Donella H. Meadows (1941–2001)
Author of Thinking in Systems: A Primer
About the Author
Trained as a biophysicist, American scientist Donella H. Meadows earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Early in her career, Meadows was a member of a joint Harvard-MIT research group that developed a computer simulation model clarifying relationships between growth and finite resources on the show more earth. Using this model, the Club of Rome sponsored extensive research that resulted in the best-selling book, "The Limits to Growth" (1972), co-authored by Meadows and others. Attention was focused on a doomsday prognosis if growth continued unchecked. Meadows and her associates, however, presented options for achieving a sustainable society if there were a movement away from dependence on growth, equity in wealth, and if technologies were used to enhance efficiency of natural-resource use. "Toward Global Equilibrium" (1973) and "Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World" (1974) are companion technical volumes to "The Limits to Growth." They present reports on the simulation models, examinations of economic, political, and ethical implications of the findings, and a detailed description of the computer model, World3. In addition to her research sponsored by the Club of Rome, Meadows, as one of the editors of "Groping in the Dark" (1982), fully articulates that basic human needs can be met in the future if social and political structures, as well as values, do not hinder efforts for sustainability and equity. Meadows states that equity, rather than individual and national-wealth aggrandizement, is increasingly recognized as a major factor in planetary survival. Twenty years after "The Limits to Growth," Meadows and others in "Beyond the Limits" (1992) find that some options for a sustainable future have narrowed. However, they claim that new technologies can, if employed wisely, contribute to sustainability. The book emphasizes social-policy options rather than models. After working for two years on the Club of Rome research project, Meadows became a member of the faculty at Dartmouth College where she was systems analyst and adjunct professor in the Environmental Studies Program. Meadows has a lifestyle that reflects her views about sustaining finite resources and valuing equity rather than personal economic gain. She has lived in a commune, studied Zen Buddhism, and believed that people today are ultimately responsible for a future that holds "unspeakable horrors or undreamed-of wonders." She died in 2001 from a bacterial infection. Her titles include Limits to Growth-The 30 year Update, The Electronic Oracle: Computer Models and Social Decisions and Thinking in Systems - A Primer. 30 show less
Disambiguation Notice:
Donella H. Meadows and Dennis L. Meadows are different people. Both were members of the MIT team that produced The Limits to Growth in 1972.
Image credit: fathom.com
Works by Donella H. Meadows
The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind (1972) 781 copies, 11 reviews
Pensando em sistemas: Como o pensamento sistêmico pode ajudar a resolver os grandes problemas globais (2019) 4 copies
Os Limites do crescimento 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Meadows, Donella H.
- Legal name
- Meadows, Donella Hager
- Other names
- Meadows, Dana
- Birthdate
- 1941-03-13
- Date of death
- 2001-02-20
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Carleton College (BA|1963)
Harvard University (Ph.D|1968) - Occupations
- environmental scientist
professor
author
columnist - Organizations
- Dartmouth College
Club of Rome - Awards and honors
- MacArthur Fellowship (1994)
Pew Marine Fellow (1991)
Walter C. Paine Science Education Award (1990)
John H. Chafee Excellence in Environmental Affairs Award (2001) - Relationships
- Meadows, Dennis (spouse)
- Short biography
- From the Donella Meadows Institute website: Dr. Donella H. Meadows, a Pew Scholar in Conservation and Environment and a MacArthur Fellow, was one of the most influential environmental thinkers of the 20th century. After receiving a Ph.D in biophysics from Harvard, she joined a team at MIT applying the relatively new tools of system dynamics to global problems. She became principal author of The Limits to Growth (1972), which sold more than 9 million copies in 26 languages. She went on to author or co-author eight other books.
For 16 years, Donella wrote a weekly syndicated column called “The Global Citizen,” commenting on world events from a systems point of view. It appeared in more than 20 newspapers, won second place in the 1985 Champion-Tuck national competition for outstanding journalism in the fields of business and economics, received the Walter C. Paine Science Education Award in 1990, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1991.
In 1996, Donella founded the Sustainability Institute with the mission of fostering transitions to sustainable systems at all levels of society, from local to global. The Institute adopted the name of its founder in 2011 and renewed its commitment to the organization’s original mission and to making Donella’s work easily and broadly accessible. - Cause of death
- bacterial cerebral meningitis
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Elgin, Illinois, USA
- Places of residence
- Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
- Place of death
- Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
- Disambiguation notice
- Donella H. Meadows and Dennis L. Meadows are different people. Both were members of the MIT team that produced The Limits to Growth in 1972.
- Associated Place (for map)
- New Hampshire, USA
Members
Reviews
I was initially somewhat disconcerted by ‘Thinking in Systems’, because it reads a lot like a textbook, and I haven’t read a textbook for ten years. It doesn’t take the tone of an academic book (the passive voice, for example), as I'd expected. This is hardly a complaint; it was much more readable than I thought it would be. Indeed, it’s a very accessible introduction to systems thinking, which I’ve come across here and there in my academic research (mostly in spatial planning show more and mobility studies). The idea of viewing the world, and collective human behaviour in particular, as a series of systems is an immensely powerful and useful one.
Although the book doesn’t explicitly position itself as a critique of neoclassical economics, it is implicitly just that. I have long found it frustrating and idiotic that markets are assumed by default to operate freely and tend to equilibrium, rather than being discussed in terms of their obvious, massive flaws. For example, the housing market. To even call it a market is a stretch. Demand is volatile and heavily dependent on a myriad of interconnected economic, social, political, cultural, and historical factors. Supply is extremely heterogeneous, changes very slowly, and can be put to multiple uses. Equilibrium is a meaningless concept in such a context and prices provide very little information about what’s happening at any given point. It is much more useful to view housing using the frames discussed in this primer: as a very complex system of stocks and flows, rife with feedbacks, delays, nonlinearities, rules, and contradictory goals.
The book really does what it says on the tin: provides a basic primer. I found it helpful to systematise references I’d come across here and there, as well as providing an intriguing intellectual framework to counter the oversimplified linearities of econometrics. It also encourages a certain humility generally lacking in academia:
Despite the somewhat downbeat tone above, I found the contents uplifting and encouraging overall. Probably because systems thinking introduces an alternative to neoclassical economics, allowing the structure and aims of endless growth (for example) to be questioned. It also provides a much better approach to environmental policy than economics can offer. (Neoclassical economics simply cannot cope with the threshold effects and nonlinearities of climate change. Witness the endless and counterproductive debate on an optimal discount rate for climate change mitigation.) One of the most memorable passages in the book is a quote from Fred Kofman:
I’ve been meaning to read this book for about six years and cannot remember how it came to be on my to-read list or who recommended it to me. I’m glad I finally got around to it, as the conceptual models it advances will be helpful to my research and general thinking about the world. It’s distinctly thought-provoking. Helpfully, all its main concepts and terms are summarised in an appendix at the end. show less
Although the book doesn’t explicitly position itself as a critique of neoclassical economics, it is implicitly just that. I have long found it frustrating and idiotic that markets are assumed by default to operate freely and tend to equilibrium, rather than being discussed in terms of their obvious, massive flaws. For example, the housing market. To even call it a market is a stretch. Demand is volatile and heavily dependent on a myriad of interconnected economic, social, political, cultural, and historical factors. Supply is extremely heterogeneous, changes very slowly, and can be put to multiple uses. Equilibrium is a meaningless concept in such a context and prices provide very little information about what’s happening at any given point. It is much more useful to view housing using the frames discussed in this primer: as a very complex system of stocks and flows, rife with feedbacks, delays, nonlinearities, rules, and contradictory goals.
The book really does what it says on the tin: provides a basic primer. I found it helpful to systematise references I’d come across here and there, as well as providing an intriguing intellectual framework to counter the oversimplified linearities of econometrics. It also encourages a certain humility generally lacking in academia:
Self-organising, nonlinear, feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way. The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealisable. The idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best. We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionist science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can’t optimise; we don’t even know what to optimise. We can’t keep track of everything. We can’t find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror.
Despite the somewhat downbeat tone above, I found the contents uplifting and encouraging overall. Probably because systems thinking introduces an alternative to neoclassical economics, allowing the structure and aims of endless growth (for example) to be questioned. It also provides a much better approach to environmental policy than economics can offer. (Neoclassical economics simply cannot cope with the threshold effects and nonlinearities of climate change. Witness the endless and counterproductive debate on an optimal discount rate for climate change mitigation.) One of the most memorable passages in the book is a quote from Fred Kofman:
[Language] can serve as a medium through which we create new understandings and new realities as we begin to talk about them. In fact, we don’t talk about what we see; we only see what we talk about. Our perspectives on the world depend on the interaction of our nervous system and our language - both act as filters through which we perceive the world… The language and information systems of an organisation are not an objective means of describing an outside reality - they fundamentally structure the perceptions and actions of its members. To reshape the measurement and communication systems of a [society] is to reshape all potential interactions at the most fundamental level.
I’ve been meaning to read this book for about six years and cannot remember how it came to be on my to-read list or who recommended it to me. I’m glad I finally got around to it, as the conceptual models it advances will be helpful to my research and general thinking about the world. It’s distinctly thought-provoking. Helpfully, all its main concepts and terms are summarised in an appendix at the end. show less
Not having spent much time on systems I consider this a good introduction. It avoids all the math and approaches systems rather from the viewpoint of how they should be interpreted, which was delightful.
I think the most important thing I learned from this book was how hierarchies emerge naturally. I had not considered the possibility that it was more natural for evolution to create simple things that connect as modules rather than complex things that serve the same purpose as a collection of show more modules. This point of view has certainly changed my world view to the better. show less
I think the most important thing I learned from this book was how hierarchies emerge naturally. I had not considered the possibility that it was more natural for evolution to create simple things that connect as modules rather than complex things that serve the same purpose as a collection of show more modules. This point of view has certainly changed my world view to the better. show less
A concise introduction to systems thinking. It starts with diagrams (supported by a technical appendix) to illustrate key relationships, like feedback dynamics. Then the author tries to extract some basic insights from systems analysis that might be useful to businesses, policy-makers, and even personal lives. These are expressed in simple English with catchy sounding rules of thumb. Finally, the book turns to a spiritual guide ("Dance with the system.") The book was intended for a wide show more audience and has attractive features to that end. However, it is rather heavy on the mysticism and spirituality and rather thin on the connection between cases of systems analysis and the rules of thumb for decision-making. Also, it is always surprising to see how systems analysts ignore their own counsel when studying the economy. They assume away incentives and prices and model behavior as mechanical rules, such as always invest x percent of profits. Naturally, when mechanical rules of behavior are combined with presumed delays in perception or adjustment, there will arise nonlinear responses to shocks. Systems analysts ought to be the first to recognize that behavioral responses will adjust rather than mechanically march on. This failure stems from the engineering and computer science backgrounds of systems analysts, such as Dr. Meadows herself, where human behavior is coded as constants of proportionality, rather than (semi) rational behavior. All in all, however, I did enjoy this short book, and, at the very least, it conveys some fundamental and important insights resulting from decades of systems analysis research. show less
Great introduction to such an important subject - I loved the examples proposed, particular mention to direct democracy with the discretion of choosing where our taxes go.
I would have loved more examples of how thinking in systems applies to real life examples, or even exercises. Additionally, though this book's goal is to provide an explanation of this field for a large audience, I found it unfortunate that there was no mention of the obvious mathematical link, i.e. systems of differential show more equations, with the classic example of predator / prey model. show less
I would have loved more examples of how thinking in systems applies to real life examples, or even exercises. Additionally, though this book's goal is to provide an explanation of this field for a large audience, I found it unfortunate that there was no mention of the obvious mathematical link, i.e. systems of differential show more equations, with the classic example of predator / prey model. show less
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