In everyday life, people design systems to get work done more efficiently and with less energy. Engineers design technical systems. Entrepreneurs design business systems. Homemakers organize various tasks.
Nature does the same thing. A system is a series of activities repeated through time to organize things and to prevent entropy–things falling into disorder.
Definitions of “system” in systems science don’t quite reach that degree of description. Standard definitions contain three sections: (1) The parts, elements, components, units, or entities are (2) arranged, interacting, functioning, interdependent with, related to, grouped together, networked with, and/or emergent into (3) a set and/or a whole.
Examples of definitions are:
“An arrangement of parts or elements that together exhibit behaviour or meaning that the individual constituents do not” (“General Systems Definition,” The INCOSE Fellows’ Initiative on System and Systems Engineering Definitions, 2019).
“A whole of some sort made up of interacting or interdependent elements or components integrally related among themselves in a way that differs from the relationships they may have with other elements” (Mobus and Kalton 2015).
“A collection of parts that interact in a meaningful, inseparable way to function as a whole” (Ford 2019).
“A set of interacting units with relationships among them” (Bertalanffy 1968).
But parts, entities, elements, units, and components are systems, so systems are defined as made up of systems. Which makes the definitions tautological and recursive.
The current definitions reflect how we see systems as parts organizing into and emerging as wholes, but Nature has a “system” that consists of the patterns of interactivity among systems, what Len Troncale called “systems processes.” Systems within systems continually organize using the same systems processes–interactions, networks, hierarchies, boundaries, cycles, evolution, and more–over and over to exist.
In my book Seeing, I define “system” as “a network of systems processes.” This definition aligns with the nonscientific one. A system is a set of processes, a series of activities, that organizes it and prevents entropy. But these are patterns of interactivity among systems.
A system as a set of systems in interaction is recursive, because Nature is recursive. Only when considered as a word definition is the statement tautologous.
As experience with systems deepens, another issue appears. At any given time, to exist, a system is “systeming,” organizing to prevent entropy. “System” is less a noun and more a verb. English doesn’t accommodate this worldview, but our lexicon evolves as our awareness expands. At the turn of this century, networks were groups of television stations. Then, thanks to the Internet, we all became aware of networks, and now we network.
As experiences with and consciousness of “system” evolve, the words and meanings will also evolve. Meanwhile, the current definitions are not incorrect and so can stand, but only as long as we understand that, as with all scientific theories and terms, they are provisional and ripe for upgrades.