially in its policy implications. In this spirit I attended my first meeting of the Society for General Systems Research (SGSR) in 1969 in Boston. I was mightily impressed by the work reflected in the Yearbook – to the point of moving mountains to obtain a complete early collection.

I attended my last meeting of SGSR in 1979 in London. Despite the theme (Improving the Human Condition: quallity and stability in social systems) I was left with the conviction that a number of dimensions were missing. From 1972 I had been working on what is now in its 4^th edition as the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. Aside from profiling some 10,000 world problems perceived by the network of international organizations, it also endeavoured to profile the range of approaches to integrative knowledge, interdisciplinarity, and the like. It was clear that the systems approach constituted but one facet of the challenge.