Thinking in Systems: A Primer
ISBN:9781603580557 read summary

This book was a hard one to really get interested in. Things are connected to other things, and the connections are sometimes complicated. Since I am an ecologist, perhaps this is a bit too obvious.

Author Donella Meadows writes well (okay... dry), but Thinking in Systems: A Primer, just doesn't set off any new "thinking bells" for me. Look at any problem in only one or two dimensions, and you will have an incomplete picture of what is happening and what can happen.

C.S. Holling's note that ecological systems have the characteristics of complexity, uncertainty, and surprise meshes well with Meadows' perspectives.

Pages 1-100 provide a brief description of systems analysis concepts that the author, Donella Meadows, used to develop software models. That part reads almost like a manual. It's fairly straight forward.

Pages 101-to the end are pure political polemics. Meadows prattles on advancing a left-wing political agenda using cheap shots and weak arguments that only a Marxist academic would seriously consider.

It's laughably sad when she blasts capitalism while heaping praise on Karl Marx. Unfortunately for the book, the reason her arguments are so weak is that she applies different standards to what she supports and opposes. She's made up her mind. It's black and white. One can do no wrong, the other no right.

Truth be told, systems analysis does not favor any economic system or political ideology. Perhaps that is why Meadows chose not to publish the book during her lifetime. Her colleagues published it for her posthumously.

Meadows also wrote the Club of Rome book Limits to Growth, which modeled the entire world using 1000 formulas in her systems software. She extrapolated the simple model into the future, and predicted catastrophic doom for planet Earth unless population and economic growth were drastically reduced. Although she does discuss the World model, she does not address the legitimate concerns about limits, where model use is useful and appropriate and where it is not appropriate or responsible.

Ultimately, Meadows uses systems analysis like a big wooden club to advance her political views. The reader should at least be forewarned, because that is a significant limitation on the usefulness of the book. If you tend to hold similar views, you may like the book. If you do not share those views, you may want to keep looking.

This is the BEST book on Systems Thinking I have read so far. My hats off to Donella Meadows for making the principles and truths about the functioning of systems so easily accessible to us by looking at common day-to-day systems that we see or participate in, in light of these principles. The book is such an easy read! We recognize the principles and realize that we have intuitively known and seen them in action all along and even learnt most of them formally only to forget them eventually. Yet, there is a freshness in relearning them with Donella as our guide. We actually learn when and how to apply these principles and understand systems that we participate in or are of interest to us very deeply. The simplicity in which they are presented by Donella speaks volumes of her deep understanding, knowledge, greatness and humility.

I have read other books on the same subject where I had to throw down the books in disgust as one author wrote copious paragraphs on why he should be recognized as the father of systems thinking and rest of the book was pretty much unreadable, and another author tried very hard to be clever and make the topic very intriguing and thought provoking but was nowhere close to it except in his own mind.

Thanks Dana! I am going to read this book several times over. It is life changing. And, I truly mean it.

In her "Note from the Editor," Diana Wright advises the reader that the manuscript for "Thinking in Systems" went unpublished for eight years before Dana Meadows' unfortunate death. Perhaps there was a reason for that: perhaps Dana Meadows recognized that the manuscript was not ready for publication. For the text is uncertain whether it is an introduction to systems analysis as a scientific endeavor, a tableau of counter-intuitive results "explained" by "systems thinking", or a pseudo-analytic basis for the usual policy preferences of the political left. In its raw form, it is a mish-mash of these and other incomplete themes, so by the end you're not sure what the point was.

Were it an introductory text in systems analysis for freshman students of English literature, the first four chapters might be ok. Meadows introduces the notions of stocks, inputs, and outputs in a way that could persuade a non-technical reader that systems analysis was a quantitative science and that the relevant quantities might be computed so long as students from another department were available. She also introduces the notion of feedback and discusses the qualitatively different forms of output resulting from positive or negative feedback. She even discusses the effects on the output of varying feedback delay. This may be about as far as you can go without introducing any math, and as Meadows did not introduce any math, this also might have been a good place to stop.

But sadly, the editors chose to publish what came next. Next was chapter 5, "Systems Traps...and Opportunities." Here we find discussions of a variety of very complicated systems--Romanian and Swedish abortion policy, for example--whose analysis is beyond most humans, let alone freshman literature students. From these discussions Meadows derives generalized "systems traps" and "ways out".

Her first trap, for example, is called "policy resistance": "When various actors try to pull a system stock toward various goals, ...[it] just pulls the stock farther from the goals of the other actors and produces additional resistance...." Translation: people disagree. And here's the "way out": "Let go. Bring in all the actors and use the energy formerly expended on resistance to seek out mutually satisfactory ways for all goals to be realized...." Translation: can't we all just get along. And so on. The "traps" and "ways out" are of a nature so obtuse as to defy any sort of concrete analysis, and as insights they are the sort that cease to seem profound after sophomore year.

And it gets worse. Chapter 6, "Leverage Points--Places to Intervene in a System," might have been a good place to discuss system sensitivity analysis--in a qualitative way, of course--but instead it leans heavily toward the justification of pet liberal causes like environmentalism, government regulation of industry ("The power of big industry calls for the power of big government...; a global economy makes global regulations necessary"), and high taxes on anyone with more wealth than a Dartmouth professor. Chapter 7, "Living in a World of Systems," sets new standards for sentimental whole-earthism, recommending, on the strength of "the tool of systems thinking," that the future be "brought lovingly into being," that we learn to "dance with great powers" as the Eskimo "have turned snow into ... a system with which they can dance." Be caring, be good: these are the final admonishments before the book, thankfully, ends.

In addition, there is economic illiteracy displayed throughout, as for example this, which follows an inept discussion of Adam Smith's "invisible hand": "Economic theory as derived from Adam Smith assumes first that 'homo economicus' acts with perfect optimality on complete information, and second that when many of the species 'homo economicus' do that, their actions add up to the best possible outcome for everybody." This is utter nonsense. Smith says nothing about perfection of optimality nor completeness of information. He merely observes that, in the aggregate, a collection of humans seeking their individual interests often advances the economic welfare of society as a whole. And he certainly does not assert that everybody will arrive at "the best possible outcome." The "invisible hand" operates even in the presence of individual failure and distress, and in some ways because of them.

Winding up for the conclusion, Meadows admits that "[s]ystems thinking has taught me to trust my intuition more and my figuring-out rationality less...." If you've gotten this far in the book, you will certainly agree, for in writing it she gave intuition free rein while rationality was on the Costa del Sol. If you're a student of Dana Meadows, this book will give you considerable insight into her intuition and her prejudices. If you are simply interested in some qualitative discussion of systems, there are some not-bad introductory bits in the first four chapters. But if you're going to buy just one book on systems analysis, buy a different one.

Really good book which helps people to start making sense of systems in business and everyday life. Thought provoking, smart and accessible