Knowing Systems and the Environment 41Knowing Systems
A useful way of exploring the notion, nature, development and significance of
‘knowing systems’ is to reprise the earlier concept of three-dimensional thinking,
specifically through the introduction and exploration of the three-level model of
cognitive processing developed by Kitchener (1983) in which she suggested that
different ‘levels of processing’ allow individuals to monitor one level of cognitive
tasks at another level. She distinguishes between cognition (or level one), meta-
cognition (level two) and epistemic cognition (level three) as a hierarchical sequence
through which individuals can monitor the way by which they conduct their own
basic cognitive tasks through a meta-cognitive process, which is itself monitored
by a process of epistemic cognition. Applying a system’s logic to this model, and
expressing it in terms of knowing, it is thus possible to claim that a knowing or
learning system can be seen to intrinsically comprise: (i) a cognitive (sub)system,
which deals with the process of coming to know about the matter to hand; (ii) a
meta-cognitive system that deals with the process by which the matter to hand is,
and can be known; and (iii) the epistemic-cognitive (supra-)system that deals with
the epistemological limits to what can be known about the other two levels as
circumscribed by the very nature of knowledge itself. Conceived in this manner,
each level in this intrinsic ‘system-of-systems’ is profoundly interconnected with
the others, with each essentially providing the contextual environment for the oth-
ers. The epistemic supra-system, furthermore, can be expanded to embrace not
just epistemological aspects of knowing and knowledge, but also of ontological
assumptions about reality and the nature of being, and about axiological assump-
tions and beliefs that are expressed as values. In this manner, the essential focus of
the epistemic (supra-)system are the cognitive frameworks or ‘meaning perspec-
tives’ or Weltanschauungen that represent ‘those usually taken-for-granted and
often idiosyncratic values, norms, and beliefs that constitute our individual and
socialized views of the world’ (Plas, 1986). As Kuhn (1962) presented them, such
worldviews become paradigms when, as ‘entire constellations of beliefs, values,
techniques and so on’ they are shared and put into practice by given communities.
And this emphasis on ‘practice’ adds the fourth element of ‘methodology’ to the
episteme where it represents the way through which the other three are interpreted
into action. Thus where method, as the process of knowing, is the focus of meta-
cognitive inquiry and evaluation, then methodology, as the expression of episte-
mological, ontological and axiological assumptions in practice, is the focus for
epistemic-cognitive inquiry.
From this perspective then, it is entirely appropriate to claim that the emer-
gence of the ‘second wave of systems thinking’ and the introduction of profound
distinctions between the previous ‘hard’ systems thinkers and the new ‘soft’ sys-
tems types was indeed equivalent to the introduction of a new paradigm of system-
ics. In this light, it is perfectly understandable, as Kuhn himself would have
predicted, that the shift would be associated with very significant controversy
equivalent to an ‘open intellectual warfare’ which not only regrettably continues to