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The 4th Regional Congress of ALAS Summary
The
4th Regional Congress of ALAS, organized by GESI, was held at the YMCA of
Buenos Aires. Several valuable papers on the central topic of the Congress: The structural poverty in Latin America
from a systemic viewpoint, were presented by members from Mexico, Venezuela,
Brazil, Santiago del Estero, Patagonia and Buenos Aires, plus a video speech
by Charles François and a two-hours conference by the world-known
epistemologist Mario Bunge. Prior to the Congress, the institutional ALAS
assembly took place, where we were fortunate to have with us Charles
François, founder and honorary president of GESI, and where outgoing ALAS
President Dean Ricardo Barrera outlined, based on the ideas of the member
entities, an action plan for the next years. A new president of ALAS was
elected: Ricardo Rodríguez Ulloa, president of IAS, Instituto Andino de
Sistemas, Perú. Highlights
Welcome and introductory
remarks were delivered by outgoing president of ALAS, Ricardo Barrera, and by
GESI president Roberto Porebski. Two pre-Congress seminars
were held: Ontology of Systems (Roberto Porebski and Ana María Vichi) and
Ontology of Complexity (Luis Samolski). The following papers were
presented and discussed: Nuclear Energy and the Chernobyl Syndrome (Roberto
Porebski and Ana María Vichi), Systemic Modelization of Schools in High Risk
Areas (Ana María Vichi and Roberto Porebski), Communicational Systemic
Psychoanalysis (Eduardo Vizer and Helenice Carvalho), Poverty – Catastrophes
– Poverty: a Tough Vicious Circle (Francisco Aceves), Poverty in Latin
America: a Methodological Approach (Fabian Szulanski), The Caterpillar
Strategy vis a vis Structural Poverty (Silvia Zweifel), Thoughts about Birth,
Development and Fall of Political Systems (Antonio Martino), Corporate Social
Responsibility, Social Economy and the State: Possibilities and Limitations
in the Battle against Poverty (Carlos Molinari), Systemic Management of
Knowledge – Intelligence – Wisdom in favor of Resource Equilibrium regarding
Functional – Structural Poverty (María Aurelia Campos), Enthusiasm (José
María Romero Maletti), Structural Poverty in Argentina and the Cultural
System (Ricardo Araujo) and Poverty: System Improvement or System Change
(Enrique G. Herrscher). In addition,
Pedro Luna presented the extraordinary research work and publications of
FundArIngenio, mainly studying the systemic contents of the culture of Due to illness,
Ernesto Grün‘s paper The Present World System and its Future from the Systems
and Cybernetics Viewpoint could not be discussed. The same, due to lack of
time, happened with the papers by Augusto Barcaglioni, Carlos Mallmann,
Charles François, as well as by Hernán López Garay, who brought us also the
greetings of ELAPDIS of Venezuela. A round table
discussion, with the participation of Eva Sarka, Luis Samolski and Antonio
Martino, facilitated by Enrique G. Herrscher, explored the interrelations of
the approaches of the Poverty issues from the diverse outlooks, with many
interventions from the floor. The closure
speech by epistemologist Mario Bunge covered mainly two basic subjects: (a)
the three ways to understand reality: (i) sectorialistic (focused on the
individual, as in liberalism and the economy based on specialization), (ii)
holistic (focused on totality: sees the woods, not the trees, as in communism
and totalitarian economics) and (iii) systemic (focused on the interactions
among the components and the emergent properties of the whole, as shown in
politics by socialism and in economics (rarely) by cooperativism; and (b) the
three ways to analyze the historic evolution of systemics: (i) ontologic
(studying categories of systems according to their properties), (ii)
gnoseologic (studying it as a branch of knowledge), and (iii) praxeologic
(studying it as a logic structure of human action). The Q&A
period brought about some fundamental definitions: (a) the excessive
specialization without integration is dangerous; (b) the so-called science of
complexity is precisely the systems approach; (c) the true systemic approach
is quantitative: its analysis and synthesis explains the quantitative; (d)
the present ―social complaints‖ (unrest, like
May Enrique G. Herrscher
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