John Boardman - Collected Quotes

 "A system, it is said, is a collection of parts together with their relationships that forms a whole that serves a purpose that is meaningful to the system alone, that is, not to its parts or their relationships." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"Closed boundaries are simply not an option for any system. While being too open is risky, a system can only learn what this means by being willing to be open in the first place, and then adapting its behavior toward future openness based on its experience with its formative exchanges with the exterior. […] Openness becomes a powerful notion that systems of all types can exploit in order to do better, be better, and find better places to live. Openness becomes a portal for exercising other systems concepts such as boundary, wholes, exchanges (inputs and outputs), and process. It opens up new worlds, and closes down a few too." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"First, we affirm that all models are wrong, some of them are useful. Since a model is an abstraction of reality, and that too only from a particular perspective, they are fundamentally wrong because they are not reality. That gives no license to models that are wrongly built - after all, two wrongs don’t make a right. So usefulness, or purpose, is what determines a model’s role, given that it is correctly formed. Models therefore have teleological value even though they are ontologically erroneous." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"Some might say that the processes are in effect the functions of the components of the system. This would not be quite correct. The processes indeed comprise these component functions, denoting a change in scale - from system level to component level - but the processes tie these component functions together in a very real structural sense, although this is integration of behavior of elements rather than of elements themselves. What we do find, however, is the continual interaction of the forces of separation and integration, and the interdependencies of structure, function, and process across. scales. This is the phenomenon of systems thinking. Greater depths of this thinking require attention be paid to these three: scale, moving across scale, and discovering new behaviors as we go to higher scales." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

 "Structure defines components and their relationships; structures may possess both rigidity and flexibility, the one not necessarily being a contradiction of the other. Function defines the outcome (or desired outcome) or behaviors of the system. Process explicitly defines the sequence of activities and the know-how required to produce the function given the structure. Thus, these three form an interdependent set of variables that can define the whole, given a knowledge of that whole’s purpose or context." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"Systems thinking tries to find out what is not there, not just what is missing." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"The notion of feedback to regulate servomechanisms is the control engineer’s contribution to understanding how systems can be sensed, and then sufficient sense made of this for the purpose of having the system behave agreeably. The cleverness of control has been to influence systems behavior when a priori knowledge of that system is difficult or impossible to achieve. Usually you need to know what it is you are controlling to have a chance of regulating its behavior; that is one consequence of the law of requisite variety." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"Two systems concepts lie at the disposal of the architect to reflect the beauty of harmony: parsimony and variety. The law of parsimony states that given several explanations of a specific phenomenon, the simplest is probably the best. […] On the other hand, the law of requisite variety states that for a system to survive in its environment the variety of choice that the system is able to make must equal or exceed the variety of influences that the environment can impose on the system." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)

"[…] systems engineering is a process - a process that transforms a functional need, a mission capability requirement, or market opportunity into a complete description for a system that meets the need." (John Boardman & Brian Sauser, "Systems Thinking: Coping with 21st Century Problems", 2008)