Notes on a video lecture “Working with Systems”

author: Seth Bullock, University of Southampton

what is a system? - individual components linked by relationships to make a whole. different levels of description eg of the node, of the overall.

Previously each system (eg genes in biology or engineering) might have been seen as their own problem, system science tries to ask if there are common ideas/themes and how do we characterise systems? its important to think about how we characterise - often guided by community view or background eg DNA is genes, bases, a large molecule or … That choice (unwittingly?) decides the viewpoint.

On structure:-

• types of atomic entity - how many, what kind?
• what are the interactions?
• type of connectivity? spare, dense etc
• uniformity: homogenous vs heterogenous
• inputs/outputs: open/ closed systems, it’s subjective how we carve up the system in sub-systems and above items.

One methodology to identify structure is is to pay attention to fault lines - where things break. Engineered systems tend to be a hierarchy ‘cos they show well ordered behaviour. Natural sys are often an anarchy of many-many relationships behaviour. Some systems are are static, but most have an active dynamic. This is just as subjective as structure.

On behaviour:-

• how is a system been perturbed? how is it changing? interventions are more ‘influence’ than definitive control
• emergence - behaviour at one level may be different that that at other levels.
• adaptation via learning, imitation, competition behaviour from different parts of the structure?

linked and interesting bit!