Derek Hitchins

System engineering is the art and science of creating effective systems, using whole system, whole life principles.

— Derek Hitchins

A system is an open set of complementary, interacting parts, with properties, capabilities and behaviours of the set emerging both from the parts and from their interactions to synthesize a unified whole.

— Derek Hitchins

The Holy Grail of systems engineering, a generic systems methodology has been the subject of the author’s ongoing research for over 20 years.

— Derek Hitchins

The real world is made from open, interacting systems, behaving chaotically.

— Derek Hitchins

The world about us can be looked at in a variety of ways. One way is to see the world as made up from many interacting systems: weather, societal, economic, ecological, floral, faunal, tectonic plate, oceanic, and so on. This is very much a connected view of the world: nothing is isolated and totally independent; everything is part of something bigger, and everything comprises many interacting parts — subsystems.

— Derek Hitchins

There seem to be two fundamental schisms in thinking: the hard/soft and the open/closed.

— Derek Hitchins

For continued system cohesion, the mean rate of system adaptiation must equal or exceed the mean rate of change of environment.

— Derek Hitchins

Emergence is the phenomenon of properties, capabilities and behaviours evident in the whole system that are not exclusively ascribable to any of its parts. Classic examples of emergence include: self awareness from the human brain; the pungent smell of ammonia emerging from two colorless, odorless gases-nitrogen and hydrogen; and so on.

— Derek Hitchins

\x93The term (system-of-systems) is being applied to the creation of new systems by bringing together existing operational systems under a single umbrella and, presumably, creating or adapting links and interactions between the operational systems, which become subsystems of the higher level umbrella system.\x94

— Derek Hitchins

Architecture is defined as the art and science of creating buildings. Systems engineering may be similarly defined as the art and science of creating systems.

— Derek Hitchins