The notion of a system, although central to system engineering, is very loosely defined.
A Multi Scale Definition of a System
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The notion of a system, although central to system engineering, is very loosely defined. In order to understand and reach beyond the limits of "traditional" system engineering, an improved definition of a system is required. Such a definition has to be able to capture the multi scale aspect of systems; it has to capture the substantive, the structural and the dynamic aspects of systems; and it has to acknowledge the unavoidable entanglement of the subjectivity and objectivity in the human conceptualization of systems. Such a definition underpins the analytic and synthetic aspects of complex-system engineering and is presented in this paper.