Derek Hitchins - Collected Quotes

"For continued system cohesion, the mean rate of system adaptiation must equal or exceed the mean rate of change of environment." (Derek Hitchins, "Putting systems to work", 1992)

"System engineering is the art and science of creating effective systems, using whole system, whole life principles." (Derek Hitchins, 1995)

"The real world is made from open, interacting systems, behaving chaotically." (Derek Hitchins, "World Class Systems Engineering - the five layer Model", 2000)

"Architecture is defined as the art and science of creating buildings. Systems engineering may be similarly defined as the art and science of creating systems." (Derek Hitchins, "Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management", 2003)

"A system is an open set of complementary, interacting parts, with properties, capabilities and behaviours of the set emerging both from the parts and from their interactions to synthesize a unified whole." (Derek Hitchins, "Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering, and Management", 2003)

"Emergence is the phenomenon of properties, capabilities and behaviours evident in the whole system that are not exclusively ascribable to any of its parts." (Derek Hitchins, "Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management", 2003)

"Emergence is not really mysterious, although it may be complex. Emergence is brought about by the interactions between the parts of a system. The galloping horse illusion depends upon the persistence of the human retina/brain combination, for instance. Elemental gases bond in combination by sharing outer electrons, thereby altering the appearance and behavior of the combination. In every case of emergence, the source is interaction between the parts - sometimes, as with the brain, very many parts - so that the phenomenon defies simple explanation." (Derek Hitchins, "Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management", 2003)

"The term (system-of-systems) is being applied to the creation of new systems by bringing together existing operational systems under a single umbrella and, presumably, creating or adapting links and interactions between the operational systems, which become subsystems of the higher level umbrella system.”" (Derek Hitchins, "Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management", 2003)