I am actually writing – essentially evolving my PhD proposal into the thesis it was intended to become, whether I’m actually doing it as a formal PhD or not. The technical “half” of my literary project.
I am very conscious – in that PhD proposal – that my take on the application of Systems Thinking is pretty much “Life, the Universe and Everything” – from metaphysics to the physical science of the cosmos via the scale of our human experience – beyond what a casual reader might attribute to those two words. I flipped to using Systems Thinking as the umbrella term for my research topic having spent most of the last 25 years of Psybertron using some variation of Cybernetics / Psybernetics, but I’ve not changed what I intend as the topic. My professional work experience space was always distinct from my research space, though real life experiences from the former were driving my interest in the latter. And increasingly, the last two decades of the day job were concerned with systemic ontologies for business operations of industrial and other organisations, increasingly informed by my earlier business Masters. Distinct but clearly convergent.
As with Systems Thinking, Cybernetics is no less ambiguous to the casual reader. Knowing that Wiener intended Cybernetics to mean individual and collective human decision-making in our cosmic ecosystem – decision-theory – doesn’t change the fact that people hear mechanistic command, feedback and control when they see the word Cybernetics or encounter it’s derivative in electronic, algorithmic Cyberspace.
Similarly in my professional sphere, I was happy to label the whole as Systems Engineering of one form or another. Engineering is simply humans using ingenuity physical or mental, hard or soft, to make better stuff happen – whether it’s bashing metal, masonry and wires into shape or whether it’s about herding cats (ie organising & managing human activities). How do we decide what’s the best thing(s) to do to make that better stuff happen? The System(s) in question being literally anything, considered in terms of functional relations between parts and wholes.
The switch of language from Systems Engineering to Systems Thinking actually happened in that professional sphere. I’ve mentioned previously that the three smartest ex-colleagues I’d ever worked with were in (separate) INCOSE Systems Engineering (nuclear) contexts and it was they that were flipping the terminology from Engineering to Thinking for me. It was perfectly natural for me to replace all of Cybernetics / Psybernetics / OR / Systems-Engineering with Systems Thinking. [Deflationary Compression as shorthand.]
So, being conscious of the ambiguity in my terminology, a conventional starting point for pulling the writing together was some definitions to distinguish between my uses of terms. I say conventional because other parts of my thesis warn against rules and definitions being anything more definitive than #goodfences / #guardrails or guidance for the wise. Nevertheless I’ve been consulting standard definitions, if only to raise that warning about how I’m using them.
I’ve previously mentioned recent Systems Thinking publications by Mike Jackson and by Ramage & Shipp. Neither really gave me a working definition more satisfactory than my own. Both are essentially – very good but quite different – summaries of the co-evolution of the many related topics and methodologies. In conclusion there being many possible ideas (with different names) to choose from contingently, in context, using pragmatism beyond any formulaic methodology. And as I’ve noted others concerned with the same set of management / governance / organisational issues – Dave Snowden and Jean Boulton (say) – shun the word System almost entirely, preferring to talk about complexity, even if from quite different perspectives. And, as Janet Singer pointed out if we needed reminding, that language & choice of words can never unambiguously pin down our topic(s) anyway. It’s why I start with #GoodFences. Any definition, any distinction between two words or things, is a matter of pragmatic convention, to be respected but not taken as fixed in any fundamentally definitive way – whether declared in advance or recorded in hindsight in dictionaries. What really matters about them are the properties we use to make such distinctions and relationships – which is ultimately circular anyway as we shift our attention from definitions of things, to definitions of their chosen properties. But again, no less useful, pragmatically. Circularity is actually a bonus, rather than a problem. Strange Loops, one level removed from our objects of interest, give us evolution.
One of those smartest ex-colleagues is Rob Black and he’s recently authored “The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Systems Thinking” [TABGST] published in their “Don’t Panic” series by INCOSE.
[The other two, referenced previously, were Viktor Agroskin and Anatoly Levenchuck: Viktor largely for his linguistic mental ability in sharing and helping us understand complex ideas being translated in real-time in his head in multi-lingual collaborative conversations; Anatoly for his introducing me to Systems Engineering as a topic originally and latterly to his version of my own #GoodFences warning – that definitions in the wrong place are the coffin of creative evolution. “Hold your definition” I’d already absorbed from Dennett much earlier in a purely philosophical context, and frankly after 30 years of industrial systems engineering this was the ultimate confluence between the abstract philosophical and real-world practical domains.]
Interestingly TABGST doesn’t per se define systems thinking, and indeed Ch1 “Framing and Taming Complexity” starts with “Systems Thinking as a mindset and skillset that can help us engage and manage complexity” and thereafter the content of Ch1 falls under “Complexity and Systems Thinking”. In my own working definition “Systems Thinking is a response to Complexity” so no argument there. The key here is going to be the separate words, Systems and Thinking as well as their conjunction. Complexity is simply the abstract noun form of the adjective “complex” – interestingly also not defined in TABGST.
Thinking is mental, so for me the skillsets are mental skillsets and mindsets – world-views, ways of thinking and viewing or conceptually modelling the world mentally. Hence for me then, ST is such a worldview that considers (views / models) the complex world in terms of systems. Nothing more, and nothing less either.
Interestingly TABGST Ch1 proceeds with “concerns” that “illustrate” a whole collection of “domains, across life and society” rather than any attempt at formal scope definition. Everything but the Universe. Science of the physical universe is the only domain excluded, or rather simply not listed, not considered. That’s a choice to focus on engineered systems of organisation and governance of human activities in the wider world. The charitable comment is that such fundamental physical systems are taken for granted as underlying the whole here. In my definition the scope also includes systems comprising one proton and one electron or one brain and trillions of neurons, or one galaxy and trillions of stars. Science already – taking a systemic view – treats these as systems anyway, so I’ve no reason to exclude them. The world ecosystem involves the natural as well as the “built” (human engineered) environment, both mentally and physically and the agent relationship between.
Which simply leaves the word system itself – what do we mean by considering the world in terms of systems. TABGST uses the ISO15288 definition for the systems of the engineered environment: “combination of interacting elements organised to achieve one or more stated purposes”
Interacting elements is fine – shorthand for my seeing the world in terms of “functional related whole and part things / elements“. No problem here.
“Organised to achieve” and “stated purposes” is pretty much limited to the engineered environment of intentional human (individual and social) activity. But that’s just that we have different scopes in mind. For me organisation and purpose are more things that arise / evolve within such a systems view of the complex whole, so no need to limit the view to human agency, which itself needs systemic grounds for explanation.
Systems Thinking is – considering the world in terms of systems, where Systems are – anything considered in terms of functional relationships between elements. Whilst applicable to literally anything it is the pragmatically recommended approach when dealing with complex and/or chaotic situations.
But that’s my wider position. So to round off any review of TABGST – Robert Black (2025) “The Absolute Beginners Guide to Systems Thinking” – is exactly what it says on the cover, brief and can’t fault it for the intended scope of application. Recommended.
Anyway, we could continue down the definitional rabbit hole, and ask ourselves what we mean by words and stuff, things and elements, wholes and parts, functions and relations, organisation and purpose, etc but as already noted, it’s a fools errand, there is no end to definition beyond your pragmatic choice of ontology.
Which is why my project is more about metaphysical underpinnings of such ontological choice(s). And it’s why my choice is to remain at least one level conceptually removed from specific / individual real-world application. An abstraction as a framework or meta-model / ecosystem about Life, the Universe and Everything, against which models can be judged and tested, but not the model of it. It does mean my ontology also includes meaning and knowledge (epistemology of what can be known as well as what is). As ever I’m not creating anything original. I’m simply recommending pragmatic choices – at this more abstract philosophical level. One of those recommendations is that we don’t be precious about particular choices of words that inevitably come with baggage of previous limited successes of imperfect or misguided uses. We know we can do better.
Although people reject being pigeonholed in camps – it is interesting to note those people that prefer to talk about systems and those that prefer to talk about complexity and those who, like myself (and Rob, Viktor and Anatoly) simply choose either to talk about the other. Systems thinking is how to deal with the complexities of reality. (Sure there are ordered, closed systems that are neither chaotic nor complex and are simply more or less complicated, but they’re much less interesting , much less in need of abstract theory and already readily addressed by formal methods.)
Anyway,
I think I have my starting definitions
for systems and systems thinking.
(As well as my standing caveat that all definitions, like rules, are for guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools. Wisdom is my real “beyond science” topic.)
=====
Coda
So, my real target is not so much that choice between systems and complexity – but the choice to call the whole “science” – to not recognise that there is more than science in our complex world. Complexity vs complexity-science for example. Distinctions between words chosen are always #GoodFences.
An aside here, but I was also tempted to watch this Dave Snowden / Nora Bateson conversation, partly because of my penance towards having maybe failed to sufficiently consider the various Bateson contributions, and partly because Dave has been part of the more than science dialogue.
Right from the outset, as is his style, Dave crashes both fences – systems vs complexity and science vs more than science.
“Complexity is a science”
and
“Systems are not a subset of complexity”
Sure, systems are not a subset of complexity, that would be a category error, the relationship is more subtle. And, there is a science of complexity, but the complex stuff arising – complexity itself – isn’t all science, even if the arising can be explained scientifically (it can) the nature, content and behaviour of the stuff arisen can’t. [See also Dave’s 2003 science quote of Pirsig – qualified by tradition and method.] Whole-part relations and Class / Set / Sub-set-membership are of course the taxonomic foundations of ontology(ies). I’m tempted to note here not just my long-standing “Tabletop” example from Doug Hofstadter, but also a very recent reference in another place to “Grandma’s Big Box of Buttons” by Dr. JT Kostman. Taxonomy-based ontology is an entirely naturally-learned creative human process, necessary to deal with our complex world – more deflationary compression.
=====