SYSTEMS AND SYSTEMS THINKING

A system is defined by a set of distinctive relationships among a group of components that interact with one another and their environment through the exchange of energy, matter, and/or information. These relationships produce a new entity, the whole, that requires its own level of analysis. The technical use of the concept of a system in science and technology dates back to the 1950s. Systems thinking subsequently become a catchall term for different postwar developments in a variety of fields, such as cybernetics, information theory, network theory, game theory, automaton theory, systems science and engineering, and operations research. An underlying theme in these developments is a shift from reductionistic thinking and compartmentalized organization to holistic thinking aimed at understanding linkages among parts and increasing organizational communication. The rise of systems thinking has broad ethical and societal implications that range from practical changes in public decision making to the emergence of a worldview critical of some instances of scientific and technological hubris.

A Taxonomic History

During the second half of the twentieth century amalgams of the terms system and systems became ubiquitous. Computer and operating systems were joined by biological, business, and political systems. Systems science and systems engineering were complemented by systems management, systems medicine, and the practice of looking at the earth as a system. However, the systems thinking in all these cases can be divided into three basic types: systems theory, systems methodology, and systems philosophy. In the history of systems thinking each realm has followed its own path, with many overlaps and interactions.

SYSTEMS THEORY. The birth of systems theory took place in the technical sciences during World War II when the scientist Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) studied control problems with antiaircraft fire. Those studies concerning communication and control in particular technical systems inspired Wiener to more general reflections on what he came to call the science of cybernetics (Wiener 1948). Although Wiener did not stress the system concept, system, he argued in effect that any type of system can be understood with the help of general laws or principles. In Wiener's cybernetics two main ideas figure: feedback, with its regulating and stabilizing properties, and transmission of information, which helps transform the many parts of a complex system into a whole. A mathematical elaboration of the concept of information was developed by Claude E. Shannon (1916–2001).

The success of cybernetics and information theory created a fertile climate for a theoretical movement based on new principles and oriented toward concepts such as system, organization, and regulation. A leading figure in the rise and development of systems theory was the biologist-philosopher Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972), who attempted to overcome mechanistic reductionism, in biology in particular but also in scientific thought in general, and persistently opposed a machine view of the world. Although he agreed with Wiener that cybernetics can provide insights into the teleological behavior of systems, he argued that the principle of feedback adopts essentially a machine view.

For von Bertalanffy (1968) a machine is composed of durable components and therefore is primarily static in character. A characteristic of the cybernetic model is that fixed structures must be present to make regulation by feedback possible. An organism, however, is characterized primarily by a dynamic ordering and maintains its structures in a continuous process of building up and breaking down (e.g., human red blood cells are replaced at a rate of 2 million to 3 million per second). The organism is thus not a closed system with a static mechanical structure but an open system in flowing or dynamic equilibrium. Such systems also are characterized by emergent properties: characteristics that are not evident when one studies system components in isolation from one another. Systems theory often is seen as a way to retain holism and organicism without positing teleological or vitalist philosophies.

Opposing Wiener's claim that the cybernetic model is the basis for a universal science, von Bertalanffy argued that the open-system model has universal validity and provides the proper foundation for a "general system theory." In 1954 he and others, among them Kenneth Boulding, Anatol Rapoport, and Ralph Gerard, founded the Society for General Systems Research, which later was renamed the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS). The ISSS brought together areas of research with dissimilar contents but similar structures or philosophical bases to enable researchers in various fields to develop a common language. Systems theory in this sense aspired to become a transdisciplinary science.

Systems theory and the quest for a general systems theory received a new impetus in the 1960s when Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) introduced the concept of self-organization and later, in the 1970s, when Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela (1980) proposed the concept of autopoiesis and developed the model of the organism as an autopoietic system. The term autopoiesis means "self-creation" and refers to the propensity of living and certain other nonequilibrium systems to remain stable for long periods despite the fact that matter and energy flow through them. Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) further refined systems theory with the notion of dissipative systems: open systems that exchange energy, matter, and information with their environment; operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium; and display the spontaneous appearance of complex organization.

According to the social theorist Niklas Luhmann (1995), the concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis allow a further step, moving from a general systems theory based on the open-system model to a general theory of self-referential systems of social meaning and communication. Luhmann's application of systems theory to modern societies rejected the normative orientation of sociologists such as Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Talcott Parsons (1902–1979). He argued instead that systems theory has to drop all references to actors and their self-interpretations and focus on the ways in which complex social systems arise, much as living organisms do, through autopoiesis.

SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY. Systems methodology is concerned with the scientific method for approaching practical problems in technology and society. It may be defined as the theoretical study of practice-oriented methods in science and engineering, in which the notion of the system indicates an approach that is intended to be integrating and holistic. As with systems theory, systems methodology arose out of postwar developments in technology, in this case systems engineering and operations research. Although operations research usually is concerned with the operation of an existing system, systems engineering investigates the planning and design of new systems.

The dominance of reductionistic and mechanistic thinking that was criticized by von Bertalanffy (1968) in his quest for a general system theory also became an important issue in systems methodology. As a leading representative, Russell L. Ackoff (1974) defended a systems approach to counter what he called "Machine Age" thinking. Together with C. West Churchman he founded one of the first systems groups in the United States at the philosophy department at the University of Pennsylvania shortly after World War II. Comparable developments took place in England at the University of Lancaster with the pioneering work of Geoffrey Vickers and Peter Checkland. Checkland observed that variants of systems thinking transferred from technology to the social domain were not especially successful. Following from that observation Checkland started to seek an alternative for the engineer's approach and tried to shift from what he called "hard systems thinking" (technical, quantitative models) to "soft systems thinking" (the incorporation of human values and perspectives).

A new impetus to the development of systems methodology came from the work of the social theorist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929). Habermas critiqued the dominance of technical categories in Luhmann's theory and the absence of human actors with conscious intentions in the development of modern society. In the 1980s this inspired a younger generation to work out a program termed critical systems thinking. Michael Jackson, Robert Flood, and Werner Ulrich became influential in this area.

In the late 1990s, inspired by the legacy of the Dutch philosopher and legal theorist Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) an attempt was made in systems thinking to break with the Western idea of human autonomy and autonomous rationality. Fundamental to that research program was the notion of intrinsic meaning and the normativity of reality. Merging Dooyeweerd's theory of modalities and Stafford Beer's cybernetic theory of management, J. D. R. de Raadt launched "multi-modal systems thinking." Sytse Strijbos followed another more radical strategy by focusing on the underlying ontology and philosophical underpinnings of systems methodology. Borrowing from Dooyeweerd's notion of disclosure, Strijbos laid the foundations of "disclosive systems thinking." Industrial ecology and product life-cycle analyses are other versions of systems methodology that are used to make large-scale decisions with the goal of achieving sustainable energy and material flows (Graedel and Allenby 2003).

SYSTEMS PHILOSOPHY. Although systems philosophy was mentioned earlier in conjunction with systems theory (Wiener, von Bertalanffy, and others all attempted to develop the philosophical implications of their work) and systems methodology (for a while Ackoff and Churchman were based in an academic philosophy department), this approach merits independent recognition. In the 1970s, for instance, the Hungarian philosopher Ervin Laszlo tried to build on von Bertalanffy's ideas for a new scientific worldview, including a philosophy of nature, to develop a systems philosophy that would bring the latest developments in science to bear in conceptualizing the social problems of the emerging global society (Laszlo 1972). However, for clarity it is useful to distinguish at least four senses in which the terms system and philosophy have been connected.

First, there is the traditional sense in which philosophy aspires to be systematic, that is, to cover all the basic issues in a manner that properly subordinates and relates them. It is in this sense that one speaks of a philosophical system such as those of the philosophers Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770–1831). This is the oldest but in the current instance least significant connection.

Second, in the 1970s Laszlo aspired to formulate a systems philosophy keyed to the latest developments in science and to the urgent problems of contemporary global society. This type of systems thinking plays heavily into larger changes both in cultural norms and in social laws and institutions. Laszlo has been a prolific author whose books range from promotional work on systems philosophy to analyses of world modeling, sustainability, globalization, consciousness, and future studies. He is the founding editor of World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, which began publication in 1980. Systems philosophers of this type often draw inspiration from process philosophy, especially the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947).

A more hard-nosed version of systems philosophy is found in the work of the Argentine-Canadian philosopher Mario Bunge (1979). For Bunge systems science is a research program for the construction of a "scientific metaphysics" built on well-defined, scientifically based concepts but having broad generality.

Third, systems philosophy deals with the philosophical issues of systems theory. Systems philosophy in this sense may be related to philosophical analyses of chaos and complexity and efforts to draw from those studies general implications for understanding nature and acting in the world. Chaos theory and complexity theory especially emphasize emergent properties and the self-organization of complex systems.

Fourth, systems philosophy concerns the philosophical foundations of systems methodology and thus deals with issues about human intervention in the world. It is a distinguishing feature of E. G. Churchman's work in management science that it closely connected with a philosophy of the systems approach. Management to Churchman has to deal with the ethical challenge to design improvement. But what constitutes an improvement and how can we design improvement without understanding the whole system?

Implications and Assessment

Systems thinking denotes the effort to define a nonreductive method for conceptualizing and explaining phenomena in both nature and society. As such it has a number of ethical and political implications that may be indicated roughly as follows.

First, systems thinking often claims to give a better account of the genealogy of ethics than did previous analyses. Ethics is described as an emergent property of complex living systems. Second, the opposition of systems thinking to nonsystems thinking almost always has a moral dimension. Systems thinking is said to be superior to nonsystems thinking in both theory and practice because it understands the world more accurately and provides better guidance for human action. Just as systems science yields better knowledge of the complexities of nature and artifice, systems engineering and systems management ground more effective interventions in nature, the construction of large-scale artificial systems, and the maintenance and management of their complex interactions.

These morally flavored claims can, however, cut two ways: to promote science and technology or to delimit them. On the one hand, systems thinking has played a large role in advancing scientific knowledge and technological development in the post–World War II era. It has done this both in the form of specific methodologies and theories and in the inculcation of a general receptivity to and awareness of interconnectivity in scientific and engineering communities. Some of its most significant impacts have occurred in biology, especially in the rise of ecology and in refinements of genomics. Institutional changes in the social structure of knowledge, especially increased interdisciplinarity, also have resulted from systems thinking.

On the other hand, systems thinking at times has criticized the modern scientific and technological project. In this critique of technological hubris, connections can be developed easily, for instance, between systems thinking and environmental thinking. Although he did not use the term, Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) essentially argued that the concept of the system forms the foundation of ethics: "All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts" (Leopold 1949, p. 203).

In a like manner Fritjof Capra (1997) has argued that new research on the organization of living systems promotes a reexamination of social policies. Systems thinking is both a scientific shift and a cultural paradigm shift away from mechanism and reductionism, but the relationship between those two shifts is complex and ethically charged. Capra, for instance, argues that systems research supports social egalitarianism, but that argument raises ethical questions about deriving political and moral conclusions from observations about nature. This is the same dilemma often raised by political conclusions drawn from the more reductionistic theories of sociobiology. The focus on wholeness, interconnectedness, and complexity thus has had an ambiguous impact on the larger realm of cultural and philosophical thought.

Thus, although it doubtlessly has been associated with some criticisms of technological and scientific hubris, systems thinking also has generated new versions of that hubris. For example, Luhmann's brand of systems thinking seeks to abstract a "grand theory" or a universal framework that is not concerned with individual humans, only the abstractions of information exchange. That led Habermas to label it as a version of "antihumanistic" sociology that denies the ability of individuals and institutions to guide social change consciously. Indeed, worldviews that stress holism always create a risk of losing lose sight of individual values such as dignity, freedom, and intentionality. In this case modern societies are seen as polycentric, and democratic participation and control as illusory, in the face of overwhelming complexity. However, it is difficult to conceive of justice and many other social values being realized by an autopoietic process devoid of intentional agency.

Similar two-sided features can be identified in proposals by Brad Allenby and others for the development of earth systems engineering and management. The bottom line is that systems and systems thinking remain ambivalent in their ethical import with regard to science and technology, but that ambivalence also may be their basic strength. Surely there is a sense in which science and technology need to be promoted and criticized at the same time.

SYTSE STRIJBOS CARL MITCHAM

SEE ALSO Complexity and Chaos; Reliability of Technology: Technical and Social Dimensions;Soft Systems Methodology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackoff, Russell L. (1974). Redesigning the Future: A Systems Approach to Societal Problems. New York: John Wiley & Sons. The crux of the book is the provocative claim that "God's work is to create the future. Man must take it away from Him."

Beer, Stafford. (1959). Cybernetics and Management. New York: Wiley. The first of several books in which the author has developed his Viable System Model. Invited by President Salvador Allende, he applied this cybernetic model in the early 1970s in an ambitious project to regulate the whole social economy of Chile.

Bunge, Mario. (1979). A World of Systems. Boston: D. Reidel. This constitutes volume 4, part 2, of Bunge's Treatise on Basic Philosophy.

Capra, Fritjof. (1997). The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor.

Churchman, C. West. (1968). The Systems Approach. New York: Dell. A slightly revised and updated version appeared in 1979.

Flood, Robert L. (1990). Liberating Systems Theory. New York: Plenum. First volume in the series "Contemporary Systems Thinking," series ed. Robert L. Flood.

Graedel, T. E., and B. R. Allenby. (2003). Industrial Ecology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. The field of industrial ecology has quickly developed since the 1990s as one of the latest separate branches of systems thinking and practice.

Laszlo, Ervin. (1972). The Systems View of the World: The Natural Philosophy of the New Developments in the Sciences. New York: George Braziller. See also the subsequent update of this book, The Systems View of the World: A Holistic Vision for Our Time. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1996.

Leopold, Aldo. (1949). A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. London: Oxford University Press.

Luhmann, Niklas. (1995). Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz, Jr. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Originally published in German in 1984.

Maturana, Humberto R., and Francisco J. Varela. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: D. Reidel.

Strijbos, Sytse. (1988). Het Technische Wereldbeeld: Een wijsgerig onderzoek van het systeemdenken [The Technical Worldview: A philosophical investigation of systems thinking]. Amsterdam: Buijten and Schipperheijn. The study gives a critical discussion of important sources of systems thinking and of a fundamental philosophical critique. It focuses on the claim made by Von Bertalanffy and a "group" around him that systems thinking overthrows the technical worldview and establishes a new conception in place.

Von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. (1968). General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: George Braziller. A classic study in systems theory.

Wiener, Norbert. (1948). Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. A classic study in systems thinking. New York: Wiley.