Systems Theory Quotes:

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

- Fritjof Capra

topic: Thinking, Movement, Systems Theory, Systems Thinking

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

- Malcolm Knowles

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

topic: Party, Intelligence, Principles, Systems Theory

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

- Marilyn Ferguson

topic: Taken, Simple, Reality, Systems Theory, Holism

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

- Kenneth E. Boulding

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

topic: Real, Lying, Names, Thinkable, Systems Theory

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

- Kenneth E. Boulding

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

topic: Animal, Self, Mobility, Systems Theory

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

- Robert L. Devaney

topic: History, Understanding, Important, Systems Theory

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

- Fritjof Capra

topic: Psychology, Intellectual, Germany, Fragmentation, Gestalt

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

- Fritjof Capra

topic: Strong, Thinking, Engineering, Systems Analysis, Systems Thinking