❄️Systems Thinking: On Environment (Quotes)

"By ecology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature - the investigation of the total relations of the animal both to its inorganic and to its organic environment; including, above all, its friendly and inimical relations with those animals and plants with which it comes directly or indirectly into contact - in a word, ecology is the study of all those complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence." (Ernst Häckel, [lecture] 1869)

"Science has two main functions in civilization. One is to give man a picture of the world phenomena, the most accurate and complete picture possible. The other is to provide him with the means of controlling his environment and his destiny." (Julian Huxley, "What Dare I Think?", 1931)

"The change from one stable equilibrium to the other may take place as the result of the isolation of a small unrepresentative group of the population, a temporary change in the environment which alters the relative viability of different types, or in several other ways." (John B S Haldane, "The Causes of Evolution", 1932)

"An isolated system or a system in a uniform environment (which for the present consideration we do best to include as a part of the system we contemplate) increases its entropy and more or less rapidly approaches the inert state of maximum entropy. We now recognize this fundamental law of physics to be just the natural tendency of things to approach the chaotic state (the same tendency that the books of a library or the piles of papers and manuscripts on a writing desk display) unless we obviate it. (The analogue of irregular heat motion, in this case, is our handling those objects now and again without troubling to put them back in their proper places.) (Erwin Schrödinger, "What is Life?", 1944)

"Hence the awkward expression ‘negative entropy’ can be replaced by a better one: entropy, taken with the negative sign, is itself a measure of order. Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness ( = fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment." (Erwin Schrödinger, "What is Life?", 1944)

"Clearly, if the state of the system is coupled to parameters of an environment and the state of the environment is made to modify parameters of the system, a learning process will occur. Such an arrangement will be called a Finite Learning Machine, since it has a definite capacity. It is, of course, an active learning mechanism which trades with its surroundings. Indeed it is the limit case of a self-organizing system which will appear in the network if the currency supply is generalized." (Gordon Pask, "The Natural History of Networks", 1960)

"Every isolated determinate dynamic system, obeying unchanging laws, will ultimately develop some sort of organisms that are adapted to their environments." (W Ross Ashby, "Principles of the self-organizing system", 1962)

"[...] in a state of dynamic equilibrium with their environments. If they do not maintain this equilibrium they die; if they do maintain it they show a degree of spontaneity, variability, and purposiveness of response unknown in the non-living world. This is what is meant by ‘adaptation to environment’ […] [Its] essential feature […] is stability - that is, the ability to withstand disturbances." (Kenneth Craik, 'Living organisms', "The Nature of Psychology", 1966)

"System theory is basically concerned with problems of relationships, of structure, and of interdependence rather than with the constant attributes of objects. In general approach it resembles field theory except that its dynamics deal with temporal as well as spatial patterns. Older formulations of system constructs dealt with the closed systems of the physical sciences, in which relatively self-contained structures could be treated successfully as if they were independent of external forces. But living systems, whether biological organisms or social organizations, are acutely dependent on their external environment and so must be conceived of as open systems." (Daniel Katz, "The Social Psychology of Organizations", 1966)

"The direct task of our cognitive apparatus is the formation of invariants, and namely invariants of perception, thinking and motives. […] Still, in the first place, exactly these invariants are, cybernetically speaking, enabling a stabilization of the relationship between humans and their environment and between humans themselves." (Georg Klaus, "Kybernetik und Erkenntnistheorie" ["Cybernetics and Epistemology"], 1966)

"Conventional physics deals only with closed systems, i.e. systems which are considered to be isolated from their environment. [...] However, we find systems which by their very nature and definition are not closed systems. Every living organism is essentially an open system. It maintains itself in a continuous inflow and outflow, a building up and breaking down of components, never being, so long as it is alive, in a state of chemical and thermodynamic equilibrium but maintained in a so-called steady state which is distinct from the latter." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"System' is the concept that refers both to a complex of interdependencies between parts, components, and processes, that involves discernible regularities of relationships, and to a similar type of interdependency between such a complex and its surrounding environment." (Talcott Parsons, "Systems Analysis: Social Systems", 1968)

"For some years now the activity of the artist in our society has been trending more toward the function of the ecologist: one who deals with environmental relationships. Ecology is defined as the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment. Thus the act of creation for the new artist is not so much the invention of new objects as the revelation of previously unrecognized relation- ships between existing phenomena, both physical and metaphysical. So we find that ecology is art in the most fundamental and pragmatic sense, expanding our apprehension of reality." (Gene Youngblood, "Expanded Cinema", 1970)

"To adapt to a changing environment, the system needs a variety of stable states that is large enough to react to all perturbations but not so large as to make its evolution uncontrollably chaotic. The most adequate states are selected according to their fitness, either directly by the environment, or by subsystems that have adapted to the environment at an earlier stage. Formally, the basic mechanism underlying self-organization is the (often noise-driven) variation which explores different regions in the system’s state space until it enters an attractor. This precludes further variation outside the attractor, and thus restricts the freedom of the system’s components to behave independently. This is equivalent to the increase of coherence, or decrease of statistical entropy, that defines self-organization." (Francis Heylighen, "The Science Of Self-Organization And Adaptivity", 1970)

"The main object of cybernetics is to supply adaptive, hierarchical models, involving feedback and the like, to all aspects of our environment. Often such modelling implies simulation of a system where the simulation should achieve the object of copying both the method of achievement and the end result. Synthesis, as opposed to simulation, is concerned with achieving only the end result and is less concerned (or completely unconcerned) with the method by which the end result is achieved. In the case of behaviour, psychology is concerned with simulation, while cybernetics, although also interested in simulation, is primarily concerned with synthesis." (Frank H George, "Soviet Cybernetics, the militairy and Professor Lerner", New Scientist, 1973)

"For any system the environment is always more complex than the system itself. No system can maintain itself by means of a point-for-point correlation with its environment, i.e., can summon enough 'requisite variety' to match its environment. So each one has to reduce environmental complexity - primarily by restricting the environment itself and perceiving it in a categorically preformed way. On the other hand, the difference of system and environment is a prerequisite for the reduction of complexity because reduction can be performed only within the system, both for the system itself and its environment." (Thomas Luckmann & Niklas Luhmann, "The Differentiation of Society", 1977)

"General systems theory and cybernetics supplanted the classical conceptual model of a whole made out of parts and relations between parts with a model emphasizing the difference between systems and environments. This new paradigm made it possible to relate both the structures (including forms of differentiation) and processes of systems to the environment." (Thomas Luckmann & Niklas Luhmann, "The Differentiation of Society", 1977)

"There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ‘holistic’ views as some sort of cure-all […] Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain [...] there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment." (Francisco Varela, "On being autonomous: The lessons of natural history for systems theory", 1977)

"We argue that in order to deal with the various inertial pressures the adaptation perspective must be supplemented with a selection orientation. We consider first two broad issues that are preliminary to ecological modelling. The first concerns appropriate units of analysis. Typical analyses of the relation of organizations to environments take the point of view of a single organization facing an environment." (Michael T Hannan, "The Population Ecology of Organizations", 1977)

"A threat to any part of the environment is a threat to the whole environment, but we must have a basis of assessment of these threats, not so that we can establish a priority of fears, but so that we can make a positive contribution to improvement and ultimate survival." (Prince Philip, "The Environmental Revolution: Speeches on Conservation, 1962–77", 1978)

"People’s views of the world, of themselves, of their own capabilities, and of the tasks that they are asked to perform, or topics they are asked to learn, depend heavily on the conceptualizations that they bring to the task. In interacting with the environment, with others, and with the artifacts of technology, people form internal, mental models of themselves and of the things with which they are interacting. These models provide predictive and explanatory power for understanding the interaction." (Donald A Norman, "Some observations on Mental Models", 1983)

"Every system of whatever size must maintain its own structure and must deal with a dynamic environment, i.e., the system must strike a proper balance between stability and change. The cybernetic mechanisms for stability (i.e., homeostasis, negative feedback, autopoiesis, equifinality) and change (i.e., positive feedback, algedonodes, self-organization) are found in all viable systems." (Barry Clemson, "Cybernetics: A New Management Tool", 1984)

"Any system that insulates itself from diversity in the environment tends to atrophy and lose its complexity and distinctive nature." (Gareth Morgan, "Images of Organization", 1986)

"The existing literature usually stresses the capacity of organizations to learn about and adapt to uncertain, changing environments. We think this emphasis is misplaced. The most important issues about the applicability of evolutionary-ecological theories to organizations concern the timing of changes. Learning and adjusting structure enhance the chance of survival only if the speed of response is commensurate with the temporal patterns of relevant environments." (Michael T Hannan, "Organizational ecology", 1989)

"When the study of the household (ecology) and the management of the household (economics) can be merged, and when ethics can be extended to include environmental as well as human values, then we can be optimistic about the future of humankind. Accordingly, bringing together these three 'E's' is the ultimate holism and the great challenge for our future." (Eugene Odum," Ecology and our endangered life-support systems", 1993)

"The model of competitive equilibrium which has been discussed so far is set in a timeless environment. People and companies all operate in a world in which there is no future and hence no uncertainty." (Paul Ormerod, "The Death of Economics", 1994)

"In the past several years, social work has increasingly focused on an ecological model. This model integrates both treatment and reform by conceptualizing and emphasizing the dysfunctional transactions between people and their physical and social environments. Human beings are viewed as developing and adapting through transactions with all elements of their environments. An ecological model gives attention to both internal and external factors. It does not view people as passive reactors to their environments but, rather, as being involved in dynamic and reciprocal interactions with them." (Charles Zastrow, "The practice of social work", 1995)

"All systems evolve, although the rates of evolution may vary over time both between and within systems. The rate of evolution is a function of both the inherent stability of the system and changing environmental circumstances. But no system can be stabilized forever. For the universe as a whole, an isolated system, time’s arrow points toward greater and greater breakdown, leading to complete molecular chaos, maximum entropy, and heat death. For open systems, including the living systems that are of major interest to us and that interchange matter and energy with their external environments, time’s arrow points to evolution toward greater and greater complexity. Thus, the universe consists of islands of increasing order in a sea of decreasing order. Open systems evolve and maintain structure by exporting entropy to their external environments." (L Douglas Kiel, "Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences: Foundations and Applications", 1996)

"In a closed system, the change in entropy must always be 'positive', meaning toward death. However, in open biological or social systems, entropy can be arrested and may even be transformed into negative entropy - a process of more complete organization and enhanced ability to transform resources. Why? Because the system imports energy and resources from its environment, leading to renewal. This is why education and learning are so important, as they provide new and stimulating input (termed neg-entropy) that can transform each of us." (Stephen G Haines, "The Managers Pocket Guide to Systems Thinking & Learning", 1998)

"Neural networks conserve the complexity of the systems they model because they have complex structures themselves. Neural networks encode information about their environment in a distributed form. […] Neural networks have the capacity to self-organise their internal structure." (Paul Cilliers, "Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems", 1998)

"All systems have a tendency toward maximum entropy, disorder, and death. Importing resources from the environment is key to long-term viability; closed systems move toward this disorganization faster than open systems." (Stephen G Haines, "The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management", 2000)

"Systems thinking practices the exact opposite of this analytic approach. Systems thinking studies the organization as a whole in its interaction with its environment. Then, it works backwards to understand how each part of that whole works in relation to, and support of, the entire system’s objectives. Only then can the core strategies be formulated." (Stephen G Haines, "The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management", 2000)

"Systems, and organizations as systems, can only be understood holistically. Try to understand the system and its environment first. Organizations are open systems and, as such, are viable only in interaction with and adaptation to the changing environment." (Stephen G Haines, "The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management", 2000)

"The self-reinforcing feedback between expectations and perceptions has been repeatedly demonstrated […]. Sometimes the positive feedback assists learning by sharpening our ability to perceive features of the environment, as when an experienced naturalist identifies a bird in a distant bush where the novice sees only a tangled thicket. Often, however, the mutual feedback of expectations and perception blinds us to the anomalies that might challenge our mental models and lead to deep insight." (John D Sterman, "Business Dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world", 2000)

"Entropy [...] is the amount of disorder or randomness present in any system. All non-living systems tend toward disorder; left alone they will eventually lose all motion and degenerate into an inert mass. When this permanent stage is reached and no events occur, maximum entropy is attained. A living system can, for a finite time, avert this unalterable process by importing energy from its environment. It is then said to create negentropy, something which is characteristic of all kinds of life." (Lars Skyttner, "General Systems Theory: Ideas and Applications", 2001)

"In the definition of meaning, it is assumed that both the source and receiver have previously coded (and stored) signals of the same or similar referents, such that the messages may have meaning and relate to behaviour. That is, the used symbols must have the same signification for both sender and receiver. If not, the receiver will create a different mental picture than intended by the transmitter. Meaning is generated by individuals in a process of social interaction with a more or less common environment. It is a relation subsisting within a field of experience and appears as an emergent property of a symbolic representation when used in culturally accepted interaction. The relation between the symbolic representation and its meaning is random. Of this, however, the mathematical theory has nothing to say. If human links in the chain of communication are missing, of course no questions of meaning will arise." (Lars Skyttner, "General Systems Theory: Ideas and Applications", 2001)

"All living organisms must feed on continual flows of matter and energy: from their environment to stay alive, and all living organisms continually produce waste. However, an ecosystem generates no net waste, one species' waste being another species' food. Thus, matter cycles continually through the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)

"The phenomenon of emergence takes place at critical points of instability that arise from fluctuations in the environment, amplified by feedback loops." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living", 2002)

"Feedback and its big brother, control theory, are such important concepts that it is odd that they usually find no formal place in the education of physicists. On the practical side, experimentalists often need to use feedback. Almost any experiment is subject to the vagaries of environmental perturbations. Usually, one wants to vary a parameter of interest while holding all others constant. How to do this properly is the subject of control theory. More fundamentally, feedback is one of the great ideas developed (mostly) in the last century, with particularly deep consequences for biological systems, and all physicists should have some understanding of such a basic concept." (John Bechhoefer, "Feedback for physicists: A tutorial essay on control", Reviews of Modern Physics Vol. 77, 2005)

"The single most important property of a cybernetic system is that it is controlled by the relationship between endogenous goals and the external environment. [...] In a complex system, overarching goals may be maintained (or attained) by means of an array of hierarchically organized subgoals that may be pursued contemporaneously, cyclically, or seriatim." (Peter Corning, "Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Evolution of Politics", 2005)

"When defining living systems, the term dynamic equilibrium is essential. It does not imply something which is steady or stable. On the contrary, it is a floating state characterized by invisible movements and preparedness for change. To be in dynamic equilibrium is adapting adjustment to balance. Homeostasis stands for the sum of all control functions creating the state of dynamic equilibrium in a healthy organism. It is the ability of the body to maintain a narrow range of internal conditions in spite of environmental changes." (Lars Skyttner, "General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspective, Practice", 2005)

"The living world can be viewed as a biological hierarchy that starts with subcellular particles, and continues up through cells, tissues and organs. Ecology deals with the next three levels: the individual organism, the population (consisting of individuals of the same species) and the community (consisting of a greater or lesser number of species populations). At the level of the organism, ecology deals with how individuals are affected by (and how they affect) their environment. At the level of the population, ecology is concerned with the presence or absence of particular species, their abundance or rarity, and with the trends and fluctuations in their numbers. Community ecology then deals with the composition and organization of ecological communities." (Michael Begon et al, "Ecology: From individuals to ecosystems", 2006)

"How is it that an ant colony can organize itself to carry out the complex tasks of food gathering and nest building and at the same time exhibit an enormous degree of resilience if disrupted and forced to adapt to changing situations? Natural systems are able not only to survive, but also to adapt and become better suited to their environment, in effect optimizing their behavior over time. They seemingly exhibit collective intelligence, or swarm intelligence as it is called, even without the existence of or the direction provided by a central authority." (Michael J North & Charles M Macal, "Managing Business Complexity: Discovering Strategic Solutions with Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation", 2007)

"Systematic usage of the methods of modern control theory to study physical systems is a key feature of a new research area in physics that may be called cybernetical physics. The subject of cybernetical physics is focused on studying physical systems by means of feedback interactions with the environment. Its methodology heavily relies on the design methods developed in cybernetics. However, the approach of cybernetical physics differs from the conventional use of feedback in control applications (e.g., robotics, mechatronics) aimed mainly at driving a system to a prespecified position or a given trajectory." (Alexander L Fradkov, "Cybernetical Physics: From Control of Chaos to Quantum Control", 2007)

"In physical, exponentially growing systems, there must be at least one reinforcing loop driving growth and at least one balancing feedback loop constraining growth, because no system can grow forever in a finite environment." (Donella H Meadows, "Thinking in Systems: A Primer", 2008)

"Two systems concepts lie at the disposal of the architect to reflect the beauty of harmony: parsimony and variety. The law of parsimony states that given several explanations of a specific phenomenon, the simplest is probably the best. […] On the other hand, the law of requisite variety states that for a system to survive in its environment the variety of choice that the system is able to make must equal or exceed the variety of influences that the environment can impose on the system." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"In that sense, a self-organizing system is intrinsically adaptive: it maintains its basic organization in spite of continuing changes in its environment. As noted, perturbations may even make the system more robust, by helping it to discover a more stable organization." (Francis Heylighen, "Complexity and Self-Organization", 2008)

"An artificial neural network, often just called a 'neural network' (NN), is an interconnected group of artificial neurons that uses a mathematical model or computational model for information processing based on a connectionist approach to computation. Knowledge is acquired by the network from its environment through a learning process, and interneuron connection strengths (synaptic weighs) are used to store the acquired knowledge." (Larbi Esmahi et al, "Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Systems", 2009)

"If universality is one of the observed characteristics of complex dynamical systems in many fields of study, a second characteristic that flows from the study of these systems is that of emergence. As self-organizing systems go about their daily business, they are constantly exchanging matter and energy with their environment, and this allows them to remain in a state that is far from equilibrium. That allows spontaneous behavior to give rise to new patterns." (Terry Cooke-Davies et al, "Exploring the Complexity of Projects", 2009)

"Internal friction is exacerbated by the fact that in business as in war, we are operating in a nonlinear, semi-chaotic environment in which our endeavors will collide and possibly clash with the actions of other independent wills (customers, suppliers, competitors, regulators, lobbyists, and so on). The internal and external worlds are in constant contact and the effects of our actions are the result of their reciprocal interaction. Friction gives rise to three gaps: the knowledge gap, the alignment gap, and the effects gap. To execute effectively, we must address all three. Our instinctive reaction to the three gaps is to demand more detail. We gather more data in order to craft more detailed plans, issue more detailed instructions, and exercise more detailed control. This not only fails to solve the problem, it usually makes it worse. We need to think about the problem differently and adopt a systemic approach to solving it." (Stephen Bungay, "The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions, and Results", 2010)

"It is hard to navigate across one’s environment without having some ideas, however coarse, about it. Indeed, to face any situation we must know whether it is real or imaginary, profane or sacred, sensitive or insensitive to our actions, and so on. This is why even lowly organisms develop, if not worldviews, at least rough sensory maps of their immediate environment – as noted by ethologists from the start. But it is generally assumed that only humans can build conceptual models of their environments. And, except for some philosophers, humans distinguish maps from the territories they represent." (Mario Bunge, "Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry", 2010)

"Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else - from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Shallow ecology is anthropocentric, or human-centered. It views humans as above or outside of nature, as the source of all value, and ascribes only instrumental, or ‘use’, value to nature. Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"To remedy chaotic situations requires a chaotic approach, one that is non-linear, constantly morphing, and continually sharpening its competitive edge with recurring feedback loops that build upon past experiences and lessons learned. Improvement cannot be sustained without reflection. Chaos arises from myriad sources that stem from two origins: internal chaos rising within you, and external chaos being imposed upon you by the environment. The result of this push/pull effect is the disequilibrium [...]." (Jeff Boss, "Navigating Chaos: How to Find Certainty in Uncertain Situations", 2015)

❄️Systems Thinking: On Systems Thinking (Quotes)

"Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objective of tektology is basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all the other sciences and of all the human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method, that is, it is interested only in the modes of organization of this subject matter." (Alexander Bogdanov, "Tektologia: Vseobshchaya Organizatsionnaya Nauka" ["Tektology: The Universal Organizational Science"], 1922)

"Creative evolution synthesises from the parts a new entity not only different from them, but quite transcending them. That is the essence of a whole. It is always transcendent to its parts, and its character cannot be inferred from the characters of its parts." (Jan Smuts, "Holism and Evolution", 1926)

"[Holism is] the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution […]" (Jan Smuts, "Holism and Evolution", 1926)

"An ecological approach to public administration builds, then, quite literally from the ground up; from the elements of a place - soils, climate, location, for example - to the people who live there - their numbers and ages and knowledge, and the ways of physical and social technology by which from the place and in relationships with one another, they get their living. It is within this setting that their instruments and practices of public housekeeping should be studied so that they may better understand what they are doing, and appraise reasonably how they are doing it. Such an approach is of particular interest to us as students seeking to co-operate in our studies; for it invites - indeed is dependent upon - careful observation by many people in different environments of the roots of government functions, civic attitudes, and operating problems." (John Merriman Gaus, "Reflections on public administration", 1947)

"A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968)

"The parallelism of general conceptions or even special laws in different fields therefore is a consequence of the fact that these are concerned with 'systems' and that certain general principles apply to systems irrespective of their nature. Hence principles such as those of wholeness and sum, mechanization, hierarchic order, approached to steady states, equifinality, etc., may appear in quite different disciplines. The isomorphism found in different realms is based of the existence of general system principles, of a more or less well-developed ‘general system theory’." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"We may state as characteristic of modern science that this scheme of isolable units acting in one-way causality has proven to be insufficient. Hence the appearance, in all fields of science, of notions like wholeness, holistic, organismic, gestalt, etc., which all signify that, in the last resort, we must think in terms of systems of elements in mutual interaction […]." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"In the selection of papers for this volume, two problems have arisen, namely what constitutes systems thinking and what systems thinking is relevant to the thinking required for organizational management. The first problem is obviously critical. Unless there were a meaningful answer there would be no sense in producing a volume of readings in systems thinking in any subject. A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking." (Frederick E Emery (ed.),"Systems thinking: selected readings", 1969)

"There are different levels of organization in the occurrence of events. You cannot explain the events of one level in terms of the events of another. For example, you cannot explain life in terms of mechanical concepts, nor society in terms of individual psychology. Analysis can only take you down the scale of organization. It cannot reveal the workings of things on a higher level. To some extent the holistic philosophers are right." (Anatol Rapoport, "General Systems" Vol. 14, 1969) 

"The systems approach to problems focuses on systems taken as a whole, not on their parts taken separately. Such an approach is concerned with total - system performance even when a change in only one or a few of its parts is contemplated because there are some properties of systems that can only be treated adequately from a holistic point of view. These properties derive from the relationship between parts of systems: how the parts interact and fit together." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a System of Systems Concepts", 1971)

"Early scientific thinking was holistic, but speculative - the modern scientific temper reacted by being empirical, but atomistic. Neither is free from error, the former because it replaces factual inquiry with faith and insight, and the latter because it sacrifices coherence at the altar of facticity. We witness today another shift in ways of thinking: the shift toward rigorous but holistic theories. This means thinking in terms of facts and events in the context of wholes, forming integrated sets with their own properties and relationships."(Ervin László, "Introduction to Systems Philosophy", 1972) 

“The notion of ‘system’ has gained central importance in contemporary science, society and life. In many fields of endeavor, the necessity of a ‘systems approach’ or ‘systems thinking’ is emphasized, new professions called ‘systems engineering’, ‘systems analysis’ and the like have come into being, and there can be little doubt that this this concept marks a genuine, necessary, and consequential development in science and world-view.” (Ervin László, “Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought”, 1972)

"A company is a multidimensional system capable of growth, expansion, and self-regulation. It is, therefore, not a thing but a set of interacting forces. Any theory of organization must be capable of reflecting a company's many facets, its dynamism, and its basic orderliness. When company organization is reviewed, or when reorganizing a company, it must be looked upon as a whole, as a total system." (Albert Low, "Zen and Creative Management", 1976)

"There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ‘holistic’ views as some sort of cure-all […] Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain [...] there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment." (Francisco Varela, "On being autonomous: The lessons of natural history for systems theory", 1977)

"Holism traditionally says that a collection of beings may have a collective property that cannot be inferred from the properties of its members." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach and Its Enemies" , 1979) 

"Systems thinking is a special form of holistic thinking - dealing with wholes rather than parts. One way of thinking about this is in terms of a hierarchy of levels of biological organization and of the different 'emergent' properties that are evident in say, the whole plant (e.g. wilting) that are not evident at the level of the cell (loss of turgor). It is also possible to bring different perspectives to bear on these different levels of organization. Holistic thinking starts by looking at the nature and behaviour of the whole system that those participating have agreed to be worthy of study. This involves: (i) taking multiple partial views of 'reality' […] (ii) placing conceptual boundaries around the whole, or system of interest and (iii) devising ways of representing systems of interest." (C J Pearson and R L Ison, "Agronomy of Grassland Systems", 1987)

"Systems thinking is a framework of thought that helps us to deal with complex things in a holistic way. The formalization of (giving an explicit, definite, and conventional form to) this thinking is what we have termed systems theory." (Robert L Flood & Ewart R Carson, "Dealing with Complexity: An introduction to the theory and application of systems", 1988)

"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change. That is, by seeing wholes we learn how to foster health. To do so, systems thinking offers a language that begins by restructuring how we think." (Peter Senge, "The Fifth Discipline", 1990)

"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) 

"Systems philosophy brings forth a reorganization of ways of thinking. It creates a new worldview, a new paradigm of perception and explanation, which is manifested in integration, holistic thinking, purpose-seeking, mutual causality, and process-focused inquiry.” (Béla H. Bánáthy, "Systems Design of Education”, 1991)

"The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term 'ecological' is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature." (Fritjof Capra & Gunter A Pauli, "Steering business toward sustainability", 1995)

"In the new systems thinking, the metaphor of knowledge as a building is being replaced by that of the network. As we perceive reality as a network of relationships, our descriptions, too, form an interconnected network of concepts and models in which there are no foundations. For most scientists such a view of knowledge as a network with no firm foundations is extremely unsettling, and today it is by no means generally accepted. But as the network approach expands throughout the scientific community, the idea of knowledge as a network will undoubtedly find increasing acceptance." (Fritjof Capra," The Web of Life: a new scientific understanding of living systems", 1996)

"It [system dynamics] focuses on building system dynamics models with teams in order to enhance team learning, to foster consensus and to create commitment with a resulting decision […] System dynamics can be helpful to elicit and integrate mental models into a more holistic view of the problem and to explore the dynamics of this holistic view […] It must be understood that the ultimate goal of the intervention is not to build a system dynamics model. The system dynamics model is a means to achieve other ends […] putting people in a position to learn about a messy problem [...] create a shared social reality […] a shared understanding of the problem and potential solutions [...] to foster consensus within the team [..]" (Jac A M Vennix, "Group Model Building: Facilitating Team Learning Using System Dynamics", 1996)

"Understanding ecological interdependence means understanding relationships. It requires the shifts of perception that are characteristic of systems thinking - from the parts to the whole, from objects to relationships, from contents to patterns. […] Nourishing the community means nourishing those relationships." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems", 1996)

"One of the strongest benefits of the systems thinking perspective is that it can help you learn to ask the right questions. This is an important first step toward understanding a problem. […] Much of the value of systems thinking comes from the different framework that it gives us for looking at problems in new ways." (Virginia Anderson & Lauren Johnson, "Systems Thinking Basics: From Concepts to Causal Loops", 1997)

"Systems thinking is most effective when it’s used to look at a problem in a new way, not to advocate a predetermined solution. Strong advocacy will create resistance - both to your ideas, and to systems thinking itself. Present systems thinking in the spirit of inquiry, not inquisition." (Virginia Anderson & Lauren Johnson, "Systems Thinking Basics: From Concepts to Causal Loops", 1997)

"[Systems thinking is] A new way to view and mentally frame what we see in the world; a worldview and way of thinking whereby we see the entity or unit first as a whole, with its fit and relationship to its environment as primary concerns." (Stephen G Haines, "The Managers Pocket Guide to Systems Thinking & Learning", 1998)

"The beauty of this [systems thinking] mindset is that its mental models are based on natural laws, principles of interrelationship, and interdependence found in all living systems. They give us a new view of ourselves and our many systems, from the tiniest cell to the entire earth; and as our organizations are included in that great range, they help us define organizational problems as systems problems, so we can respond in more productive ways. The systems thinking mindset is a new orientation to life. In many ways it also operates as a worldview - an overall perspective on, and understanding of, the world." (Stephen G Haines, "The Managers Pocket Guide to Systems Thinking & Learning", 1998)

"The Systems Thinking Approach is an absolute necessity to make sense of and succeed in today’s complex world." (Stephen G Haines, 1998)

 "[...] information feedback about the real world not only alters our decisions within the context of existing frames and decision rules but also feeds back to alter our mental models. As our mental models change we change the structure of our systems, creating different decision rules and new strategies. The same information, processed and interpreted by a different decision rule, now yields a different decision. Altering the structure of our systems then alters their patterns of behavior. The development of systems thinking is a double-loop learning process in which we replace a reductionist, narrow, short-run, static view of the world with a holistic, broad, long-term, dynamic view and then redesign our policies and institutions accordingly." (John D Sterman, "Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world", 2000)

"Systems thinking practices the exact opposite of this analytic approach. Systems thinking studies the organization as a whole in its interaction with its environment. Then, it works backwards to understand how each part of that whole works in relation to, and support of, the entire system’s objectives. Only then can the core strategies be formulated. (Stephen G Haines, "The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management", 2000)

"Systems, and organizations as systems, can only be understood holistically. Try to understand the system and its environment first. Organizations are open systems and, as such, are viable only in interaction with and adaptation to the changing environment." (Stephen G Haines, "The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management", 2000)

"As a meta-discipline, systems science will transfer its content from discipline to discipline and address problems beyond conventional reductionist boundaries. Generalists, qualified to manage today’s problem better than the specialist, could be fostered. With these intentions, systems thinking and systems science should not replace but add, complement and integrate those aspects that seem not to be adequately treated by traditional science." (Lars Skyttner, "General Systems Theory: Ideas and Applications", 2001)

"Systems thinking expands the focus of the observer, whereas analytical thinking reduces it. In other words, analysis looks into things, synthesis looks out of them. This attitude of systems thinking is often called expansionism, an alternative to classic reductionism. Whereas analytical thinking concentrates on static and structural properties, systems thinking concentrates on the function and behaviour of whole systems. Analysis gives description and knowledge; systems thinking gives explanation and understanding." (Lars Skyttner, "General Systems Theory: Ideas and Applications", 2001)

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Deep change in mental models, or double-loop learning, arises when evidence not only alters our decisions within the context of existing frames, but also feeds back to alter our mental models. As our mental models change, we change the structure of our systems, creating different decision rules and new strategies. The same information, interpreted by a different model, now yields a different decision. Systems thinking is an iterative learning process in which we replace a reductionist, narrow, short-run, static view of the world with a holistic, broad, long-term, dynamic view, reinventing our policies and institutions accordingly." (John D Sterman, "Learning in and about complex systems", Systems Thinking Vol. 3 2003)

"There exists an alternative to reductionism for studying systems. This alternative is known as holism. Holism considers systems to be more than the sum of their parts. It is of course interested in the parts and particularly the networks of relationships between the parts, but primarily in terms of how they give rise to and sustain in existence the new entity that is the whole whether it be a river system, an automobile, a philosophical system or a quality system." (Michael C Jackson, "Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Manager", 2003) 

"System Thinking is a common concept for understanding how causal relationships and feedbacks work in an everyday problem. Understanding a cause and an effect enables us to analyse, sort out and explain how changes come about both temporarily and spatially in common problems. This is referred to as mental modelling, i.e. to explicitly map the understanding of the problem and making it transparent and visible for others through Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD)." (Hördur V. Haraldsson, "Introduction to System Thinking and Causal Loop Diagrams", 2004)

"Systems thinking is only an epistemology, a particular way of describing the world. It does not tell us what the world is. Hence, strictly speaking, we should never say of something in the world: ‘It is a system’, only: ‘It may be described as a system.’" (John Mingers, Realising" Systems Thinking: Knowledge and Action in Management Science", 2006)

"At a time when the world is more messy, more crowded, more interconnected, more interdependent, and more rapidly changing than ever before, the more ways of seeing, the better. The systems-thinking lens allows us to reclaim our intuition about whole systems and hone our abilities to understand parts, see interconnections, ask 'what-if' questions about possible future behaviors, and be creative and courageous about system redesign. (Donella H Meadows, "Thinking in Systems: A Primer", 2008)

"In ecology, we are often interested in exploring the behavior of whole systems of species or ecosystem composed of individual components which interact through biological processes. We are interested not simply in the dynamics of each species or component in isolation, but the dynamics of each species or component in the context of all the others and how those coupled dynamics account for properties of the system as a whole, such as its persistence. This is what people seem to mean when they say that ecology is ‘holistic’, an otherwise rather vague term." (John Pastor, "Mathematical Ecology of Populations and Ecosystems", 2008)

"Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2008) 

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" , 2008)

"Understanding interdependency requires a way of thinking different from analysis. It requires systems thinking. And analytical thinking and systems thinking are quite distinct. [...] Systems thinking is the art of simplifying complexity. It is about seeing through chaos, managing interdependency, and understanding choice. We see the world as increasingly more complex and chaotic because we use inadequate concepts to explain it. When we understand something, we no longer see it as chaotic or complex." (Jamshid Gharajedaghi, "Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity A Platform for Designing Business Architecture", 2011)

"Systems thinking is a discipline or process that considers how individual elements interact with one another as part of a whole entity. As an approach to solving problems, systems thinking uses relationships among individual elements and the dynamics of these relationships to explain the behavior of systems such as an ecosystem, social system, or organization." (Karen L Higgins, "Economic Growth and Sustainability: Systems Thinking for a Complex World", 2015)

"Holism [is] the art - in contrast with reductionism - of seeing a complex system as a whole. Holism knows the limits to its understanding; it acknowledges that the system has its wildness, its privacy, its own reasons, its defenses against invasive explanation." (David Fleming, "Lean Logic", 2016)

"Systems thinking focuses on optimizing for the whole, looking at the overall flow of work, identifying what the largest bottleneck is today, and eliminating it." (Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais, "Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow", 2019)

❄️Systems Thinking: On Networks (Quotes)

"Any pattern of activity in a network, regarded as consistent by some observer, is a system, Certain groups of observers, who share a common body of knowledge, and subscribe to a particular discipline, like 'physics' or 'biology' (in terms of which they pose hypotheses about the network), will pick out substantially the same systems. On the other hand, observers belonging to different groups will not agree about the activity which is a system." (Gordon Pask, "The Natural History of Networks", 1960)

"I am using the term 'network' in a general sense, to imply any set of interconnected and measurably active physical entities. Naturally occurring networks, of interest because they have a, self-organizing character, are, for example, a marsh, a colony of microorganisms, a research team, and a man." (Gordon Pask, "The Natural History of Networks", 1960)

"In a network, one can plot the figures on a plane which has no meaning, and then look for the arrangement which produces the minimum number of intersections, or the simplest figure. After this transformation, the graphic will yield maximum efficiency, based on the discovery of a meaningful order expressed by the plane." (Jacques Bertin, "Semiology of graphics", 1967)

"To analyse graphic representation precisely, it is helpful to distinguish it from musical, verbal and mathematical notations, all of which are perceived in a linear or temporal sequence. The graphic image also differs from figurative representation essentially polysemic, and from the animated image, governed by the laws of cinematographic time. Within the boundaries of graphics fall the fields of networks, diagrams and maps. The domain of graphic imagery ranges from the depiction of atomic structures to the representation of galaxies and extends into the spheres of topography and cartography."  (Jacques Bertin, "Semiology of graphics", 1967)

"Nature is a network of happenings that do not unroll like a red carpet into time, but are intertwined between every part of the world; and we are among those parts. In this nexus, we cannot reach certainty because it is not there to be reached; it goes with the wrong model, and the certain answers ironically are the wrong answers. Certainty is a demand that is made by philosophers who contemplate the world from outside; and scientific knowledge is knowledge for action, not contemplation. There is no God’s eye view of nature, in relativity, or in any science: only a man’s eye view." (Jacob Bronowski, "The Identity of Man", 1972)

"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limit. […] In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits." (John C Lilly, "The Human Biocomputer", 1974)

"As with any graphic, networks are used in order to discover pertinent troups of to inform others of the groups and structures discovered. It is a good means of displaying structures, However, it ceases to be a means of discovery when the elements are numerous. The figure rapidly becomes complex, illegible and untransformable." (Jacques Bertin, "Graphics and graphic information processing", 1977)

"An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components that: (a) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produce them and, (b) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network." (Francisco Varela, "Principles of Biological Autonomy", 1979)

"Information is recorded in vast interconnecting networks. Each idea or image has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of associations and is connected to numerous other points in the mental network." (Peter Russell, "The Brain Book: Know Your Own Mind and How to Use it", 1979)

"A schema, then is a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory. There are schemata representing our knowledge about all concepts; those underlying objects, situations, events, sequences of events, actions and sequences of actions. A schema contains, as part of its specification, the network of interrelations that is believed to normally hold among the constituents of the concept in question. A schema theory embodies a prototype theory of meaning. That is, inasmuch as a schema underlying a concept stored in memory corresponds to the meaning of that concept, meanings are encoded in terms of the typical or normal situations or events that instantiate that concept." (David E Rumelhart, "Schemata: The building blocks of cognition", 1980)

"The traditional boundaries between various fields of science are rapidly disappearing and what is more important science does not know any national borders. The scientists of the world are forming an invisible network with a very free flow of scientific information - a freedom accepted by the countries of the world irrespective of political systems or religions. […] Great care must be taken that the scientific network is utilized only for scientific purposes - if it gets involved in political questions it loses its special status and utility as a nonpolitical force for development." (Sune K. Bergström, [speech] 1982) 

"We define a semantic network as 'the collection of all the relationships that concepts have to other concepts, to percepts, to procedures, and to motor mechanisms' of the knowledge." (John F Sowa, "Conceptual Structures", 1984)

"Cybernetics, although not ignoring formal networks, suggests that an informal communications structure will also be present such that complex conversations at a number of levels between two or more individuals exist." (Robert L Flood, "Dealing with Complexity", 1988) 

"When loops are present, the network is no longer singly connected and local propagation schemes will invariably run into trouble. [...] If we ignore the existence of loops and permit the nodes to continue communicating with each other as if the network were singly connected, messages may circulate indefinitely around the loops and process may not converges to a stable equilibrium. […] Such oscillations do not normally occur in probabilistic networks […] which tend to bring all messages to some stable equilibrium as time goes on. However, this asymptotic equilibrium is not coherent, in the sense that it does not represent the posterior probabilities of all nodes of the network." (Judea Pearl, "Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference", 1988)

"A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least." (Jacques Barzun, "The Culture We Deserve", 1989)

"Metaphor plays an essential role in establishing a link between scientific language and the world. Those links are not, however, given once and for all. Theory change, in particular, is accompanied by a change in some of the relevant metaphors and in the corresponding parts of the network of similarities through which terms attach to nature." (Thomas S Kuhn, "Metaphor in science", 1993)

"What is a system? A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment." (William E Deming, "The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education”, 1993)

"Mathematics says the sum value of a network increases as the square of the number of members. In other words, as the number of nodes in a network increases arithmetically, the value of the network increases exponentially. Adding a few more members can dramatically increase the value of the network." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 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)

"The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or unguided learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"The multiplier effect is a major feature of networks and flows. It arises regardless of the particular nature of the resource, be it goods, money, or messages." (John H Holland, "Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity", 1995)

"There are a variety of swarm topologies, but the only organization that holds a genuine plurality of shapes is the grand mesh. In fact, a plurality of truly divergent components can only remain coherent in a network. No other arrangement-chain, pyramid, tree, circle, hub-can contain true diversity working as a whole. This is why the network is nearly synonymous with democracy or the market." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"In the new systems thinking, the metaphor of knowledge as a building is being replaced by that of the network. As we perceive reality as a network of relationships, our descriptions, too, form an interconnected network of concepts and models in which there are no foundations. For most scientists such a view of knowledge as a network with no firm foundations is extremely unsettling, and today it is by no means generally accepted. But as the network approach expands throughout the scientific community, the idea of knowledge as a network will undoubtedly find increasing acceptance." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A new scientific understanding of living systems", 1996)

"Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture. While the networking form of social organization has existed in other times and spaces, the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure." (Manuel Castells, "The Rise of the Network Society", 1996)

"The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems", 1996)

"There is a multilayering of global networks in the key strategic activities that structure and destructure the planet. When these multilayered networks overlap in some node, when there is a node that belongs to different networks, two major consequences follow. First, economies of synergy between these different networks take place in that node: between financial markets and media businesses; or between academic research and technology development and innovation; between politics and media." (Manuel Castells, "The Rise of the Network Society", 1996) 

"When the knowledge base of an industry is both complex and expanding and the sources of expertise are widely dispersed, the locus of innovation will be found in networks of learning, rather than in individual firms." (Walter W. Powell et al, "Interorganizational collaboration and the locus of innovation: Networks of learning in biotechnology", Administrative science quarterly, 1996)

"A standalone object, no matter how well designed, has limited potential for new weirdness. A connected object, one that is a node in a network that interacts in some way with other nodes, can give birth to a hundred unique relationships that it never could do while unconnected. Out of this tangle of possible links come myriad new niches for innovations and interactions." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"Any network has two ingredients: nodes and connections. In the grand network we are now assembling, the size of the nodes is collapsing while the quantity and quality of the connections are exploding." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"Mathematics says the sum value of a network increases as the square of the number of members. In other words, as the number of nodes in a network increases arithmetically, the value of the network increases exponentially. Adding a few more members can dramatically increase the value for all members." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"Networks have existed in every economy. What’s different now is that networks, enhanced and multiplied by technology, penetrate our lives so deeply that 'network' has become the central metaphor around which our thinking and our economy are organized. Unless we can understand the distinctive logic of networks, we can’t profit from the economic transformation now under way." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"The combinatorial mathematics of networks also boost the opportunities for intermediaries. By definition, every node on a network is a node between other nodes. The more connections there are between members in a net, the more intermediary nodes there can be. Everything in a network is intermediating something else." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"The distinguishing characteristic of networks is that they contain no clear center and no clear outside boundaries. Within a network everything is potentially equidistant from everything else." (Kevin Kelly, "New Rules for the New Economy: 10 radical strategies for a connected world", 1998)

"The notion of system we are interested in may be described generally as a complex of elements or components directly or indirectly related in a network of interrelationships of various kinds, such that it constitutes a dynamic whole with emergent properties." (Walter F. Buckley, "Society: A Complex Adaptive System - Essays in Social Theory", 1998)

"Networks [...] are usually distinguished from graphs by virtue of the special weightings placed upon either links or nodes or both. Weighted links indicate the strength of the relationship, and signs, when they exist, indicate a direction in a manner similar to directed graphs. Weighted nodes indicate that an entity is measured by some attribute relevant to the study under investigation." (D A Seeley, "Network evolution and the emergence of structure", 2000)

"Remember a networked learning machine’s most basic rule: strengthen the connections to those who succeed, weaken them to those who fail." (Howard Bloom, "Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century", 2000)

"The ability of causal networks to predict the effects of actions requires of course a stronger set of assumptions in the construction of those networks, assumptions that rest on causal (not merely associational) knowledge and that ensure the system would respond to interventions in accordance with the principle of autonomy." (Judea Pearl, "Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference", 2000)

"[…] most earlier attempts to construct a theory of complexity have overlooked the deep link between it and networks. In most systems, complexity starts where networks turn nontrivial." (Albert-László Barabási, "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life", 2002)

"[…] networks are the prerequisite for describing any complex system, indicating that complexity theory must inevitably stand on the shoulders of network theory. It is tempting to step in the footsteps of some of my predecessors and predict whether and when we will tame complexity. If nothing else, such a prediction could serve as a benchmark to be disproven. Looking back at the speed with which we disentangled the networks around us after the discovery of scale-free networks, one thing is sure: Once we stumble across the right vision of complexity, it will take little to bring it to fruition. When that will happen is one of the mysteries that keeps many of us going." (Albert-László Barabási, "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life", 2002)

"Networks do not offer a miracle drug, a strategy that makes you invincible in any business environment. The truly important role networks play is in helping existing organizations adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. The very concept of network implies a multidimensional approach." (Albert-László Barabási, "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life", 2002)

"One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living", 2002)

"The diversity of networks in business and the economy is mindboggling. There are policy networks, ownership networks, collaboration networks, organizational networks, network marketing-you name it. It would be impossible to integrate these diverse interactions into a single all-encompassing web. Yet no matter what organizational level we look at, the same robust and universal laws that govern nature's webs seem to greet us. The challenge is for economic and network research alike to put these laws into practice."  (Albert-László Barabási, "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life", 2002)

"At an anatomical level - the level of pure, abstract connectivity - we seem to have stumbled upon a universal pattern of complexity. Disparate networks show the same three tendencies: short chains, high clustering, and scale-free link distributions. The coincidences are eerie, and baffling to interpret." (Steven Strogatz, "Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order", 2003)

"Average path length reflects the global structure; it depends on the way the entire network is connected, and cannot be inferred from any local measurement. Clustering reflects the local structure; it depends only on the interconnectedness of a typical neighborhood, the inbreeding among nodes tied to a common center. Roughly speaking, path length measures how big the network is. Clustering measures how incestuous it is." (Steven Strogatz, "Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order", 2003)

"The networked world continuously refines, reinvents, and reinterprets knowledge, often in an autonomic manner." (Donald M Morris et al, "A revolution in knowledge sharing", 2003)

"The inner mysteries of quantum mechanics require a willingness to extend one’s mental processes into a strange world of phantom possibilities, endlessly branching into more and more abstruse chains of coupled logical networks, endlessly extending themselves forward and even backwards in time." (John C Ward, "Memoirs of a Theoretical Physicist", 2004) 

"Powerfully positioned middlemen extract value by interrupting or distorting information." (Jason Owen-Smith & Walter W Powell,"Knowledge networks as channels and conduits: The effects of spillovers in the Boston biotechnology community", Organization Science 15.1, 2004)

"If a network is solely composed of neighborhood connections, information must traverse a large number of connections to get from place to place. In a small-world network, however, information can be transmitted between any two nodes using, typically, only a small number of connections. In fact, just a small percentage of random, long-distance connections is required to induce such connectivity. This type of network behavior allows the generation of 'six degrees of separation' type results, whereby any agent can connect to any other agent in the system via a path consisting of only a few intermediate nodes." (John H Miller & Scott E Page, "Complex Adaptive Systems", 2007)

"Networks may also be important in terms of view. Many models assume that agents are bunched together on the head of a pin, whereas the reality is that most agents exist within a topology of connections to other agents, and such connections may have an important influence on behavior. […] Models that ignore networks, that is, that assume all activity takes place on the head of a pin, can easily suppress some of the most interesting aspects of the world around us. In a pinhead world, there is no segregation, and majority rule leads to complete conformity - outcomes that, while easy to derive, are of little use." (John H Miller & Scott E Page, "Complex Adaptive Systems", 2007)

"The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world - the hardware - plays the role of a gigantic computer." (Paul C W Davies, "Laying Down the Laws", New Scientist, 2007)

"Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of its constituent groups. The aggregate relations among individuals and groups, among individuals within groups, and among groups forms a network of astonishing complexity." (Clay Shirky, "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations", 2008)

"If a network has violently changing properties, it is most probably not very stable. How can we measure stability, if a network remains unchanged? The assessment of stability often requires a test, and this test comes in the form of a perturbation to the network. A stable network should try to restore its original status after a perturbation. However, this is not easy. Most networks are open systems and therefore undergo a continuous series of perturbations." (Péter Csermely, "Weak Links: The Universal Key to the Stabilityof Networks and Complex Systems", 2009)

"In the network society, the space of flows dissolves time by disordering the sequence of events and making them simultaneous in the communication networks, thus installing society in structural ephemerality: being cancels becoming." (Manuel Castells, "Communication Power", 2009)

"Network stability may be a key element in the development of multilevel, nested networks. The formation of nested networks obviously requires at least a few contacts between the bottom networks. However, evolutionary selection requires the independence and at least temporary isolation of the bottom networks themselves. Weak links are probably the only tools for solving this apparent paradox." (Péter Csermely, "Weak Links: The Universal Key to the Stabilityof Networks and Complex Systems", 2009)

"In the telephone system a century ago, messages dispersed across the network in a pattern that mathematicians associate with randomness. But in the last decade, the flow of bits has become statistically more similar to the patterns found in self-organized systems. For one thing, the global network exhibits self-similarity, also known as a fractal pattern. We see this kind of fractal pattern in the way the jagged outline of tree branches look similar no matter whether we look at them up close or far away. Today messages disperse through the global telecommunications system in the fractal pattern of self-organization." (Kevin Kelly, "What Technology Wants", 2010)

"We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information, organically whole and self-referential at all scales of its existence. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time." (Ervin László,"Cosmos: A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole-World", 2010)

"The people we get along with, trust, feel simpatico with, are the strongest links in our networks." (Daniel Goleman, "Working With Emotional Intelligence", 2011) 

"Cybernetics is the study of systems which can be mapped using loops (or more complicated looping structures) in the network defining the flow of information. Systems of automatic control will of necessity use at least one loop of information flow providing feedback." (Alan Scrivener, "A Curriculum for Cybernetics and Systems Theory", 2012)

"If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won't succeed. We can't pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships." (Adam Grant, "Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success", 2013) 

"Information is recorded in vast interconnecting networks. Each idea or image has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of associations and is connected to numerous other points in the mental network." (Peter Russell, "The Brain Book: Know Your Own Mind and How to Use it", 2013) 

"All living systems are networks of smaller components, and the web of life as a whole is a multilayered structure of living systems nesting within other living systems - networks within networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"All the variables we can observe in an ecosystem-population densities, availability of nutrients, weather patterns, and so forth-always fluctuate. This is how ecosystems maintain themselves in a flexible state, ready to adapt to changing conditions. The web of life is a flexible, ever-fluctuating network. The more variables are kept fluctuating, the more dynamic is the system; the greater is its flexibility; and the greater is its ability to adapt to changing conditions." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"In other words, the web of life consists of networks within networks. At each scale, under closer scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arange these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid fashion. But this is a human projection. In nature there is no 'above' or 'below', and there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"A worldview consists of observations of the individual and other people with respect to the self, time and space, the natural and the supernatural and the sacred and profane. […] Beliefs about the world do not reside in the human mind in chaotic disorder; rather they form a latent system. A worldview cannot, however, be viewed as a well-organised network of cognitive models or a static collection of values; instead it should be regarded as the product of a process shaped by historical, cultural and social perspectives and contexts." (Helena Helve, "A longitudinal perspective on worldviews, values and identities", 2016)

"Although cascading failures may appear random and unpredictable, they follow reproducible laws that can be quantified and even predicted using the tools of network science. First, to avoid damaging cascades, we must understand the structure of the network on which the cascade propagates. Second, we must be able to model the dynamical processes taking place on these networks, like the flow of electricity. Finally, we need to uncover how the interplay between the network structure and dynamics affects the robustness of the whole system." (Albert-László Barabási, "Network Science", 2016)

"Some paths to superintelligence require great resources and are therefore likely to be the preserve of large well-funded projects. Whole brain emulation, for instance, requires many different kinds of expertise and lots of equipment. Biological intelligence enhancements and brain–computer interfaces would also have a large scale factor: while a small biotech firm might invent one or two drugs, achieving superintelligence along one of these paths (if doable at all) would likely require many inventions and many tests, and therefore the backing of an industrial sector or a well-funded national program. Achieving collective superintelligence by making organizations and networks more efficient requires even more extensive input, involving much of the world economy." (Nick Bostrom, "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies", 2014)

"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)

❄️Systems Thinking: On Holistic View (Quotes)

"Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objective of tektology is basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all the other sciences and of all the human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method, that is, it is interested only in the modes of organization of this subject matter." (Alexander Bogdanov." Tektologia: Vseobshchaya Organizatsionnaya Nauka" ["Tektology: The Universal Organizational Science"], 1922)

"Creative evolution synthesises from the parts a new entity not only different from them, but quite transcending them. That is the essence of a whole. It is always transcendent to its parts, and its character cannot be inferred from the characters of its parts." (Jan Smuts, "Holism and Evolution", 1926)

"[Holism is] the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution […]" (Jan Smuts, "Holism and Evolution", 1926)

"An ecological approach to public administration builds, then, quite literally from the ground up; from the elements of a place - soils, climate, location, for example - to the people who live there - their numbers and ages and knowledge, and the ways of physical and social technology by which from the place and in relationships with one another, they get their living. It is within this setting that their instruments and practices of public housekeeping should be studied so that they may better understand what they are doing, and appraise reasonably how they are doing it. Such an approach is of particular interest to us as students seeking to co-operate in our studies; for it invites - indeed is dependent upon - careful observation by many people in different environments of the roots of government functions, civic attitudes, and operating problems." (John Merriman Gaus, "Reflections on public administration", 1947)

"A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach", 1968) 

"In the selection of papers for this volume, two problems have arisen, namely what constitutes systems thinking and what systems thinking is relevant to the thinking required for organizational management. The first problem is obviously critical. Unless there were a meaningful answer there would be no sense in producing a volume of readings in systems thinking in any subject. A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking." (Frederick E Emery (ed.),"Systems thinking: selected readings", 1969)

"There are different levels of organization in the occurrence of events. You cannot explain the events of one level in terms of the events of another. For example, you cannot explain life in terms of mechanical concepts, nor society in terms of individual psychology. Analysis can only take you down the scale of organization. It cannot reveal the workings of things on a higher level. To some extent the holistic philosophers are right." (Anatol Rapoport,"General Systems" Vol. 14, 1969) 

"The systems approach to problems focuses on systems taken as a whole, not on their parts taken separately. Such an approach is concerned with total - system performance even when a change in only one or a few of its parts is contemplated because there are some properties of systems that can only be treated adequately from a holistic point of view. These properties derive from the relationship between parts of systems: how the parts interact and fit together." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a System of Systems Concepts", 1971)

"Early scientific thinking was holistic, but speculative - the modern scientific temper reacted by being empirical, but atomistic. Neither is free from error, the former because it replaces factual inquiry with faith and insight, and the latter because it sacrifices coherence at the altar of facticity. We witness today another shift in ways of thinking: the shift toward rigorous but holistic theories. This means thinking in terms of facts and events in the context of wholes, forming integrated sets with their own properties and relationships."(Ervin László, "Introduction to Systems Philosophy", 1972) 

“The notion of ‘system’ has gained central importance in contemporary science, society and life. In many fields of endeavor, the necessity of a ‘systems approach’ or ‘systems thinking’ is emphasized, new professions called ‘systems engineering’, ‘systems analysis’ and the like have come into being, and there can be little doubt that this this concept marks a genuine, necessary, and consequential development in science and world-view.” (Ervin László, “Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought”, 1972)

"There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ‘holistic’ views as some sort of cure-all […] Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain [...] there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment." (Francisco Varela, "On being autonomous: The lessons of natural history for systems theory", 1977)

"Holism traditionally says that a collection of beings may have a collective property that cannot be inferred from the properties of its members." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach and Its Enemies" , 1979) 

"Systems thinking is a special form of holistic thinking - dealing with wholes rather than parts. One way of thinking about this is in terms of a hierarchy of levels of biological organization and of the different 'emergent' properties that are evident in say, the whole plant (e.g. wilting) that are not evident at the level of the cell (loss of turgor). It is also possible to bring different perspectives to bear on these different levels of organization. Holistic thinking starts by looking at the nature and behaviour of the whole system that those participating have agreed to be worthy of study. This involves: (i) taking multiple partial views of 'reality' […] (ii) placing conceptual boundaries around the whole, or system of interest and (iii) devising ways of representing systems of interest." (C J Pearson and R L Ison, "Agronomy of Grassland Systems", 1987) 

"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change. That is, by seeing wholes we learn how to foster health. To do so, systems thinking offers a language that begins by restructuring how we think." (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)

"Systems philosophy brings forth a reorganization of ways of thinking. It creates a new worldview, a new paradigm of perception and explanation, which is manifested in integration, holistic thinking, purpose-seeking, mutual causality, and process-focused inquiry.” (Béla H. Bánáthy, "Systems Design of Education”, 1991)

"The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term 'ecological' is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature." (Fritjof Capra & Gunter A Pauli, "Steering business toward sustainability", 1995)

"In the new systems thinking, the metaphor of knowledge as a building is being replaced by that of the network. As we perceive reality as a network of relationships, our descriptions, too, form an interconnected network of concepts and models in which there are no foundations. For most scientists such a view of knowledge as a network with no firm foundations is extremely unsettling, and today it is by no means generally accepted. But as the network approach expands throughout the scientific community, the idea of knowledge as a network will undoubtedly find increasing acceptance." (Fritjof Capra," The Web of Life: a new scientific understanding of living systems", 1996)

"It [system dynamics] focuses on building system dynamics models with teams in order to enhance team learning, to foster consensus and to create commitment with a resulting decision […] System dynamics can be helpful to elicit and integrate mental models into a more holistic view of the problem and to explore the dynamics of this holistic view […] It must be understood that the ultimate goal of the intervention is not to build a system dynamics model. The system dynamics model is a means to achieve other ends […] putting people in a position to learn about a messy problem … create a shared social reality […] a shared understanding of the problem and potential solutions … to foster consensus within the team [..]" (Jac A M Vennix, "Group Model Building: Facilitating Team Learning Using System Dynamics", 1996)

"Understanding ecological interdependence means understanding relationships. It requires the shifts of perception that are characteristic of systems thinking - from the parts to the whole, from objects to relationships, from contents to patterns. […] Nourishing the community means nourishing those relationships." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems", 1996)

"[...] information feedback about the real world not only alters our decisions within the context of existing frames and decision rules but also feeds back to alter our mental models. As our mental models change we change the structure of our systems, creating different decision rules and new strategies. The same information, processed and interpreted by a different decision rule, now yields a different decision. Altering the structure of our systems then alters their patterns of behavior. The development of systems thinking is a double-loop learning process in which we replace a reductionist, narrow, short-run, static view of the world with a holistic, broad, long-term, dynamic view and then redesign our policies and institutions accordingly." (John D Sterman, "Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world", 2000)

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Deep change in mental models, or double-loop learning, arises when evidence not only alters our decisions within the context of existing frames, but also feeds back to alter our mental models. As our mental models change, we change the structure of our systems, creating different decision rules and new strategies. The same information, interpreted by a different model, now yields a different decision. Systems thinking is an iterative learning process in which we replace a reductionist, narrow, short-run, static view of the world with a holistic, broad, long-term, dynamic view, reinventing our policies and institutions accordingly." (John D Sterman, "Learning in and about complex systems", Systems Thinking Vol. 3 2003)

"There exists an alternative to reductionism for studying systems. This alternative is known as holism. Holism considers systems to be more than the sum of their parts. It is of course interested in the parts and particularly the networks of relationships between the parts, but primarily in terms of how they give rise to and sustain in existence the new entity that is the whole whether it be a river system, an automobile, a philosophical system or a quality system." (Michael C. Jackson, "Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Manager", 2003) 

"Systems thinking is only an epistemology, a particular way of describing the world. It does not tell us what the world is. Hence, strictly speaking, we should never say of something in the world: ‘It is a system’, only: ‘It may be described as a system.’" (John Mingers, Realising" Systems Thinking: Knowledge and Action in Management Science", 2006)

"At a time when the world is more messy, more crowded, more interconnected, more interdependent, and more rapidly changing than ever before, the more ways of seeing, the better. The systems-thinking lens allows us to reclaim our intuition about whole systems and hone our abilities to understand parts, see interconnections, ask 'what-if' questions about possible future behaviors, and be creative and courageous about system redesign. (Donella H Meadows, "Thinking in Systems: A Primer", 2008)

"In ecology, we are often interested in exploring the behavior of whole systems of species or ecosystem composed of individual components which interact through biological processes. We are interested not simply in the dynamics of each species or component in isolation, but the dynamics of each species or component in the context of all the others and how those coupled dynamics account for properties of the system as a whole, such as its persistence. This is what people seem to mean when they say that ecology is ‘holistic’, an otherwise rather vague term." (John Pastor, "Mathematical Ecology of Populations and Ecosystems", 2008)

"Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2008) 

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" , 2008) 

"Holism [is] the art - in contrast with reductionism - of seeing a complex system as a whole. Holism knows the limits to its understanding; it acknowledges that the system has its wildness, its privacy, its own reasons, its defenses against invasive explanation." (David Fleming, "Lean Logic", 2016)