Trans-Disciplinary Systems as Complex Systems

Abstract

The system
concept is a widely-used concept in research and practice. Already in the 50s
of the previous century, a community was created to investigate interrelationships
between domains and create a theory surpassing and comparing domains. The
General Systems Theory (GST) community has tried to come up with such a theory
for several decades. The ambition has grown more realistic in the years after,
recognizing that an all-encompassing theory would not be possible. Since then,
systems research was aimed at generating useful and usable approaches to
compare and interrelate domains, thus creating a trans-disciplinary approach to
enable description and analysis of large, and even complex, systems. The
concept of systems, however, is often loosely used. Levels of abstraction are neglected,
and interrelationships between systems ignored. In this paper, the concept of
system is put in historical context, and further elaborated upon in the context
of complex and trans-disciplinary systems. Two examples of transdisciplinary
systems are presented and discussed to illustrate the use of the system
concept.