The Systems Thinker – Dynamic Systems: Make Better Decisions and Find Lasting Solutions Using Scientific Analysis.

by Albert Rutherford

Understand the complex human factors and challenges associated with change. Increase your tolerance to uncertainty.

“Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.”
– Edward Lorenz

We can encounter chaos in every system around us - even the smallest and simplest ones. Any system can fall into chaos, which prevents us to accurately predict its behavior. Even a small change in the initial conditions can lead to unexpectedly large-scale consequences. Therefore we can often enter in panic, blame actors for events they are not responsible for, and our sense of security in the world can generally decrease.

This book is a primer to nonlinear system dynamics and chaos where the author presents analytical methods, through real life examples, and easy mathematical calculations. By the time you finish this book you’ll understand why some events are out of our control, but there are still ways to manage and live with unpredictability and chaos.

The book is structured systematically, starting with differentiating linear and nonlinear systems, first-order differential equations, bifurcations, phase transition analysis, oscillations, chaos, iterated maps, period doubling, fractals, and strange attractors.

Systems Thinking and Chaos sheds light to why sometimes life sometimes unfolds counter to expectations, and how small changes can lead to tremendously big ones over time.

- Learn the difference between linear and nonlinear systems.
- Deepen your knowledge about the additivity and homogeneity principle.
- How to use synergy and interference in real life.
- What are feedback loops and how can they generate equilibrium?

Explore and fix the “problems that never seem to go away”.
- Learn about the importance of exponentials, power law, and long tail distribution.
- A detailed introduction to chaos theory and the butterfly effect.
- Phase transitions, bifurcation, and strange attractors.
- Discover the world of fractals.

Our beliefs are lenses that enable us to see, to analyze, and understand the world around us. Chaos theories provide new and improved lenses we need to understand our fast-phased, chaotic world.

Get introduced to the world of chaos. Learn about the Raleigh-Benard instability, Metcalf’s Law, Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, the Koch snowflake and others.

Genres: Nonfiction, Logic

224 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 12, 2020

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent introduction to systems thinking and chaos theory. You'd need at least mastery of algebra to understand the sparse math in the book. Mostly it relates analogies for thinking and explains some of the important concepts of non-linear and linear equations. It has some good descriptions and definitions in it, but it also has that are extremely tangled in words. Take one definition of phase transition:
"A phase space of a dynamical system is the gathering of every single condition of the system being referred to. The estimation of the outside conditions at which the change happens is named phase transition." I think this is trying to translate mathematical conditions into words but I find it fairly hard to parse.
It rectifies this later with the more comprehensible
"Phase transitions are when a small change to a quantitative input (we can think of this as the initial condition) results in a qualitative change in the system."
Much better.

Otherwise, I would have preferred a bit more math, but I didn't see anything that seemed way off. It is fairly short and gives you the gist, even if it does not equip you to do any calculations.

[Anu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent intro to systems theory from a subject expert. Picked up this specific book hoping to find a layman's explanation of chaos theory that I can use in explaining the basics - but not the most elegant or accessible introduction. Uses minimal math for an academic book, but be aware that you need non-zero appreciation of algebra to grok the book.

[Denis Romanovsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick short squeeze of system thinking and chaos theory. Just to remind yourself how these concepts are connected.

[KC · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently read Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems: A Primer and Steven Strogatz’ Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, which were about systems thinking and chaos theory, respectively.

This book is a fascinating (yet brief) review of the fundamentals of these two books, with some interesting notes about the convergence between the two. The discussion is insightful, and I love seeing the cross applications of concepts I recently learned.

The main takeaway is that system thinking allows us to approach chaos theory with a toolkit beyond that of a mathematician’s. A systems approach of stocks, flows, feedback loops and other causal maps will help describe a system with far greater agility than mathematical equations, which invariably favors linearity, and tend to reduce compound elements into expressions that, for the sake of chaos they, are irreducible.

Again, I feel compelled to pull out the old' VenSim and start charting some relationships.