Peter Checkland

"A methodology will lack the precision of a technique but will be a firmer guide to action than a philosophy. Where a technique tells you 'how' and a philosophy tells you 'what', a methodology will con…"

"Cursory inspection of the world suggests it is a giant complex with dense connections between its parts. We cannot cope with it in that form and are forced to reduce it to some separate areas which we…"

"We have no aces to what the world is, to ontology, only to descriptions of the world... that is to say, epistemology... We should never say something in the world: 'it is a system'; only: "it may be d…"

"We reduce the complexity of the variety of the world in experiments whose results are validated by their repeatability, and we may build knowledge by the refutation of hypotheses."

"Making drawings to indicate the many elements in any human situation is something which has characterized SSM from the start. Its rationale lies in the fact that the complexity of human affairs is alw…"

"In an unrestricted science such as biology or geology, the effects under study are so complex that designed experiments with controls are often not possible. Quantitative models are more vulnerable an…"

"The concept of action research arises in the behavioural sciences and is obviously applicable to an examination of human activity systems carried out through the process of attempting to solve problem…"

"A root definition describing a notional system chosen for its relevance to what the investigator and/or people in the problem situation perceive as matters of contention."