“The real world is made from open, interacting systems, behaving chaotically.”

—  Derek Hitchins

D.K. Hitchins (2000) World Class Systems Engineering - the five layer Model; cited in: Neville A. Stanton, Chris Baber, Don Harris (2012) Modelling Command and Control. p. 8

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The real world is made from open, interacting systems, behaving chaotically." by Derek Hitchins?
Derek Hitchins photo
Derek Hitchins14
British systems engineer 1935

Related quotes

“A system is an open set of complementary, interacting parts, with properties, capabilities and behaviours of the set emerging both from the parts and from their interactions to synthesize a unified whole.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Hitchins (1998. p. 195) cited in: Peter Stasinopoulos (2009) Whole System Design: An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Engineering. p. 27

Neil H. Jacoby photo

“Payments made to, or extorted by, a corrupt bureaucracy can enable a socially chaotic system to function.”

Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) University professor and public servant

Source: Bribery and Extortion in World Business with Peter Nehemkis and Richard Eells (1977), p. 153

Kevin Kelly photo

“Every time a closed system opens, it begins to interact more directly with other existing systems, and therefore acquires all the value of those systems.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“The world about us can be looked at in a variety of ways. One way is to see the world as made up from many interacting systems: weather, societal, economic, ecological, floral, faunal, tectonic plate, oceanic, and so on. This is very much a connected view of the world: nothing is isolated and totally independent; everything is part of something bigger, and everything comprises many interacting parts — subsystems.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Derek Hitchins (2013) at " Systems World http://www.hitchins.net/" at hitchins.net

Louis Kauffman photo

“Cybernetics is the study of systems and processes that interact with themselves and produce themselves from themselves.”

Louis Kauffman (1945) American mathematician

Louis Kauffman (2007) CYBCON discussion group, 20 September 2007: 18-15; as cited in: Andrzej Targowski (2011), Cognitive Informatics and Wisdom Development, p. 68

Humberto Maturana photo

“Living systems are units of interactions; they exist in an ambience. From a purely biological point of view they cannot be understood independently of that part of the ambience with which they interact: the niche; nor can the niche be defined independently of the living system that specifies it.”

Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher

Source: Biology of Cognition (1970), p. 9.

“In order to constitute a complex system, the elements have to interact, and this interaction must be dynamic.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 3; as cited in: Richard Andrews, ‎Erik Borg, ‎Stephen Boyd Davis (2012), The SAGE Handbook of Digital Dissertations and Theses, p. 129

“A system can be defined as a set of elements standing in interrelations. Interrelation means that elements, p, stand in relations, R, so that the behavior of an element p in R is different from its behavior in another relation, R’. If the behaviors in R and R’ are not different, there is no interaction, and the elements behave independently with respect to the relations R and R’.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 3. Some System Concepts in Elementary Mathematical Consideration, p. 55-56

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Nature and the Greeks (1954)
Context: The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject" for the observing mind. … For the subject, if anything, is the thing that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy."

Ingeborg Refling Hagen photo

“She was so open and frank… She made space around her, if we just behaved… Everybody seemed to trust this woman and gathered gladly around her.”

Ingeborg Refling Hagen (1895–1989) Norwegian writer

On Eleanor Roosevelt, volume III
Memoirs

Related topics