Systems and Systems Thinking

The formal origins of systems theory date back to the middle 20th century and draw from two interconnected [Page 406]threads. There were the physicists and biologists, such as David Bohm and Ludvig von Bertallanfy, and there were the group dynamacists and organizational developers, such as Stafford Beer, Russel Ackoff, Fred Emery, Eric Trist, Reg Revans, and, to some extent, Kurt Lewin.

The basic issue all sought to understand was the relationship between an event and its context: past, present, and future. Although they each took a different route, they built on each other's concepts and established the basis of the rich range of systems approaches that are available today.

From the range of approaches, is it possible to develop some general statements about systems and the properties ...