Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts.Anderson, Virginia, & Johnson, Lauren (1997). ''Systems Thinking Basics: From Concepts to Causal Loops''. Waltham, Mass: Pegasus Comm., Inc. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts, enabling systems change.Sarah York, Rea Lavi, Yehudit Judy Dori, and MaryKay Orgil
Applications of Systems Thinking in STEM Education
''J. Chem. Educ.'' 2019, 96, 12, 2742–2751 Publication Date:May 14, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b00261 Systems thinking draws on and contributes to

systems theory Systems theory is the Transdisciplinarity, transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, de ...

and the system sciences.Systemic Thinking 10
Russell L Ackoff From Mechanistic to Systemic thinking
also awal street journa
(2016) Systems Thinking Speech by Dr. Russell Ackoff
1:10:57

History

Ptolemaic system versus the Copernican system

The term ''

system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, str ...

'' is

polysemic Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a Sign (semiotics), sign (e.g. a symbol, morpheme, word, or phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word h ...

Robert Hooke Robert Hooke (; 18 July 16353 March 1703) was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ("natural philosopher"), astronomer, geologist, meteorologist, and architect. He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living ...

(1674) used it in multiple senses, in his System of the World, but also in the sense of the Ptolemaic system versus the Copernican system of the relation of the planets to the fixed starsJon Voisey ''Universe Today''
(14 Oct 2022) Scholarly History of Ptolemy’s Star Catalog Index
/ref> which are cataloged in

Hipparchus Hipparchus (; , ; BC) was a Ancient Greek astronomy, Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Hippar ...

' and Ptolemy's Star catalog. Hooke's claim was answered in magisterial detail by Newton's (1687) ''

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (English: ''The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), often referred to as simply the (), is a book by Isaac Newton that expounds Newton's laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation. The ''Principia'' is written in Lati ...

'', Book three, ''The System of the World''Newton, Isaac (1687) ''

'' (that is, ''the system of the world'' is a

physical system A physical system is a collection of physical objects under study. The collection differs from a set: all the objects must coexist and have some physical relationship. In other words, it is a portion of the physical universe chosen for analys ...

).Hooke, Rober
(1674) An attempt to prove the motion of the earth from observations
/ref> Newton's approach, using

dynamical system In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a Function (mathematics), function describes the time dependence of a Point (geometry), point in an ambient space, such as in a parametric curve. Examples include the mathematical models ...

s continues to this day. as reprinted in Gerald Midgely (ed.) (2002) ''Systems thinking'' vol One In brief, Newton's equations (a system of equations) have methods for their solution.

Feedback control systems

By 1824, the

Carnot cycle A Carnot cycle is an ideal thermodynamic cycle proposed by French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, Sadi Carnot in 1824 and expanded upon by others in the 1830s and 1840s. By Carnot's theorem (thermodynamics), Carnot's theorem, it provides ...

presented an engineering challenge, which was how to maintain the operating temperatures of the hot and cold working fluids of the physical plant.Sadi Carnot (1824)

Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire ''Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power'' () is a scientific treatise written by the French military engineer Sadi Carnot.full text of 1897 ed. ( Full text of 1897 edition on Wikisource ) Publis ...

In 1868,

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism an ...

presented a framework for, and a limited solution to, the problem of controlling the rotational speed of a physical plant.James Clerk Maxwell (1868) On Governors 12 pages Maxwell's solution echoed James Watt's (1784) centrifugal moderator (denoted as element Q) for maintaining (but not enforcing) the constant speed of a physical plant (that is, ''Q'' represents a moderator, but not a governor, by Maxwell's definition).Otto Mayr
(1971) Maxwell and the Origins of Cybernetics
''Isis'', Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 1971), pp. 424-444 (21 pages) Maxwell's approach, which linearized the equations of motion of the system, produced a tractable method of solution.

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener late ...

identified this approach as an influence on his studies of

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and Wiener even proposed treating some

subsystem A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is exp ...

s under investigation as

black box In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...

es.Peter Galiso
(1994) The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision
''Critical Inquiry'', Vol. 21, No. 1 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 228–266 (39 pages) ''JSTOR'' Methods for solutions of the systems of equations then become the subject of study, as in feedback control systems, in

stability theory In mathematics, stability theory addresses the stability of solutions of differential equations and of trajectories of dynamical systems under small perturbations of initial conditions. The heat equation, for example, is a stable partial differ ...

, in

constraint satisfaction problem Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are mathematical questions defined as a set of objects whose state must satisfy a number of constraints or limitations. CSPs represent the entities in a problem as a homogeneous collection of finite const ...

s, the unification algorithm,

type inference Type inference, sometimes called type reconstruction, refers to the automatic detection of the type of an expression in a formal language. These include programming languages and mathematical type systems, but also natural languages in some bran ...

, and so forth.

Applications

:"So, how do we change the structure of systems to produce more of what we want and less of that which is undesirable? ... MIT’s Jay Forrester likes to say that the average manager can ... guess with great accuracy where to look for leverage points—places in the system where a small change could lead to a large shift in behavior".

Donella Meadows Donella Hager "Dana" Meadows (March 13, 1941 – February 20, 2001) was an American environmental scientist, educator, and writer. She is best known as lead author of the books '' The Limits to Growth'' and '' Thinking In Systems: A Primer''. ...

, (2008) '' Thinking In Systems: A Primer''—

, (2008) '' Thinking In Systems: A Primer'' p.145

Characteristics

Subsystem A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is exp ...

s serve as part of a larger system, but each comprises a system in its own right. Each frequently can be described reductively, with properties obeying its own laws, such as Newton's System of the World, in which entire

planet A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets b ...

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

s, and their satellites can be treated, sometimes in a scientific way as dynamical systems, entirely mathematically, as demonstrated by

Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, Natural philosophy, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best know ...

's equation (1619) for the orbit of Mars before Newton's ''Principia'' appeared in 1687. *

Black box In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...

es are subsystems whose operation can be characterized by their inputs and outputs, without regard to further detail.Wiener, Norbert; '' Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine'', MIT Press, 1961, ISBN 0-262-73009-X, page xi

Particular systems

Political system In political science, a political system means the form of Political organisation, political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state (polity), state. It defines the process for making official gov ...

s were recognized as early as the millennia before the common era.Aristotle, ''

Politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

'' *

Biological system A biological system is a complex Biological network inference, network which connects several biologically relevant entities. Biological organization spans several scales and are determined based different structures depending on what the system is ...

s were recognized in Aristotle's lagoon ca. 350 BCE. *

Economic system An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within an economy. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making proces ...

s were recognized by 1776.

Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptised 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the field of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as the "father of economics"——— or ...

br>(1776) ''The Wealth of Nations''
Book IV refers to commercial, and mercantile systems, as well as to systems of political enonomy *

Social system In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. It is the formal Social structure, structure of role and status that can form in a smal ...

s were recognized by the 19th and 20th centuries of the common era. ** Radar systems were developed in

in subsystem fashion; they were made up of

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter (often abbreviated as XMTR or TX in technical documents) is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna with the purpose of sig ...

, receiver,

power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, electric current, current, and frequency to power ...

, and

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, Scalar potential, potential fields, Seismic tomograph ...

subsystems, to defend against airborne attacks. *

Dynamical systems In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a Function (mathematics), function describes the time dependence of a Point (geometry), point in an ambient space, such as in a parametric curve. Examples include the mathematical models ...

ordinary differential equation In mathematics, an ordinary differential equation (ODE) is a differential equation (DE) dependent on only a single independent variable (mathematics), variable. As with any other DE, its unknown(s) consists of one (or more) Function (mathematic ...

s were shown to exhibit stable behavior given a suitable Lyapunov control function by Aleksandr Lyapunov in 1892.Richard Pate
(2021) What is a Lyapunov function
/ref> *

Thermodynamic systems A thermodynamic system is a body of matter and/or radiation separate from its surroundings that can be studied using the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamic systems can be passive and active according to internal processes. According to inter ...

were treated as early as the eighteenth century, in which it was discovered that

heat In thermodynamics, heat is energy in transfer between a thermodynamic system and its surroundings by such mechanisms as thermal conduction, electromagnetic radiation, and friction, which are microscopic in nature, involving sub-atomic, ato ...

could be created without limit, but that for

closed system A closed system is a natural physical system that does not allow transfer of matter in or out of the system, althoughin the contexts of physics, chemistry, engineering, etc.the transfer of energy (e.g. as work or heat) is allowed. Physics In cl ...

laws of thermodynamics The laws of thermodynamics are a set of scientific laws which define a group of physical quantities, such as temperature, energy, and entropy, that characterize thermodynamic systems in thermodynamic equilibrium. The laws also use various param ...

could be formulated. 272 pages.

Ilya Prigogine Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (; ; 28 May 2003) was a Belgian physical chemist of Russian-Jewish origin, noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. Prigogine's work most notably earned him the 19 ...

(1980) has identified situations in which systems far from equilibrium can exhibit stable behavior;Glansdorff, P., Prigogine, I. (1971)
''Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, Stability and Fluctuations''
London: Wiley-Interscience once a Lyapunov function has been identified, future and past can be distinguished, and scientific activity can begin.

Systems far from equilibrium

Living systems are resilient, and are far from equilibrium.

Homeostasis In biology, homeostasis (British English, British also homoeostasis; ) is the state of steady internal physics, physical and chemistry, chemical conditions maintained by organism, living systems. This is the condition of optimal functioning fo ...

is the analog to equilibrium, for a living system; the concept was described in 1849, and the term was coined in 1926. Resilient systems are

self-organizing Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spont ...

; H T Odu
(25 Nov 1988) Self-Organization, Transformity and Information
''Science'' Vol 242, Issue 4882 pp. 1132–1139 as reprinted by Gerald Midgley ed. (2002), ''Systems Thinking'' vol ''2'' The scope of functional controls is

hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an importan ...

, in a resilient system.

Frameworks and methodologies

Frameworks and methodologies for systems thinking include: * Critical systems heuristics: in particular, there can be twelve boundary categories for the systems when organizing one's thinking and actions. * Critical systems thinking, including the E P I C approach. * DSRP, a framework for systems thinking that attempts to generalise all other approaches. *

Ontology engineering In computer science, information science and systems engineering, ontology engineering is a field which studies the methods and methodologies for building Ontology (information science), ontologies, which encompasses a representation, formal nami ...

of representation, formal naming and definition of categories, and the properties and the relations between concepts, data, and entities. *

Soft systems methodology Soft systems methodology (SSM) is an organised way of thinking applicable to problematic social situations and in the management of change by using action. It was developed in England by academics at the Lancaster Systems Department on the basis o ...

, including the CATWOE approach and rich pictures. * Systemic design, for example using the double diamond approach. * System dynamics of stocks, flows, and internal

feedback loop Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause and effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handle ...

s. * Viable system model: uses 5 subsystems.

Notes

References

Sources

* Russell L. Ackoff (1968) "General Systems Theory and Systems Research Contrasting Conceptions of Systems Science." in: ''Views on a General Systems Theory: Proceedings from the Second System Symposium'', Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (ed.). * A.C. Ehresmann, J.-P. Vanbremeersch (1987
Hierarchical evolutive systems: A mathematical model for complex systems
''Bulletin of Mathematical Biology'' Volume 49, Issue 1, Pages 13–50 * NJTA Kramer & J de Smit (1977) ''Systems thinking: Concepts and Notions'', Springer. 148 pages * A. H. Louie (November 1983)
Categorical system theory
''Bulletin of Mathematical Biology'' volume 45, pages 1047–1072 * DonellaMeadows.or
Systems Thinking Resources
* Gerald Midgley (ed.) (2002) ''Systems Thinking'', SAGE Publications. 4 volume set: 1,492 page
List of chapter titles
* Robert Rosen. (1958) �
The Representation of Biological Systems from the Standpoint of the Theory of Categories
. ''Bull. math. Biophys.'' 20, 317–342. * Peter Senge, (1990) '' The Fifth Discipline'' {{Authority control Cybernetics Systems science Systems theory