Key Vocabulary: System

           The notion "system" is a point of view.

           "System" corresponds to a man-created general conceptual model for coherent, complex and more or less identifiable and permanently observed real world entities. "A system is a set of elements dynamically interacting and organized in relation to a goal" (de Rosnay).

           "A set of parts with a common destiny,which maintain their interrelations, even when placed in a different environment"(Bonsack).

           "A set of interrelated elements ... a system is an entity which is composed of at least two elements and a relation that holds between each of its elements and at least one other element in the set. Each of a system's elements is connected to every other element, directly or indirectly. Furthermore, no subset of elements is unrelated to any other subset" (Ackoff)

           "A grouping of interrelated elements possessing a boundary and functional unity. Each of the elements of a system is related, directly or indirectly, to all other elements so that a change in any element, to a greater or lesser degree changes the entire system. A system is distinguished from an aggregate by the interrelatedness of its elements" (Dechert).

           "A system is a dynamic, organized, delimited, open, persistent, composite whole. It is volutionary, comprised of at least one loop and at least one link which manifest the aspects of content, form, function, and control, together with timing and scaling factors, relative to an environment and relevant to a percipient" (McNeil).

           "A system is a complex object every part of which is related to some other component of the same object" (Bunge)

           An Anticipatory System is a "system that possesses on-going capabilities of building relevant systems models of its environment and is able to use these models for making decisions and actions that optimize specific goals. This means that an on-going systems modeling of relevant aspects of the environment will be an essential feature of the decision-making infrastructure of organizations. This implies that expertise in systems science will be in increasing demand by organizations in the information society" (Klir)

           Rosen observed that "the essence of anticipatory behavior ... involves the concept of feedforward, rather than feedback". Indeed: "the essence of feedback control is that it is error-actuated; in other words the stimulus to corrective action is the discrepancy between the system 's actual present state and the state the system should be in. Stated otherwise, a feedback control system must already be departing from its nominal behavior before control begins to be exercised". As to the feedforward system, its basic condition is: "that present change of state is determined by an anticipated future state, computed in accordance with some internal model of the world"