Systems Theory Quotes

A cardinal principle in systems theory is that all parties that have a stake in a system should be represented in its management.

Malcolm Knowles

Party, Intelligence, Principles

Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1984). “The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species”, Gulf Publishing Company

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General Systems Theory, a related modern concept [to holism], says that each variable in any system interacts with the other variables so thoroughly that cause and effect cannot be separated. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Reality will not be still. And it cannot be taken apart! You cannot understand a cell, a rat, a brain structure, a family, a culture if you isolate it from its context. Relationship is everything.

Marilyn Ferguson

Taken, Simple, Reality

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General Systems Theory is a name which has come into use to describe a level of theoretical model-building which lies somewhere between the highly generalized constructions of pure mathematics and the specific theories of the specialized disciplines. Mathematics attempts to organize highly general relationships into a coherent system, a system however which does not have any necessary connections with the "real" world around us. It studies all thinkable relationships abstracted from any concrete situation or body of empirical knowledge.

Kenneth E. Boulding

Real, Lying, Names

"General Systems Theory - The Skeleton of Science". Management Science, Volume 2. No. 3, pp. 197-208, www.panarchy.org. April 1956.

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A second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields... leading towards a "system of systems." [...] I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse...(vi) [...] the "animal" level, characterized by increased mobility, teleological behavior and self-awareness...

Kenneth E. Boulding

Animal, Self, Mobility

"General systems theory - the skeleton of science". Kenneth E. Boulding, Management Science, Volume 2, No. 3 (pp. 200-201), April 1956.

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Modern dynamical systems theory has a relatively short history. It begins with Poincare (of course)... [to whom] a global understanding of the gross behavior of all solutions of the system was more important than the local behavior of particular, analytically-precise solutions.

Robert L. Devaney

History, Understanding, Important

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In the Germany of the l920s, the Weimar Republic, both organismic biology and Gestalt psychology were part of a larger intellectual trend that saw itself as a protest movement against the increasing fragmentation and alienation of human nature. The entire Weimar culture was characterized by an antimechanistic outlook, a "hunger for wholeness". Organismic biology, Gestalt psychology, ecology, and, later on, general systems theory all grew out of this holistic zeitgeist.

Fritjof Capra

Psychology, Intellectual, Culture

"The Web of Life". Book by Fritjof Capra, 1996.

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Before the 1940s the terms "system" and "systems thinking" had been used by several scientists, but it was Bertalanffy's concepts of an open system and a general systems theory that established systems thinking as a major scientific movement

Fritjof Capra

Thinking, Movement, Scientist

Fritjof Capra, Pier Luigi Luisi (2014). “The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision”, p.85, Cambridge University Press

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With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics , the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.

Fritjof Capra

Strong, Thinking, Engineering

Fritjof Capra (1996). “The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems”, Doubleday

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