SYSTEMS


"A system is a local phenomenon in the Universe."

"A system is a closed configuration of vectors."

"All systems are polyhedra."

(Synergetics 400.01)

The tetrahedron is the minimum possible system.

"A system divides universe into all the universe outside the system (macrocosm) and all the rest of the universe which is inside the system (microcosm) with the exception of the minor fraction of universe which constitutes the system itself."

(Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth, p.57)

Weinberg (1975, p.63) observes that,

"the role of observer is usually ignored in systems writing. The most popular way of ignoring the observer is to move right into a mathematical representation of a system... without saying anything about how that particular representation was chosen."

He quotes the definition given by Hall and Fagen:

"a system is a set of objects together with relationships between the objects and between their attributes".

This, he says, fails "to give the slightest hint that the system is relative to the viewpoint of some observer. Set theory tells us much about the properties of sets, but tells us nothing about how observers might choose them."

Fuller's account of systems is couched in mathematical language, yet the observer, the person doing the thinking, is incorporated into the account.

It may well seem that Fuller, speaking in terms of vectors, is referring only to identifiable material/energetic systems in the Universe. However, he also states (op. cit., p.58) that a thought is a system, and that, furthermore, the relationships which constitute thinking can be seen to have geometrical properties. Hence the Geometry Of Thinking.



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© Paul Taylor 2001