System

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex or intricate whole. Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning.

Alternatively, and usually in the context of complex social systems, the term is used to describe the set of rules that govern structure or behavior.

The term "system" comes from the Latin word systēma, in turn from Greek σύστημα systēma: "whole compounded of several parts or members, system", literary "composition".

According to Marshall McLuhan,

"System" means "something to look at". You must have a very high visual gradient to have systematization. In philosophy, before Descartes, there was no "system". Plato had no "system". Aristotle had no "system".

In the 19th century the French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, who studied thermodynamics, pioneered the development of the concept of a "system" in the natural sciences. In 1824 he studied the system which he called the working substance (typically a body of water vapor) in steam engines, in regards to the system's ability to do work when heat is applied to it. The working substance could be put in contact with either a boiler, a cold reservoir (a stream of cold water), or a piston (to which the working body could do work by pushing on it). In 1850, the German physicist Rudolf Clausius generalized this picture to include the concept of the surroundings and began to use the term "working body" when referring to the system.

The biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) became one of the pioneers of the general systems theory. In 1945 he introduced models, principles, and laws that apply to generalized systems or their subclasses, irrespective of their particular kind, the nature of their component elements, and the relation or 'forces' between them.

Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) and Ross Ashby (1903-1972), who pioneered the use of mathematics to study systems, carried out significant development in the concept of a system.

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