Understanding Systems: Components, Interactions, and Types
Understanding Systems: Key Concepts and Principles
Objectives:
- Investigate analogies, looking for commonalities, parallels, similarities, correlations, or isomorphic traces (same shape) of the concepts, laws, and models of the various sciences.
- Promote knowledge transfer among the sciences.
- Minimize duplication of research efforts in various fields.
- Encourage the development of adequate theoretical models in areas that lack them.
- Promote the unity of science and achieve uniformity of scientific vocabulary.
Components
Components are the raw material of the system.
Interactions Between Components
They represent the form and type of relationship between components.
Boundary
The boundary is provided by the observer. It determines the relationship between the inside and outside. It will be possible to establish which components of the system are included and excluded from it. Without a boundary, we could not differentiate the system from its environment.
Inputs and Outputs
Inputs and outputs may be relevant or irrelevant depending on the importance of the change in income or discharge to the system. They are divided into:
- Beneficial: They stabilize or grow the system.
- Negative: They tend to unbalance the system or make it disappear.
Classifying Systems
- Isolated System: These systems have no interaction with the environment, and therefore any change that occurs in the system causes no changes in the environment.
- Open System: This type of system allows the exchange of matter and energy with the environment. Any changes that occur in the system cause an effect on its environment.
- Closed System: These systems only exchange energy with the environment.
System Structure
The structure of a system depends on the following characteristics related to the components:
- Number of Components: The number of basic elements that interact to constitute the system.
- Component Type: The characteristics of an individual component can influence the structure of a system.
- Interaction Between the Components: They represent the form and type of relationship between components.
System Function
The function of a system is defined in terms of processes or activities and is related to the process of receiving inputs and generating outputs. A system has a function in terms of the metasystem; each component generates an output which is, in turn, the input of another. In other words, it functions as a component over another.
Autonomy
Reserves are the means by which the system becomes relatively independent of the environment. If the environmental (external environment) conditions are not proper for the exchange (flow of inputs and outputs), the system can reduce or even eliminate some aspects of the exchange or adapt to outside weather conditions.
Purpose
Purpose is a property revealed by the actual behavior of the system, which has been defined as “the objective or goal that the system seems to pursue, despite changes in its environment.”
Environment
The environment is the medium surrounding the system. No system is closed in a vacuum but does so in constant liaison with the environment. The environment is often another larger system, so it ends up being a metasystem.
Ranking
Ranking is one of the most important properties because each system occupies a particular level of hierarchy and, therefore, may be part of a larger system and have lower-level subordinate systems.
Models
A model is an approximate representation of reality, where you try to reproduce the salient features of a system.
- Theoretical Model: A series of propositions that attempt to explain part of reality.
- Formal Model: Mathematical formulas that explain the relationship between at least two elements of the system.
- Graphic Model: Schemes that attempt to explain the system of study.
- Physical Models: Those that mimic one or more properties of another real system.
- Biological Model: There are several biological models, but the most important is the modeling of living organisms.