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and evaluate their logical consistency. As a result, they are able to develop a "system" of beliefs
which do not contradict each other.
Piaget believed that the ability to use formal logic was the most complex form of thinking
possible for humans. However, post-Piagetian researchers have noted significant differences in
how formal logic is used by adults, distinguishing between "systemic" and "metasystemic"
thinking. Systemic thinkers have a hard time grasping what happens when systems
themselves
change (e.g. historically) and when variables (and systems) interact with each other (like in the
weather or in complex social interactions); they struggle in real-life problem-solving contexts
where people don't have all the information necessary to solve the problem in a clear-cut way
(e.g. should I change careers?); and most importantly for the concerns of this chapter, rigidly
systemic thinking seems unable to synthesize a number of single systems or perspectives into a
larger picture, a "meta-system."
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As we have seen, some things in the universe have concurrences, features that seem very
different and are hard to harmonize (e.g. light seems to be composed of particles and waves).
Faced with such concurrences, a systemic thinker typically applies the LONC prematurely and
unwisely (crying "contradiction" too soon) and works out a one-sided solution that undermines
the conceptual tensions, too quickly eliminating the contrast in order to provide superficially
coherent, but simplistic, understanding. As a result, there is no motivational impetus to develop
more complex thought structures that allow one to hold the truths in tension. The strict, systemic
thinker is "embedded" in the thought structures of a simple system.
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This impatient formalizing
agenda ends up obscuring the side of the concurrence not favored or valued.
To be fair, this early formal logical thinking is partly a result of the "egocentrism" that