ABSTRACT
The world has moved on in our lifetime and more rapidly that at any other time within recorded human experience. Thus we are all trying to cope with a cataract of interwoven technological, economic, societal and ecological changes on a global scale. Sometimes this cataract is so strong that it threatens to overwhelm us. Cognitive psychologists state that as human beings we can effectively manage approximately (plus or minus two) seven chunks of information at any given time. Is it any wonder, therefore, that many managers are experiencing difficulties in handling organizational life and are keenly interested in uncovering useful ways of handling change in its many guises. I would argue that, unfortunately, traditional mainstream management studies have yet to keep pace with the needs of today’s managers and are still offering too many ideas and prescriptions rooted in a view of the world that is now irrelevant. It is a view that arose out of a very exciting and challenging period of scientific discovery and experimentation: the late-sixteenth, the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. This period is commonly referred to as the Scientific Revolution and it led to the development of classical science or the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm. In Part One of this chapter I shall describe the origins of this view, its main features and how it came to be interwoven into our thinking about organizations and management. Part Two explores the birth of classical science and its development in more detail, briefly refers to challenges to its pre-eminence and offers a short discussion on the relationship between science and society.
