Humanities & Social Sciences 8 (2015 8) 1569-1575 ~ ~ ~ УДК 165.4 Critical Analysis of the Systems Approach Vladimir I. Zhukovskya b and Daniil V. Pivovarovb aSiberian Federal University * 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia Ural Federal University named after the B. N. Yeltsin 19 Mira Str., Ekaterinburg, 620002, Russia Received 15.05.2015, received in revised form 19.06.2015, accepted 15.07.2015 The systems approach emerged mainly in natural science as an expression of scientists’ naive belief that the universe has a very simple and logical structure. <...> The critics argue that, fi rstly, the systems principle in its most important aspects is alternative to the holistic principle; secondly, the holistic principle is much richer and more realistic than the systems principle. <...> Apparently, the system’s concept is associated not so much with the sign of epistemic truth, but with one of the rules of language games of philosophers, theologians and scientists. <...> Keywords: systemness and wholeness, the systems approach, a thing as a metasystem, the holistic approach, epistemic truth of knowledge about the wholeness of things and logical correctness of systematic knowledge about any fragment of some object. <...> Research area: culture studies, philosophy. “System” is a set of structured elements, “element” is a minimal integral part of some system and “structure” is a way of relationships of elements and larger parts within the system (Pivovarov, 2006, 5). <...> G. V. F. Hegel and K. Marx believed that the real-valued truth is born only in the philosophical or scientifi c system. <...> It is enough here to recall Vladimir I. Zhukovsky and Daniil V. Pivovarov. <...> Critical Analysis of the Systems Approach that, according to Pythagoras, the essences of things are their numbers; according to Plato, the God is the Master of geometry; by G. Galileo and I. Newton, mathematics is the key to the reading of the Book of Nature. <...> It is important to remember the idea of B. S. Gryaznov that a scientifi c theory is, above all, the knowledge of abstract objects, but not the knowledge of real objects of nature and society. <...> Therefore, the theoretical conclusions should not be directly – without special technical amendments and empirically determined coeffi cients – use for practical purposes (Gryaznov, 1982, 2). <...> The systems principle in its <...>