A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex/intricate

whole.[1]
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.
Fields that study the general properties of systems include systems science, systems
theory, systems modeling,systems engineering, cybernetics, dynamical
systems, thermodynamics, complex systems, system analysis and design and systems
architecture. They investigate the abstract properties of systems' matter and organization,
looking for concepts and principles that are independent of domain, substance, type, or
temporal scale.[citation needed]
Some systems share common characteristics, including:[citation needed]

A system has structure, it contains parts (or components) that are directly or indirectly
related to each other;

A system has behavior, it exhibits processes that fulfill its function or purpose;

A system has interconnectivity: the parts and processes are connected by structural
and/or behavioral relationships;

A system's structure and behavior may be decomposed via subsystems and subprocesses to elementary parts and process steps;

A system has behavior that, in relativity to its surroundings, may be categorized as both
fast and strong.

The term system may also refer to a set of rules that governs structure and/or behavior.
Alternatively, and usually in the context of complex social systems, the term institution is used
to describe the set of rules that govern structure and/or behavior.
Contents
[hide]

1 Etymology

2 History

3 System concepts

4 Elements of a system: an example

5 Types of systems

6 Analysis of systems
o

6.1 Cultural system

6.2 Economic system

7 Application of the system concept

o

7.1 Systems in information and computer science

7.2 Systems in engineering and physics

7.3 Systems in social and cognitive sciences and management research

7.4 Pure logical systems

7.5 Systems applied to strategic thinking

8 See also

9 References

10 Bibliography

11 External links

Etymology[edit]
The term "system" comes from the Latin word systma, in turn from Greek systma:
"whole compounded of several parts or members, system", literary "composition". [2]

History[edit]
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".[3][4]
In the 19th century the French physicist Nicolas Lonard 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. [5]
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.
[6][7]

In the 1980s John H. Holland (1929- ), Murray Gell-Mann (1929- ) and others coined the term
"complex adaptive system" at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute.