A collection of stateful parts in meaningful (recognizable) relationship (processes) with one another, that taken together has characteristics that none of the parts have alone or in lesser combinations.
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A system is a set of interrelated elements with a purpose, as perceived in time by an observer. Until nominated by an observer, collections of elements do not constitute a system. One group of elements, say the parts of a radio, will be perceived as a system by a trainer of radio assemblers but not by someone who wants to listen to the news. From the listener's perspective, 'radio' may be regarded as part of a system called 'the media', and so on... The designation of a system is always subjective although some systems are more likely to be similarly perceived than others. For a simple system such as a home heating system, there is likely to be general agreement on its purposes, its elements and its boundaries. For complex " systems, such as a transportation system, a company, or a code of laws, **different observers inside and outside the system may have very different perceptions of purposes, elements and boundaries**.
The designation of a system implies that it is perceived as a whole with different properties than those exhibited by its parts -separately or together. This is the distinction between a 'systems approach' and a ‘reductionist approach'. Although many systems contain subsystems or may be viewed as embedded in a number of different larger systems, each may be considered as a whole with its own boundaries and environments.
The prevalence of trivial examples of systems in advertising, such as the 'personal storage system' which another observer might regard simply as a 'set of shelves', sometimes obscures the **power of the systems approach to dealing with complex dynamic situations**.
# SOURCE The word system comes from the Greek 'sustema' a standing or placing together. Early usages include' the solar system' and 'the digestive system'. The adjective, still quite narrowly applied, is systemic (not systematic).
# EXAMPLES • the Earth • an automobile • a geometry • a government • a corporation • a family public health • a zoo to its administrators and staff
# NON-EXAMPLES • a random collection (unless purposefully selected such as a table of random numbers) • any grouping or configuration which has no relevance to an observer • a zoo to the children who visit it • Leibniz's monad • an object outside of its context (readers of Homer may recall that Odysseus was bidden to wander until those he met took his oar for a winnowing fan)
# PROBABLE ERROR • Failure to take appropriate note of subjectivity in system designation, • Mistakenly assuming that a phenomenon observed in a subsystem applies to a larger system, e.g. drawing inferences from the election returns from a jurisdiction in a national election where local issues are dominant. • The assumption that systems are somehow systematic
# SEE Identity; Complementarity; Observer; Boundary; Environment