Systems Thinking

Attempts to think about Systems And Games.

Widely associated with Jay Forrester and the Systems Dynamics Group at MIT.

One interesting body of work on how-to-think is the Theory Of Constraints.

The World In A Machine: Origins And Impacts Of Early Computerized Global Systems Models by Paul N Edwards, covers 1945-1972 (Limits To Growth)

Flash-based summary of various diagramming tools. See also Diagram Of Effects.

Cosma Shalizi says re General Systems Theory - An off-shoot of Cybernetics, with (so far as I can see) far less to recommend it. This is not to say that none of its advocates ever produced anything worthwhile, just that the credit for it should not go to the verbiage which passed for "approaches to a general theory of systems'' (query --- why is that phrase much more respectable than "theory of things in general''?)

appropriate for Wicked problems? or drowned by them?

cf John Gall's Systemantics ISBN:0-671-81910-0 - A Complex System designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

Systems Wiki


Edited:    |       |    Search Twitter for discussion