Thinking in Systems

Review

This was an excellent introduction to systems thinking — Meadows covers core concepts and terminology, strengths and pitfalls, and approaches, plus she includes explanatory diagrams! I found the elaboration on feedback loops helpful and the discussion about system boundaries interesting. Bonus points for having a summary at the end!

Everything, as they say, is connected to everything else, and not neatly. There is no clearly determinable boundary between the sea and the land, between sociology and anthropology, between an automobile's exhaust and your nose. There are only boundaries of word, thought, perception, and social agreement—artificial, mental-model boundaries.