Seeds of systems theory were sowed during the first half of the 20th century with a radical break from the tradition of modern scientific thought, which was in turn moored to the posts of “Newtonian atomism and Cartesian reductionism” [2]. According to its pioneers, systems theory aimed at reviving the Aristotelian notion that ‘the whole is always more than the sum of its parts’, which was neglected by the majority of scientific trends up to late 19th century, causing them to almost come to a halt.
A system has four necessary conditions: “it contains two or more elements with specific properties; it contains relations connecting the elements of the system with each other; it is embedded in an environment containing interrelated elements; and the boundaries between the system and its environment are determined by system elements and relations, and are sufficiently sharp and permanent to consider the system as an entity” [2]. The term ‘element’ may imply ‘the basic building units of the system’ (leading to a theory of “system complexity”) or ‘the subsystems it comprises’ (which ends up in a theory of “system differentiation”)