Thinking in Systems: International BestsellerThe classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes
"Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins
In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions. |
From inside the book
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... furnace system is to keep a building at a given temperature. One function of a plant is to bear seeds and create more plants. One purpose of a national economy is, judging from its behavior, to keep growing larger. An important function ...
... furnaces and automobile engines, it cannot change quickly to furnaces and engines that burn a different fuel, even if the price of oil suddenly changes. It has taken decades to accumulate the stratospheric pollutants that destroy the ...
... investment capital R fraction of output invested output Figure 14. Figure 13. growth in savings with various interest rates. Figure 18. The furnace warms a cool room, even as. 32 PArT One: SySTem STrUCTUre And BehAviOr.
... furnace). Like all models, the representation of a thermostat in Figure 15 is a simplification of a real home heating system. heat from furnace heat to outside room temperature thermostat setting outside temperature B discrepancy ...
... furnace), Figure 17 shows what would happen, starting with a warm room on a cold day. The assumption is that room insulation is not perfect, and so some heat leaks out of the warm room to the cool outdoors. The better the insulation ...
Contents
11 | |
35 | |
Three Why Systems Work So Well | 75 |
five System Traps and Opportunities | 111 |
Six Leverage PointsPlaces to Intervene in a System | 145 |
Seven Living in a World of Systems | 166 |
Appendix | 187 |
Notes | 204 |