Systems and their environments in the context of some applications in products liability litigation
Douglas F Muster · Technology Law and Insurance · 1997
For more than three centuries, the world view of science and technology has been based on the Newtonian concepts of reductionism and mechanism and closed systems in equilibrium isolated from their environments. In this milieu, it was natural for analysts, in technology or in law, to view their problems in terms of single-cause-single-effect laws and to synthesize their solutions using discipline-dependent, sequentially iterative processes. But, in today's world, we are turning from the mechanistic conception of Newton and Descartes to a holistic world view based on systems thinking. This is happening in the natural sciences, engineering, economics, management science, medical science and the law. Technologies are becoming increasingly aware that the Newtonian view of systems as bounded entities whose interconnected and interrelated components are in equilibrium and isolated from their environments is not an appropriate paradigm for many of the systems of interest to them. In a Kuhnian paradigm shift, the singularity of systems closed to their environments, which is a central notion in Newtonian science, is being displaced by the concept of the duality of systems open to their environments in the holism of a systems-based world view. In the Newtonian-science-based paradigm, the concept of a system in equilibrium involves the characteristics of the system only; the system is isolated from its environment. In the new paradigm, the duality of a system and its environment is based in the notion that the system maintains a homeostasis-like equilibrium condition with respect to its environment, a condition which is made possible by the bilateral flows of matter/energy and information through its boundary. Thus, a semantic examination of the terms 'system' and 'environment' is needed, in the context of this new paradigm, in order to understand better the application of these terms to some aspects of technology which relate to products liability law. An etymological study of the terms, such as that given here, leads inevitably to developing a taxonomy of systems which takes into account the dualism of systems and their environments. The point is made here that certain aspects of products liability law can be understood better by the technologists and attorneys involved in products liability litigation when they have an essentially congruent understanding of the duality that exists between a system and its environment.