Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research. The term does not yet have a well-established, precise meaning, but systems theory can reasonably be considered a specialization of systems thinking, a generalization of systems science, a systems approach. The term originates from Bertalanffy's general system theory (GST) and is used in later efforts in other fields, such as the action theory of Talcott Parsons and the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann.
In this context the word systems is used to refer specifically to self-regulating systems, i.e. that are self-correcting through feedback. Self-regulating systems are found in nature, including the physiological systems of our body, in local and global ecosystems, and in climate—and in human learning processes.
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... Systems Theory in Anthropology is an interdisciplinary, non-representative, non-referential, and non-Cartesian approach that brings together natural and social sciences to understand society in its ... The basic idea of a system theory in social science is to solve the classical problem of duality mind-body, subject-object, form-content, signifier-signified, and structure-agency ... System theory, therefore, suggests that instead of creating closed categories into binaries (subject-object) the system should stay open so as to allow free flow of process and interactions ...
... Asia and English East India Company wrote “Systems analysis receives prominent attention ... He writes of the Company as a trading system, one in which the decision-rules employed by management can be mapped to a sequence of physical inputs and outputs, suggesting the Company operated like an engine ... Systems analysis enables him to test statistically a series of hypotheses, such as "average costs are a decreasing function of the volume of trade, the cost price of ...
... Other fieldworks use systems theory concepts and ecological considerations to understand the shaman's lore ... these concepts to developments in the ways that modern science (systems theory, ecology, new approaches in anthropology and archeology) treats causality in a less linear fashion ...
... Systems science is an interdisciplinary field of science that studies the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science ... Systems sciences covers formal sciences fields like complex systems, cybernetics, dynamical systems theory, and systems theory, and applications in the ...
... of Cape Town, South Africa, integrated the key concepts of the systems and related fields, together with their unique theoretical contributions, into a coherent meta-theory called Biomatrix systems theory ... The theory is also unique in having a graphic alphabet with which it can be explained visually ...
Famous quotes containing the words theory and/or systems:
“A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)