2- Philosophy and early history

Obviously, the ‘systems’ concept has deep philosophical roots.

Systems philosophies and disciplines have developed as movements
against various versions and forms of reductionist (atomist)
philosophies. According to reductionism, all problems can be
understood and solved by reducing them to smaller and smaller
elements and studying the elements in more and more detail.
The most radical example of reductionism in early Greek philosophy
was to try to reduce all problems to a single ‘essence’ like ‘fire’ or
‘water’.

The philosophical roots of systems thinking can be traced back to some

early Greek philosophers (Aristotle, Heraclitus…)
‘The sum is greater than the sum of its parts’

Also rooted in early Eastern and far-east philosophers (Chinese…)

In some Arabic/Persian philosophers in ‘golden ages’ of Islam…

Later in 1700-1800’s during the emergence of more modern

philosophical schools and social-economic fields (Hegel, Adam Smith,
K. Marx, Malthus, Leibniz, Dewey…)

In medicine (homeostasis)…

Literature and arts (Tolstoy…)

In general:
Modern philosophical schools and modern science have been (still are)
strongly dominated by reductionism.
(‘All we need is more and more powerful microscopes’).

But in parallel, there have been strong developments in systems

philosophies in various branches of sciences in the past Century.
Various forms of systems sciences continue to develop today…
 3- Modern history

More explicitly, modern ‘systems’ sciences and philosophies first

emerged in 1930s-40s:
- Biologist Von Bertalanffy: He founded General Systems Theory
(GST) in 1930s-40s, as a general scientific movement against the
dominating reductionism, particularly in biology.
(Later, GST was led and advanced by the economist K. Boulding)

- Norbert Wiener: He founded Cybernetics and feedback control

theory in engineering and mathematics in 1940s. The goal was to
design engineering systems that perform like ‘living systems’, as
if they have ‘brains’. (The other two pioneers of Cybernetics were
G. Bateson and R. Ashby).
Note: Cybernetics was also the precursor of Artificial Intelligence

- Jay W. Forrester: He founded Industrial Dynamics in 1950s, by

applying the principles of feedback systems and control theory of
electrical systems to management problems, in the early years of
MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Industrial Dynamics later
turned into a more general dynamical systems science applied to
all living systems, re-named System Dynamics in 1970s.

- W. Churchman, R. Ackoff, P. Checkland, C. Argyris are some

other key contributors to the Systems Thinking movements in the
1950s and 1970s.

4- Systems Science as adopted in this course

As mentioned before, there are static and dynamic versions and

applications of systems sciences. In this course, we apply systems
science to dynamic problems (first from traditional engineering, then
from socio-economic, living systems). More technically, dynamic
problems (models) can be continuous or discrete in time and in other
variables. In this (introductory) course, we focus on continuous
problems (in time and all variables) that are typically modeled by
differential equations.