This https://stream.syscoi.com/2024/05/27/tracing-the-roots-brief-history-of-systems-thinking-2024/ was reshared on LinkedIn, drawing the comment
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7470429570618355712/?dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287470819985020444672%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7470429570618355712%29
CSEP Systems/Software Engineering – Improving the world through better systems
In the Introduction of the book “Derech Hashem” (The Way of God), written around 1736 by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (RaMCHaL), there is a very concise and clear explanation of Systems Thinking, to prepare the readers for what they are about to experience. It is a masterpiece!
https://www.sefaria.org/Derekh_Hashem?tab=contents
The first long paragraph of which – translated on that page from the Hebrew by Rabbi Franci Nataf, reads:
The advantage of knowing things within the framework of their parts – according to their divisions and the structures of their relationships – over their knowledge without distinction is like the advantage of seeing a garden beautified by its flowerbeds, enhanced by its paths and planted in specific rows, over seeing a thicket of reeds or a forest growing mixed together. For in truth, the perception of many parts about which we do not know their connections or true places in the structure of all that is constructed by them is nothing but a heavy and joyless burden to the intellect that desires to understand [it]. The intellect wearies itself with it; it toils, despairs, tires and has no pleasure; as it will not quench its desire to come to the purpose of any [part] that one has come to consider. For this will not come to him, since he is missing its complete context. As a great part of something is surely its relationships to those things that relate to it, and its place within its context – and this is lacking from him. So it comes out that his desire is his unresolvable burden; and his longing is his unassuageable pain. Not so is the one who knows something in its context. When he examines it, it is clearly revealed in his eyes as it [actually] is. He grows in his understanding of that to which he turns and he enjoys the beauty of his work and is exhilarated. And, in general, that which one needs to examine about his subject is [the knowledge of] its true place that we mentioned. And that is because when we surely examine all things – physical and conceptual, which is all that can be grasped by our intellects – it comes out that they are not all of one type or one function, but rather of different types and differing functions. And according to the difference in their types, so will their properties and axioms differ. And this is what compels us to distinguish between them with our intellects, so that we may truly understand them – each one according to its axioms. However the first [step in knowledge] of the types and functions is one. And that is to know to which one of them the subject belongs, meaning to the part or the whole, to the specific or the category, to the cause or the effect, to the subject or its associations. And this is what is required to know about a subject first: Is it the whole thing or a part, a category or a specific, is it a cause or an effect, is it the [actual] subject or an association?
https://www.sefaria.org/Derekh_Hashem%2C_Introduction.2?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
Systems Community of Inquiry 
You must be logged in to post a comment.