Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Systems Theory

Systems theory is a science that has the comparative study of systems as its object. There are different types of systems: organisms (animals, humans, and particularly cognitive mechanisms in organisms), machines (particularly computers), physico-chemical systems, psychic systems, and social systems. Such a comparative research program for heterogeneous types of systems presupposes a highly general concept of systems, for which numerous features have been proposed: the interdependency of the parts of a system, the reference of any structure and process in a system to the environments of the system, equilibrium and adaptedness and continuous readaptations to environmental demands as core elements of the understanding of a system, self-organization of a system as the principal way it responds to external intervention, and complexity as a trigger mechanism for system formation and as the form that describes the internal network structures of connectedness among system elements. After examining the historical roots of general system theory, this entry focuses on the main two theories that have been elaborated in social sciences from this perspective.

General System Theory, Information Theory, and Cybernetics

Systems theory is an understanding related to those definitions developed in the years after 1940 on the basis of suggestions from biology (the “general system theory” of Ludwig von Bertalanffy), physiology (Walter B. Cannon, Walter Pitts, and Warren McCulloch), and information theory and cybernetics (Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, and William Ross Ashby). Particularly, the idea by Shannon and Wiener of defining information as a selection among alternative possibilities turned out to be a generalization transcending heterogeneous systems and pointing to systems theory as a kind of general selection theory. This was connected to the strictly binary way of operation Pitts and McCulloch postulated in a paper on nerve cells published in 1943. This idea that at any branching of nerve cells there are only two alternative states available proved to be the simplest suggestion of how to make use of a network of cells for long chains of numerical operations. From this came the computer and, at the same time, came more general ideas regarding the operational realities of any observing system whatsoever.

Since its beginnings, the social sciences were an important part of the establishment of systems theory. Jürgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson were in 1951 the first who tried to base a social science discipline on an information and communication theory coming from cybernetics (Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry). But the two most influential suggestions were the comprehensive sociological versions of systems theory that were proposed by Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann beginning in the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively.

Talcott Parsons

Parsons (1902–1979) had been influenced by equilibrium ideas from physiology (Cannon), the system–environment thinking of the Harvard physiologist Lawrence Henderson, and the duality of information and energy that Wiener had proposed. From these materials, he developed a sociological systems theory. Social systems are related either to the internal environment of other social systems or to external nonsocial environments (psychic, biological, and cultural environments). Furthermore, they differ in the way they refer to time: They are either oriented toward realizations in the future or to satisfactions of needs in the present (instrumental or consummatory). From these two distinctions, internal/external and instrumental/consummatory, Parsons derived four possibilities for the formation of systems: first, there are adaptive systems (combining external reference and future orientation, e.g., the economy); second, systems that are specialized on goal attainment (internal reference and future orientation, e.g., the polity); third, systems focused on integration of system elements (internal reference and present orientation, e.g., the society conceived as a community); and fourth, systems that are responsible for the maintenance of long-term patterns (external reference and present orientation, e.g., cultural institutions in society).

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution