Probert, Stephen K., "The Epistemological Assumptions of the (Main) Soft System Methodology Advocates", 1994
ua435
A number of writers have argues that Soft Systems Methodology embodies a distinctly "subjective" philosophical approach and (or) yield a system methodology based on a "subjectivist" epistemology, and as such it is distinct from "objective" methodologies. It has also been argued that Soft System Methodology avoids, or attempts to avoid, the "reductionism" inherent in traditional approaches to study of natural phenomenon. In this paper it is argued that such argument contain a number of conceptual and historical confusions, and that whilst the advocates of the developed form of Soft Systems Methodology in fact subscribes to a subjective mode of enquiry, such a mode has its history firmly grounded in the natural sciences. It is also argued that the Soft System Methodology advocates (in fact) subscribe to the thesis of epistemological reductionism, and this thesis will be contrasted with that of epistemological holism.