"[...] there is a universal principle, operating in every department of nature and at every stage of evolution, which is conservative, creative and constructive. [...] I have at last fixed upon the word synergy, as the term best adapted to express its twofold character of ‘energy’ and ‘mutuality’ or the systematic and organic ‘working together’ of the antithetical forces of nature. [...] Synergy is a synthesis of work, or synthetic work, and this is what is everywhere taking place. It may be said to begin with the primary atomic collision in which mass, motion, time, and space are involved, and to find its simplest expression in the formula for force, which implies a plurality of elements, and signifies an interaction of these elements." (Lester F Ward, "Pure Sociology", 1903)
"The true nature of the universal principle of synergy pervading all nature and creating all the different kinds of structure that we observe to exist, must now be made clearer. Primarily and essentially it is a process of equilibration, i.e., the several forces are first brought into a state of partial equilibrium. It begins in collision, conflict, antagonism, and opposition, and then we have the milder phases of antithesis, competition, and interaction, passing next into a modus vivendi, or compromise, and ending in collaboration and cooperation. […] The entire drift is toward economy, conservatism, and the prevention of waste." (James Q Dealey & Lester F Ward, "A Text-book of Sociology", 1905)
"[...] the concept of 'feedback', so simple and natural in certain elementary cases, becomes artificial and of little use when the interconnexions between the parts become more complex. When there are only two parts joined so that each affects the other, the properties of the feedback give important and useful information about the properties of the whole. But when the parts rise to even as few as four, if every one affects the other three, then twenty circuits can be traced through them; and knowing the properties of all the twenty circuits does not give complete information about the system. Such complex systems cannot be treated as an interlaced set of more or less independent feedback circuits, but only as a whole. For understanding the general principles of dynamic systems, therefore, the concept of feedback is inadequate in itself. What is important is that complex systems, richly cross-connected internally, have complex behaviours, and that these behaviours can be goal-seeking in complex patterns." (W Ross Ashby, "An Introduction to Cybernetics", 1956)
"The homeostatic principle does not apply literally to the functioning of all complex living systems, in that in counteracting entropy they move toward growth and expansion." (Daniel Katz, "The Social Psychology of Organizations", 1966)
"Traditional organizational theories have tended to view the human organization as a closed system. This tendency has led to a disregard of differing organizational environments and the nature of organizational dependency on environment. It has led also to an over-concentration on principles of internal organizational functioning, with consequent failure to develop and understand the processes of feedback which are essential to survival." (Daniel Katz, "The Social Psychology of Organizations", 1966)
"Cybernetics, based upon the principle of feedback or circular causal trains providing mechanisms for goal-seeking and self-controlling behavior." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)
"Perhaps the most important single characteristic of modern organizational cybernetics is this: That in addition to concern with the deleterious impacts of rigidly-imposed notions of what constitutes the application of good 'principles of organization and management' the organization is viewed as a subsystem of a larger system(s), and as comprised itself of functionally interdependent subsystems." (Richard F Ericson, "Organizational cybernetics and human values", 1969)
"Open systems, in contrast to closed systems, exhibit a principle of equifinality, that is, a tendency to achieve a final state independent of initial conditions. In other words, open systems tend to 'resist' perturbations that take them away from some steady state. They can exhibit homeostasis." (Anatol Rapaport, "The Uses of Mathematical Isomorphism in General System Theory", 1972)
"[Hierarchy is] the principle according to which entities meaningfully treated as wholes are built up of smaller entities which are themselves wholes […] and so on. In hierarchy, emergent properties denote the levels." (Peter Checkland, "Systems Thinking, Systems Practice", 1981)
"Effect spreads its 'tentacles' not only forwards" (as a new cause giving rise to a new effect) but also backwards, to the cause which gave rise to it, thus modifying, exhausting or intensifying its force. This interaction of cause and effect is known as the principle of feedback. It operates everywhere, particularly in all self-organising systems where perception, storing, processing and use of information take place, as for example, in the organism, in a cybernetic device, and in society. The stability, control and progress of a system are inconceivable without feedback." (Alexander Spirkin, "Dialectical Materialism", 1983)
"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, "The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species", 1984)
"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static 'snapshots'. It is a set of general principles- distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management. [...] During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character." (Peter Senge, "The Fifth Discipline", 1990)
"Systems thinking is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns rather than static snapshots. It is a set of general principles spanning fields as diverse as physical and social sciences, engineering and management." (Peter Senge, "The Fifth Discipline", 1990)
"Evolution is a technological, mathematical, informational, and biological process rolled into one. It could almost be said to be a law of physics, a principle that reigns over all created multitudes, whether they have genes or not." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)
"System engineering is the art and science of creating effective systems, using whole system, whole life principles." (Derek Hitchins, 1995)
"The basic principle of an autocatalytic network is that even though nothing can make itself, everything in the pot has at least one reaction that makes it, involving only other things in the pot. It's a symbiotic system in which everything cooperates to make the metabolism work - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." (J Doyne Farmer, "The Second Law of Organization" [in The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution], 1995)
"Contrary to what happens at equilibrium, or near equilibrium, systems far from equilibrium do not conform to any minimum principle that is valid for functions of free energy or entropy production." (Ilya Prigogine, "The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature", 1996)
"These, then, are some of the basic principles of ecology - interdependence, recycling, partnership, flexibility, diversity, and, as a consequence of all those, sustainability... the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy, on our ability to understand these principles of ecology and live accordingly." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life", 1996)
"[…] swarm intelligence is becoming a valuable tool for optimizing the operations of various businesses. Whether similar gains will be made in helping companies better organize themselves and develop more effective strategies remains to be seen. At the very least, though, the field provides a fresh new framework for solving such problems, and it questions the wisdom of certain assumptions regarding the need for employee supervision through command-and-control management. In the future, some companies could build their entire businesses from the ground up using the principles of swarm intelligence, integrating the approach throughout their operations, organization, and strategy. The result: the ultimate self-organizing enterprise that could adapt quickly - and instinctively - to fast-changing markets." (Eric Bonabeau & Christopher Meyer, "Swarm Intelligence: A Whole New Way to Think About Business", Harvard Business Review, 2001)
"In complexity thinking the darkness principle is covered by the concept of incompressibility [...] The concept of incompressibility suggests that the best representation of a complex system is the system itself and that any representation other than the system itself will necessarily misrepresent certain aspects of the original system." (Kurt Richardson, "Systems theory and complexity: Part 1", Emergence: Complexity & Organization Vol.6" (3), 2004)
"The model theory postulates that mental models are parsimonious. They represent what is possible, but not what is impossible, according to assertions. This principle of parsimony minimizes the load on working memory, and so it applies unless something exceptional occurs to overrule it." (Philip N Johnson-Laird, Mental Models, Sentential Reasoning, and Illusory Inferences, [in "Mental Models and the Mind"], 2006)
"This reduction principle - the reduction of the behavior of a complex system to the behavior of its parts - is valid only if the level of complexity of the system is rather low." (Andrzej P Wierzbicki & Yoshiteru Nakamori, "Creative Space: Models of Creative Processes for the Knowledge Civilization Age", Studies in Computational Intelligence Vol.10, 2006)
"Principle of Equifinality: If a steady state is reached in an open system, it is independent of the initial conditions, and determined only by the system parameters, i.e. rates of reaction and transport." (Kevin Adams & Charles Keating, "Systems of systems engineering", 2012)
"In an information economy, entrepreneurs master the science of information in order to overcome the laws of the purely physical sciences. They can succeed because of the surprising power of the laws of information, which are conducive to human creativity. The central concept of information theory is a measure of freedom of choice. The principle of matter, on the other hand, is not liberty but limitation - it has weight and occupies space." (George Gilder, "Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World", 2013)
"A key discovery of network science is that the architecture of networks emerging in various domains of science, nature, and technology are similar to each other, a consequence of being governed by the same organizing principles. Consequently we can use a common set of mathematical tools to explore these systems. " (Albert-László Barabási, "Network Science", 2016)
"Cybernetics is an interdisciplinary science. It originated ‘at the junction’ of mathematics, logic, semiotics, physiology, biology and sociology. Among its inherent features, we mention analysis and revelation of general principles and approaches in scientific cognition. Control theory, communication theory, operations research and others represent most weighty theories within cybernetics 1.0." (Dmitry A Novikov, "Cybernetics 2.0", 2016)
"The exploding interest in network science during the first decade of the 21st century is rooted in the discovery that despite the obvious diversity of complex systems, the structure and the evolution of the networks behind each system is driven by a common set of fundamental laws and principles. Therefore, notwithstanding the amazing differences in form, size, nature, age, and scope of real networks, most networks are driven by common organizing principles. Once we disregard the nature of the components and the precise nature of the interactions between them, the obtained networks are more similar than different from each other." (Albert-László Barabási, "Network Science", 2016)
