In Bertalanffy’s masterpiece titled “General System Theory Foundations, Development, Applications”, he emphasized the concept of holism. Therefore, system theory is also called system approach since it can represent concept, view, model, and mathematical methods as well. As a branch of scientific approaches, system theory helps identify the objective laws on how world is running and also offers human being a way of thinking the world. System theory proclaims that holism, connectedness, hierarchical structure, and dynamic equilibrium, time-dependence are common properties of all systems, which are both philosophy of system thinking and principles of using system approach. System theory is recognized a discipline that possesses both mathematical and logic characteristics. Moreover, by gaining better understanding on the dynamics of a system over time, decision/policy makers and practitioners can prevent policy-resistance (counter-intuitive behaviors). With better understanding on the system structures, we can introduce all kinds of interventions or policies to enable the systems of interest attain their optimal performance or outcomes. And the ultimate objective of learning system theory is to use the understanding on the system to better manage, control, renovate, or change the current system structures (natural or man-made systems) to align them with the needs of our civilized world.
The purpose of system theory is to investigate form, structure, and laws of general systems, to examine the common properties of those systems, to capture and illustrate their features using mathematical methods, and consequently to identify the mechanisms, rules, laws, principles, and mathematical models that can be applied to general systems. This definition apparently includes 4 concepts and their relationships, namely system, element, structure, feature, relationships between elements, relationships between elements and structure, and relationships between system and external environment.
The definition for general system is: a body composed of well-organized elements working toward attaining particular goals or features. General system theory attempts to provide a definition that can capture common properties of various systems. Holland, Gell-Mann, and others proposed the term “complex adaptive system”. Wiener and Ashby used mathematics to study systems. Bertalanffy pioneered the general system theory by introducing models, principles, and laws that apply to it.
The development of system theory and their applications in different field were mainly attributed to the contributions of scholars such as biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972), Norbert Wiener (1894–1964), Ross Ashby (1903–1972), John Henry Holland (1929–2015), and Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019). “System is a pre-given set composed of elements and their normal behaviors” “System is a well-organized wholeness” “System is an entity made of connected materials and processes ” “System is a body composed of ordered elements/factors working towards a common goal” are some popular examples for the definition of system. Many different definitions had been made by scholars for system from different perspectives based on their particular research objectives. The word ‘system’ originates from Latin word syst \(\overline\) ma meaning that a whole is made of several parts or members. The attainment of global optimum of a system must rely on the normal deployment of functions (features) of its subsystems. When talking about the state that system reaches optimal, it generally refers to global optimum of the whole system with respect to the objective features that are included in the intrinsic features of a system. The essence of system science resides in the philosophy of holism.