Collective intelligence Collective action Self-organized criticality Herd mentality Phase transition Agent-based modelling Synchronization Ant colony optimization Particle swarm optimization Swarm behaviour Social network analysis Small-world networks Centrality Motifs Graph theory Scaling Robustness Systems biology Dynamic networks Evolutionary computation Genetic algorithms Genetic programming Artificial life Machine learning Evolutionary developmental biology Artificial intelligence Evolutionary robotics Reaction–diffusion systems Partial differential equations Dissipative structures Percolation Cellular automata Spatial ecology Self-replication Conversation theory Entropy Feedback Goal-oriented Homeostasis Information theory Operationalization Second-order cybernetics Self-reference System dynamics Systems science Systems thinking Sensemaking Variety Ordinary differential equations Phase space Attractors Population dynamics Chaos Multistability Bifurcation Rational choice theory Bounded rationality Systems theory is the transdisciplinary[1] study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial.
The distinction of autopoiesis as made by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela represent further developments in this field.
Important names in contemporary systems science include Russell Ackoff, Ruzena Bajcsy, Béla H. Bánáthy, Gregory Bateson, Anthony Stafford Beer, Peter Checkland, Barbara Grosz, Brian Wilson, Robert L. Flood, Allenna Leonard, Radhika Nagpal, Fritjof Capra, Warren McCulloch, Kathleen Carley, Michael C. Jackson, Katia Sycara, and Edgar Morin among others.
[6] These ideas refer to an organized body of knowledge and "any systematically presented set of concepts, whether empirically, axiomatically, or philosophically" represented, while many associate Lehre with theory and science in the etymology of general systems, though it also does not translate from the German very well; its "closest equivalent" translates to 'teaching', but "sounds dogmatic and off the mark.
While the idea of a "general systems theory" might have lost many of its root meanings in the translation, by defining a new way of thinking about science and scientific paradigms, systems theory became a widespread term used for instance to describe the interdependence of relationships created in organizations.
For example, in noting the influence in the evolution of "an individually oriented industrial psychology [into] a systems and developmentally oriented organizational psychology," some theorists recognize that organizations have complex social systems; separating the parts from the whole reduces the overall effectiveness of organizations.
In the most general sense, system means a configuration of parts connected and joined together by a web of relationships.
[16] Systems engineering integrates other disciplines and specialty groups into a team effort, forming a structured development process that proceeds from concept to production to operation and disposal.
[20] It is currently surprisingly uncommon for organizations and governments to investigate the project management decisions leading to serious design flaws and lack of usability.
[29]: 12–13 Ludwig von Bertalanffy traced systems concepts to the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Nicholas of Cusa's coincidentia oppositorum.
Figures like James Joule and Sadi Carnot represent an important step to introduce the systems approach into the (rationalist) hard sciences of the 19th century, also known as the energy transformation.
Then, the thermodynamics of this century, by Rudolf Clausius, Josiah Gibbs and others, established the system reference model as a formal scientific object.
[30] Some consider interdisciplinary perspectives critical in breaking away from industrial age models and thinking, wherein history represents history and math represents math, while the arts and sciences specialization remain separate and many treat teaching as behaviorist conditioning.
[31] The contemporary work of Peter Senge provides detailed discussion of the commonplace critique of educational systems grounded in conventional assumptions about learning,[32] including the problems with fragmented knowledge and lack of holistic learning from the "machine-age thinking" that became a "model of school separated from daily life."
In this way, some systems theorists attempt to provide alternatives to, and evolved ideation from orthodox theories which have grounds in classical assumptions, including individuals such as Max Weber and Émile Durkheim in sociology and Frederick Winslow Taylor in scientific management.
[33] The theorists sought holistic methods by developing systems concepts that could integrate with different areas.
Some may view the contradiction of reductionism in conventional theory (which has as its subject a single part) as simply an example of changing assumptions.
Between 1929 and 1951, Robert Maynard Hutchins at the University of Chicago had undertaken efforts to encourage innovation and interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, aided by the Ford Foundation with the university's interdisciplinary Division of the Social Sciences established in 1931.
[38] Jackson also claimed that Bertalanffy's work was informed by Alexander Bogdanov's three-volume Tectology (1912–1917), providing the conceptual base for GST.
In December that year, a meeting of around 70 people was held in Berkeley to form a society for the exploration and development of GST.
The field developed from the work of Bertalanffy, Rapoport, Gerard, and Boulding, as well as other theorists in the 1950s like William Ross Ashby, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and C. West Churchman, among others.
Bertalanffy's ideas were adopted by others, working in mathematics, psychology, biology, game theory, and social network analysis.
Aleksandr Lyapunov and Jules Henri Poincaré worked on the foundations of chaos theory without any computer at all.
The Cold War affected the research project for systems theory in ways that sorely disappointed many of the seminal theorists.
Boulding concluded from the effects of the Cold War that abuses of power always prove consequential and that systems theory might address such issues.
[29]: 229–233 Since the end of the Cold War, a renewed interest in systems theory emerged, combined with efforts to strengthen an ethical[42] view on the subject.
[37] The concept received extensive focus in his 1968 book, General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications.
Von Bertalanffy opened up something much broader and of much greater significance than a single theory (which, as we now know, can always be falsified and has usually an ephemeral existence): he created a new paradigm for the development of theories.Bertalanffy outlines systems inquiry into three major domains: philosophy, science, and technology.
In his work with the Primer Group, Béla H. Bánáthy generalized the domains into four integratable domains of systemic inquiry: These operate in a recursive relationship, he explained; integrating 'philosophy' and 'theory' as knowledge, and 'method' and 'application' as action; systems inquiry is thus knowledgeable action.
However, Gordon Pask's differences of eternal interacting actor loops (that produce finite products) makes general systems a proper subset of cybernetics.