The example used by participants was the emergency department, with its higher than usual level of complexity and uncertainty. Following this prelude to discussion, the CyberForum report will be presented in Socratic form, with questions posed, discussed, and answered. A paradigm is a set of assumptions from which subsequent theory is developed. It includes symbolic generalizations, a set of beliefs in particular models of reality, a set of fundamental values, and a set of shared exemplars. Paradigms change when anomalies between existing theory and observation occur, when an alternative paradigm is available, and when a critical mass of people have changed their beliefs.
New paradigms represent a change in a collective world view.
Systems can be understood through basic physical laws that describe a deterministic world in objective ways. Equilibrium is the natural state of a system. A system perturbed will come to rest. The point at which the system comes to rest, where entropy is maximum, is the state of equilibrium. In seeking equilibrium, a system may close itself from the environment, leading to stagnation.