Political, Social, and Biological Systems
The studying of behavior patterns of political, social, and biological systems began in earnest in the middle of the twentieth century. The underlying principles of closed-loop control in mechanical and electrical systems had been studied earlier by many
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Abstract The studying of behavior patterns of political, social, and biological systems began in earnest in the middle of the twentieth century. The underlying principles of closed-loop control in mechanical and electrical systems had been studied earlier by many professionals in other disciplines. Professor Jay W. Forrester of MIT led the study of the behaviors of social and business systems based on the principles of feedback and closed loop. What he found was a large measure of commonality in the behavior patterns of the systems in these various disciplines. This chapter is an introduction to the behaviors of political, economic, social, and natural systems. It starts with the history of the study of such systems and shows how they are depicted by causal loop diagrams. There is discussion of biofeedback, dead time and lag, and system hierarchies. That is followed by a case study on urban youth violence. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the advantages and limitations of causal loop diagrams and with an example of system dynamic approach in our daily lives.
3.1
Jay W. Forrester and the History of System Dynamics
The person who spearheaded the study of the dynamics of business, economic, and social systems was Jay W. Forrester, a professor in the Sloan School of Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Forrester came to MIT in 1939 as a graduate student in electrical engineering. He first worked as a research assistant under Professor Gordon Brown, the founder © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 A. Ghosh, Dynamic Systems for Everyone, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43943-3_3
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of Servomechanism Laboratory in MIT and did research on feedback control mechanisms in engineered systems. At the end of World War II, he pioneered the use of digital computers in an aircraft flight simulator for the US Navy. In 1947, he became the director of MIT’s newly founded Digital Computer Laboratory. There he was instrumental in the creation of WHIRLWIND I, MIT’s first general-purpose digital computer. During the design and construction of the computer, Forrester was one of the inventors of random-access magnetic core memory, which became the industry standard for the next 20 years until it was replaced by solid-state memory chips.
3.1.1 System Dynamics While managing the computer laboratory along with his work on simulation and feedback control of engineered systems, Forrester gained an appreciation of the difficulties that executives face in managing businesses and other organizations. He concluded that social systems are much harder to simulate and control than physical or engineered systems. Thus, the management problems in an industry are more formidable than engineering or technical challenges. In 1956, Forrester switched his focus from engineering to management by accepting a professorship in the newly formed MIT School of Management, which was later renamed as the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. There his aim was to use his knowledge of the be
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