Complexity Science- 3 Systems Thinking

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A brief introduction to systems thinking.

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Transcription:

System thinking is a way of describing the world in a more holistic manner based upon the model of a system, but lets start from the beginning.

We can understand the world as things, that is parts or components and their relations, that is how they are connected or fit together.

So take a car for example, it is made up of parts, car parts such as engine, wheels and so on and these parts are put together or organized in a specific way so as to make them function as a vehicle of transportation.

Now we call a group of things that are not organized in this way a set. So we would call a group of cups on a table a set of cups because unlike the parts to our car they have not been designed to serve some collective function.

Because the group of cups is simple the sum of its parts we would describe them by describing the individual properties of the each cup and this would tell us everything we needed to know about them.

This approach to describing thing is called analysis or reductionism, reductionism is the traditional approach taken within modern science that tries to describe complex phenomena in terms of their individual parts.

Now take the human body that is highly organized through a complex set of relations between its parts. Out of the arrangement of these parts in a specific way we get the overall functioning of a living organism.

Because the parts are so strongly defined by their connections and function within the body as an entirety, to properly describe the parts we need to first understand the functioning of the whole body.

This approach to describing things that is that we can best describe things by understanding their place within the function of the whole that they are apart of is called synthesis and synthesis is the foundations of systems thinking.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

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