Nature
A system consists of a configuration of parts joined by a web of relationships.
Complex systems exist in the subject of many diverse fields such as biology,
psychology, economics, sociology, law and of course management, which is a
selective compilation of these and other sciences.
To understand systems and its theory it is first helpful to examine the contrast
in approach between reductionism and systems theory. Reductionism
examines the elements and static relations between the items that create and
stablise the subject. Systems theory looks for energetics and kinetics as it
views the system as dynamic action involving relationships between activities
and elements that constantly renovate the sysem.
The difference between them can be explained by a comparison from the field
of chemistry where a popular topic in the first lesson is to explain the
difference between a mixture of substances and a chemical compound made
from those substances. A mixture of two substances, such as iron and
sulphur, retains the individual properties of the specific ingredients. It displays
characteristics of iron (for example, the iron will be attracted by a magnet) and
sulphur (for example sulphur has a distinct smell). By contrast a chemical
compound of iron and sulphur (iron sulphide), where the two are bonded at
the atomic level, displays properties that have no necessary relation, and in
truth no relation in fact, to the components.
As a term of science, reductionism has a cluster of meanings. A common
notion among them is that to understand something one analyses its parts. In
other words, the whole is the sum of the parts where the parts are summed in
some simple means that is purely additive (A + B = A + B) or linear (A causes
B or B causes A). Reductionism is like the chemical mixture. Each
components contributes its individual properties which are preserved by, and
present in, the mixture.
Systems, however, do not
lend themselve to simple redutionism because
something can have properties as a whole that are not explainable from the
sum of its parts. As Aristotle expressed in in the Metaphysics: "The whole is
more than the sum of its parts".
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A better rendition might be that the whole is
different from the sum of the parts. Parts inteact with each other to prouduce
the whole. This expresses the basic tenet of holism or emergentism. When the
parts come together, as in a compound of substances in chemistry, something
new and different emerges. It has a life and an existence of its own as distinct
from a mere assembly of its components. It is the relationship
between the
parts, rather than their specific properties alone, that creates the system. (A
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Metaphysica 10f-1045a
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