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| Inspirations for the Worldview Change Project | |
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Meadows was a leader of the sustainability and system dynamics fields. Her deepest contributions included the interpretation of systems and computer models for wide audiences and showing how systems thinking affects the way we see the world. She was lead author of Limits to Growth and she wrote a nationally syndicated column “Global Citizen” among many other publications. I took an environmental journalism class with her and interacted on a variety of environmental projects at Dartmouth College, especially her sitting on the board for the magazine that I founded. She introduced me to systems thinking and sustainability. See an article I wrote about her and an article that she wrote about me. |
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Quinn wrote Ishmael, which won the largest prize ($500,000) for a single literary work, given by The Tomorrow Coalition in 1992. The book and its sequels opened my perception to the deep beliefs that drive our civilization, to the notion that worldviews exist and inform the behavior of their adherents. His powerful work set the context for the Worldview Change Project.
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Kuhn, a professor at MIT, wrote the 1962 classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which proposed a theory for how successive paradigms in science rather than build on previous ones, destroy them in a transition resulting in widespread change. Kuhn’s was the first concerted theory of worldview change. Though limited to science, his theory has been applied to many different fields. John Sterman (see below) constructed a computer model based on Kuhn’s theory and found its behavior to be fully consistent with Kuhn’s description. Kuhn’s work has proven an important starting point for this project. |
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Sterman, a graduate of Dartmouth College, is director of the System Dynamics Group at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He studied under the master and founder of the field, Jay Forrester, also of MIT. Sterman has written the definitive text for the field of system dynamics, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. Sterman was kind enough to give me a copy which I have read practically cover to cover, allowing me at least a working understanding of what systems are and what the field can offer sustainability. It was while reading his text, that the idea for the Worldview Change Project first occurred to me. |
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Mark Woodhouse, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He has taught courses in the history of philosophy, metaphysics, consciousness studies, Eastern thought, parapsychology, and the New Paradigm literature on levels ranging from freshman to doctoral. His book Paradigm Wars (covered in Cosmopathy #4) has more than any other source detailed what elements will likely manifest in the new worldview needed to bring civilization out of its destructive view of the world. |
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Ham is a professor and communications expert at the University of Idaho. He introduced me to environmental communications and its links with environmental protection. Under his influence, I have developed in the field of interpretation and the cognitive psychology of persuasion and behavior change. His contributions have imbued how I conceptualize worldviews and allowed me to ponder communication strategies for speeding up the transition of worldviews. But perhaps most of all, Ham is an invaluable colleague for discussing new ideas about communications, conservation, and sustainability. |
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Peter Forbes, a Dartmouth graduate, is a senior fellow at the Trust for Public Land and founder of the Center for Land and People and the Center for Whole Communities. He is also a board member for the Center for a New American Dream. It was only after discussing with Forbes his own book-action project (Our Land, Ourselves: Readings on People and Place) that resulted in the creation of the former Center, that I began to take seriously the notion of writing the book and finding creative ways of financing it. His inspiration and support have been instrumental in the launching of this project. His essay “Lifting the Veil” was featured in Cosmopathy, March-April 2005. |
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April 4, 2005
