Daniel's notes on Thinking In Systems

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves.... There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding. —RoBERT PIRSIG, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

So, what is a system? A system is a set of things —people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system's response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.

According to the competitive exclusion principle, if a reinforcing feedback loop rewards the winner of a competition with the means to win further competitions, the result will be the elimination of all but a few competitors. —The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

More Than the Sum of Its Parts A system' is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. If you look at that definition closely for a minute, you can see that a system must consist of three kinds of things: - elements - interconnections - and a function or purpose

The elements of your digestive system include teeth, enzymes, stomach, and intestines. They are interrelated through the physical flow of food, and through an elegant set of regulating chemical signals. The function of this system is to break down food into its basic nutrients and to transfer those nutrients into the bloodstream (another system), while discarding unusable wastes. A football team is a system with elements such as players, coach, field, and ball. Its interconnections are the rules of the game, the coach's strategy, the players' communications, and the laws of physics that govern the motions of ball and players. The purpose of the team is to win games, or have fun, or get exercise, or make millions of dollars, or all of the above.

A school is a system. So is a city, and a factory, and a corporation, and a national economy. An animal is a system. A tree is a system, and a forest is a larger system that encompasses subsystems of trees and animals. The earth is a system. So is the solar system; so is a galaxy. Systems can be embedded in systems, which are embedded in yet other systems.

How to know whether you are looking at a system or just a bunch of stuff: A) Can you identify parts? ... and B) Do the parts affect each other? ... and C) Do the parts together produce an effect that is different from the effect of each part on its own? ... and perhaps D) Does the effect, the behavior over time, persist in a variety of circumstances?

Many interconnections are flows of information-signals that go to decision points or action points within a system. These kinds of interconnections are often harder to see, but the system reveals them to those who look. If information-based relationships are hard to see, functions or purposes are even harder. A system's function or purpose is not necessarily spoken, written, or expressed explicitly, except through the operation of the system. The best way to deduce the system's purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves.