ABSTRACT
When is a system transformed so that it has become a different system? The question in this form is misleading. It implies that there exists in reality a system in some objective sense which when changed in some or all of its characteristics becomes a different system. But if all systems are abstractions from reality, are mental constructs, then the system changes when the person who has conceived it determines that it has changed. This is a trivial statement. The question of system transformation becomes important – its exploration may indeed become one of the central purposes of systems analysis – when it is seen in the light of the relationships between some observed or postulated empirical interactions and the conceptual model of them which is the system. Take for instance a balance of power system. This was described in Chapter 9 in terms of certain units, and interactions among them, in a defined environment, and the conditions maximizing the likelihood of the system continuing were explored. The system would be stated to continue unchanged so long as the essential characteristics by which it was defined remained unchanged. The interesting and important questions about systems transformation arise, however, when the system is compared with a real-world situation. If the balance of power model, or conceived system, is compared with eighteenth-century western Europe, how far are the characteristics and processes of the model observable in that situation, how and why did they continue, how and why did they change, and so how and why did the appropriateness of the balance of power model break down so that a different system conceptualization is needed to describe the post-1789 situation? The question with which this chapter opens thus becomes – when do empirical processes which are seen as the referent of a system so change that a new system conceptualization becomes necessary? And the important questions are of course not just when, but how and why.
