La langue est un systéme dont toutes les parties peuvent et doivent être considérés dans leur solidarité synchronique.
Cours de linguistique générale (1916)
— Ferdinand de Saussure Swiss linguist 1857 - 1913
Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 101
— Rensis Likert American statistician 1903 - 1981
New patterns of management, (1961), p. 222
— Kurt Lewin German-American psychologist 1890 - 1947
1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 218, as cited in: Granville Stanley Hall, Edward Bradford Titchener, Karl M. Dallenbach (1937) The American journal of psychology. Vol. 50, p. 374.
— Buckminster Fuller American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist 1895 - 1983
1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963), Context: Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate parts or any subassembly of the system's parts. There is nothing in the chemistry of a toenail that predicts the existence of a human being.
— Bobby Seale American activist 1936
Interview with The Guardian (February 1970)
— Fritjof Capra American physicist 1939
The Web of Life (1996), p. 46.
— Bertrand Russell logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist 1872 - 1970
1950s, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)
— Ralph Waldo Emerson American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803 - 1882
1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Context: The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.
Ch. 1, Nature
— Arthur D. Hall American electrical engineer 1925 - 2006
A methodology for systems engineering, 1962, Cited in: Harold Chestnut (1967) Systems Engineering Methods. p. 121
— David Aberle anthropologist 1918 - 2004
Isidore Dyen, David F. Aberle (1974), Lexical Reconstruction: The Case of the Proto-Athapaskan Kinship System. p. 7
— Arthur D. Hall American electrical engineer 1925 - 2006
Definition of System, 1956, p. 23
— David Bohm American theoretical physicist 1917 - 1992
Thought as a System (1992), Context: What I mean by 'thought' is the whole thing — thought, 'felt', the body, the whole society sharing thoughts — it's all one process. It is essential for me not to break that up, because it's all one process; somebody else's thought becomes my thought, and vice versa. Therefore it would be wrong and misleading to break it up into my thought, your thought, my feelings, these feelings, those feelings. I would say that thought makes what is often called in modern language a system. A system means a set of connected things or parts. But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent — not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence. A corporation is organized as a system — it has this department, that department, that department... they don't have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.
Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thought and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society — as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times. Thought has been constantly evolving and we can't say when that system began. But with the growth of civilization it has developed a great deal. It was probably very simple thought before civilization, and now it has become very complex and ramified and has much more incoherence than before.
Now, I say that this system has a fault in it — a 'systematic fault'. It is not a fault here, there or here, but it is a fault that is all throughout the system. Can you picture that? It is everywhere and nowhere. You may say "I see a problem here, so I will bring my thoughts to bear on this problem". But "my" thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I'm trying to look at, or a similar fault.
Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn’t notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates.
— Chester Barnard American businessman 1886 - 1961
The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 98-99, footnote
— Russell L. Ackoff Scientist 1919 - 2009
1970s, Towards a System of Systems Concepts, 1971
— Mike Jackson 1951
Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers (2003), p. 4
— Rensis Likert American statistician 1903 - 1981
The Human Organization, 1967, p. 123
