Cybernetics, systems science, and the great university

Abstract It is time that the related fields of cybernetics and systems science began to make a significant contribution to the design of organizations. A good place to begin is with the design of the Great University. The Great University does not presently exist, either in any institution or in a conceptual form. If it can be designed conceptually, the possibility exists that it may be realized in practice, and that it could serve as an example to existing institutions. The Great University represents a sufficiently sophisticated concept that its design and operation both can serve as tests of the quality and utility of concepts from systems science and cybernetics. The Great University is founded on the Leibniz Principle of Reason. In order to reflect this Principle, it is animated by and organized around three objectives of education set forth by Ralph Barton Perry, which are founded in the aim to prepare people for the exercise of citizenship in a free society. Evaluation of the Great University will lie in the performance of university graduates in society. The Great University will strive to create and implement exemplary practices that reinforce high quality performance of university graduates and correct the factors that promote low‐quality performance in university graduates. In creating an organization and programs that are responsive to the Leibniz Principle and the Perry Objectives, the Great University will set behavioral standards of the highest ethical quality, and its internal incentive system for faculty and student performance will be designed to promote balanced attention to the three objectives. In order to achieve this, a double infrastructure will be required to meet the vastly different requirements of subsumptive and supersumptive activity, both types being essential in the Great University. “… the paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.” Alfred North Whitehead