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.[1][2] It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts,[3] enabling systems change.[4][5] Systems thinking draws on and contributes to systems theory and the system sciences.[6]
By 1824 the Carnot cycle presented an engineering challenge, which was how to maintain the operating temperatures of the hot and cold working fluids of the physical plant.[12] In 1868 James Clerk Maxwell presented a framework for, and a limited solution to the problem of controlling the rotational speed of a physical plant.[13] 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).[14][a]
"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".[19]: 146 — Donella Meadows, (2008) Thinking In Systems: A Primer p.145 [c]
System boundary in contextSystem input and output allows exchange of energy and information across boundary.
...What is a system? A system is a set of things ... interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. ... But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world
Subsystems 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 planets, stars, and their satellites can be treated, sometimes in a scientific way as dynamical systems, entirely mathematically, as demonstrated by Johannes Kepler's equation (1619) for the orbit of Mars before Newton's Principia appeared in 1687.
Thermodynamic systems were treated as early as the eighteenth century, in which it was discovered that heat could be created without limit, but that for closed systems, laws of thermodynamics could be formulated.[39]Ilya Prigogine (1980) has identified situations in which systems far from equilibrium can exhibit stable behavior;[40] once a Lyapunov function has been identified, future and past can be distinguished, and scientific activity can begin.[39]: 212–213
Ontology engineering of representation, formal naming and definition of categories, and the properties and the relations between concepts, data, and entities.
^A solution to the equations for a dynamical system can be afflicted by instability or oscillation.[15]: 7:33 The Governor: A corrective action against error can solve the dynamical equation by integrating the error.[15]: 29:44 [16]
^"cybernetics: see system science.";[17]: 135 "system science: —the systematized knowledge of systems"[17]: 583
^Donella Meadows, Thinking In Systems: A Primer[19][20] Overview, in video clips: Chapter 1[21] Chapter 2, part 1[22] Chapter 2, part 2[23] Chapter 3[24] Chapter 4[25] Chapter 5[26] Chapter 6[27] Chapter 7[28]
^ abMarchal, J. H. (1975). "On the Concept of a System". Philosophy of Science. 42 (4). [Cambridge University Press, The University of Chicago Press, Philosophy of Science Association]: 448–468. ISSN0031-8248. JSTOR187223. Retrieved 2024-05-31. as reprinted in Gerald Midgely (ed.) (2002) Systems thinking vol One
^Cannon, W.B. (1932). The Wisdom of the Body. New York: W. W. Norton. pp. 177–201.
^Cannon, W. B. (1926). "Physiological regulation of normal states: some tentative postulates concerning biological homeostatics". In A. Pettit (ed.). A Charles Riches amis, ses collègues, ses élèves (in French). Paris: Les Éditions Médicales. p. 91.
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.).
