• 《Wisdom for breakthrough comes from Systems Thinking》

If we can find a way of making sense of the complexity of our body by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. We should be able to use this way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts to discover the so called “leverage points”!

What is systems thinking?

Systems thinking is a way of exploring and developing effective action by looking at connected wholes rather than separate parts. Systems thinking is a powerful approach to support evidence based decision making and is essential to successful delivery of complex projects where there are many many possible solutions.

Within systems thinking there are the following key concepts to guide us to new understanding of our body:

1. Elements – Parts, wholes and layers. All systems are similar. For example they have an environment, sub-systems and interactions. Understanding of basic systems theory helps ensure that solutions are viable to improve the system performance and effectiveness.

2. Relationship – InterConnections and loops. Understanding how different parts interact is one of the most powerful tools to solve some of the most intractable situations. System dynamics has been used to describe complex situations and evaluate alternative technical solutions.

3. Structure – Structures of Synergy supporting the sustainable functions and operations to serve the purposes of the whole. The terms “agonist' and ‘antigonist' used in anatomy and medicine are the parts interconnected by the opposite forces to form a synergetic structure with patterns of physical behavior. We can often observe the cyclic patterns of energy in time. We can also understand the nature of self-organization and growth in organic systems such as human body.

4. Purpose – Processes and how change happened. The systems approach is core to improving the complex systems. If done right it will trigger the transformation across the board within the system. It has been used to get humans on the moon, win the Battle of Britain and transform major corporations.

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   The physicist and chemist Ilya Prigogine was a physical chemist and Nobel laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. He formulated the principle such as "order through fluctuations" or "order out of chaos", and the forerunner of the principle of self-orgaznization. A dissipative system is a thermodynamically open system which is operating in and out of thermodynamic equilibrium in an environment with which it exchanges energy and matter.A dissipative structure is a dissipative system that has a dynamical regime that is in some sense in a reproducible steady state. This reproducible steady state may be reached by natural evolution of the system. Examples in everyday life include convection, turbulent flow, cyclones, hurricanes and living organisms.
   

 

Evolutionary thermodynamics and complex system theory provide a potential scientific background for understanding the general behaviour of living systems. They also provide an opportunity for understanding nature, and our body. Knowledge of nature and our body must come from a global, systemic view of events and from study of interactions between different elements in the various forms of matter, energy and information in time and space. The perception of complexity and dissipation in far from equilibrium systems gives a theoretical framework to study the dynamics of natural systems, flows of energy and matter, information exchange and the spontaneous formation of ordered structures. There is usually patterns in these flows of energy and matter we can anticipate, which provide useful clues in identifying the leverage points to disrupt the behavior of the system.