Open System and Closed System
Ludwig Bertalanaffy describes two types of systems: open system and closed system. The open systems are systems that allow interactions between its internal elements and the environment. An open system is defined as a “system in exchange of matter with its environment, presenting import and export, building-up and breaking-down of its material components.” For example, living organism. Closed systems, on the other hand, are considered to be isolated from their environment. For instance, thermodynamics that applies to closed systems.
Read more about this topic: Systems Theory In Anthropology, Main Concepts in Systems Theory
Famous quotes containing the words open, system and/or closed:
“...there are important considerations in the world beyond plain sewing and teaching dull little boys the alphabet. Any woman who has brains and willing hands finds twenty remunerative occupations open to her where formerly she would have found merely the inevitable two—plain sewing, or the dull little boys. All she had to do is to make her choice and then buckle on her armor of perseverance, while the world applauds.”
—Clara (Marquise)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One man’s observation is another man’s closed book or flight of fancy.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)