STSP Ch1. The Subject of Systems

We can observe the world, and think about our observations, and so gain knowledge of the world. Western civilization, in particular, has in the last 300 years provided us with a powerful means of observing the world, and thinking about it, and acquiring well-tested knowledge of its regularities: I refer to the method of science.

This book is about a particular way of thinking about the world, one which although broadly a part of the science movement, uses some concepts which are complementary to those of classical natural science.


This book is about systems thinking, and about the use of a particular set of ideas, systems ideas, in trying to understand the world's complexity.

The central concept 'system' embodies the idea of a set of elements connected together which from a whole, this showing properties which are properties of the whole, rather than properties of its component parts.

What, precisely, is 'thinking'? When at the reception of sense impressions, memory pictures emerge, this is not yet 'thinking'. And when such pictures form series, each member of which calls forth another, this too is not yet 'thinking'. When, however, a certain picture turns up in many such series, then - precisely through such return - it becomes an ordering element for such serious...Such an element becomes an instrument, a concept. I think that the transition from free association or 'dreaming' to thinking is characterised by the more or less domination role which the 'concept' plays in it. (Einstein, in Schilpp, 1949).

Systems thinking, then, makes conscious use of the particular concept of wholeness captured in the world 'system', to order our thoughts. 'System practice' then implies using the product of this thinking to initiate and guide actions we take in the world.

The Subject: 'Systems'

Nature did not consist of physics, chemistry, and biology: these were arbitrary divisions, man-made, merely a convenient way of carving up the task of investigating Nature's mysteries.

It is a meta-discipline whose subject matter can be applied within virtually any other discipline.

An approach is a way of going about tackling a problem, and obviously a particular approach may be relevant to more than one subject, just as 'an experimental approach' might be taken to the problems of physics, psychology, agriculture, and many other subjects.

What is a systems approach? an approach to a problem which takes a broad view, which tries to take all aspects into account, which concentrates on interactions between the different parts of the problem.

Only the philosophers of science are now concerned with science as a whole. Professional scientists work in one of the many branches of the subject.

The scientific outlook assumes that the world is characterized by natural phenomena which are ordered and regular, not capricious, and this has led to an effective way of finding out about the regularities - the so-called 'law of Nature'.

The system outlook, accepting the basic propositions of science, for it is a part of the scientific tradition, assumes that the world contains structured whole (which include soap bubbles, slow-worms and social systems) which can maintain their identity under a certain range of conditions and which exhibit certain general principles of 'wholeness'.

A systems orientation is recognizable in the work of some practitioners in many different disciplines, including biology, geography, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, social administration, and management science, thus confirming the status of systems as a meta-discipline.

A systems model of any developing discipline, assumes that the focus of interest is a set of concerns, issues or problems perceived in the real world, or something there about which we have aspirations.

Whatever the focus, it will lead to ideas from which we can formulate two kinds of theory, substantive theories about the subject matter (for example a theory concerning catalysis in chemistry) and methodological theories concerning how to go about investigating the subject matter.

Once methodological theories exist, it is possible to state problems, not merely as problems existing in the world, but as problems within the discipline.

All the resources of the discipline -- previous results within it, its paradigms, models, and techniques -- can then be used in an appropriate methodology to test the theory. The results from this test, which will itself involve action in the real world (intervention, influence, observation) will provide what are called 'case records'.

The case records of happenings under certain conditions. These provide the crucial source of criticism which enables better theories to be formulated, better models, techniques, and methodology to be developed.

Figure 1. Relationships between activities and results in a developing subject

For systems as a meta-discipline with a highly abstract subject matter ('organized complexity') there are two obvious possibilities for work within it. There will be work on the general principles of 'wholeness', applicable, hopefully, to any perceived 'whole', and there will be work which brings systems ideas to bear on problems within other disciplines.

Work of the first kind, for example, might be the attempt to formulate in general terms the requirements for any controller which governs the overall behavior of a system in an environment with which it interacts (Ashby, 1956) . Work of the first kind, abstract work on general systems principles, is obviously in danger of losing contact with reality. Its theory will be highly abstract, and it will be difficult to translate it into testable propositions. 

Work of the second kind covers the attempt to picture the professional activity of a social worker as an interaction between systems of different kinds (Pincus and Minahan, 1973). Trying to avoid content-free abstraction leads to systems work of the second kind, in which systems models, techniques, and methodology are applied to a problem defined within another discipline. Here difficulties may arise as a result of using one (meta) discipline which is itself still developing to tackle issues which will be part of the continuing development of another discipline.

Systems thinkers need to be mindful of the distinction between using systems ideas to obtain 'case records' within another discipline, and using that discipline simply as a vehicle for further developing systems ideas themselves.

Any actual systems study may well provide lessons of both kinds, of course, which makes the appraisal of results a complex business and the need to make the distinction crucial.

The management science seems to consist of a set of techniques relevant to a small number of textbook problems which never seemed to match the idiosyncrasies of real life; and I had come to the conclusion that even highly sophisticated industrial firms were rather bad at learning from their experiences.

Difficulties for the Reader

I have tried to avoid obscurity, but I need the reader's goodwill on three counts.

First, I need the reader's goodwill in accepting the need for some systems language which could, and no doubt will, be called 'jargon', such as 'root definition' and 'human activity system'. 

 Second, I need the reader's goodwill in being ready to follow an argument which extends throughout the book. I hope the individual chapters are individually intelligible, but their role is to contribute to the argument as a whole. The aim is that this argument should be more than an aggregate of its component parts; it should be systemic.

Finally, the book needs the goodwill of the reader because although it is not difficult to understand, it will make a special kind of demand on him. 

Rene Descartes taught Western civilization that the thing to do with complexity was to break it up into component parts and tackle them separately.

Systems thinking, however, stars from noticing the unquestioned Cartesian assumption: namely, that a component part is the same when separated out as it is when part of a whole. This makes finding out about systems thinking very different from finding out about, say, Renaissance literature, the politics of the Middle East, or natural selection in the fruit fly.

The Cartesian legacy provides us with an unnoticed framework - a set of intellectual pigeon-holes - into which we place the new knowledge we acquire.

Systems thinking is different because it is about the framework itself. Systems thinking does not drop into its pigeon-hole, it changes the shape and structure of the whole framework of pigeon-holes.  

(Checkland, Peter. (1999) Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. Wiley. P3~12.)