systems thinking

Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts, enabling systems change. Systems thinking draws on and contributes to systems theory and the system sciences. See Dana Meadows, Thinking In Systems: A Primer History Ptolemaic system versus the Copernican system The term system is polysemic: Robert Hooke (1674) used it in multiple senses, in his System of the World, but also in the sense of the Ptolemaic system versus the Copernican system of the relation of the planets to the fixed stars which are cataloged in Hipparchus and Ptolemy's Star catalog. Hooke's claim was anwered in magisterial detail by Newton's (1687) Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Book three, The System of the World (that is, the system of the world is a physical system). Newton's approach, using dynamical systems continues to this day. In brief, Newton's equations (a system of equations) have methods for their solution.