- The Systems Thinker: Essential Thinking Skills For Solving Problems, Managing Chaos, and Creating Lasting Solutions in a Complex World (The Systems Thinker Series)

This is by far, the most comprehensive book that I have ever read on Systems Thinking. Outstanding intellectual journey of science, history and philosophy to develop the systems view of life. While the book is categorized as science oriented given the authors' physics background, the Systems Thinker is so much more than science. The underlying theories apply to all aspects of human activity such as law, economics, society, government etc. The essence of the book is the disconnect between the non-linear processes based on relationships, forms, feedback loops and our linear models that stem from a conventional, cause-effect world view. This gap in thinking and reality explains why humanity faces so many ecological and social problems. The book starts by providing the development from Newtonian mechanistic thinking to an evolving holistic approach and how that transition occurred. It tackles more scientific fields as physics, biology, chemistry, even sociology where changes in focus have been made. He explains how thinking shifted from analyzing small particles to looking things as a whole. We live in a time where all current systems of human thought from physics to politics are dominated by a set of underlying assumptions, that are mostly outdated and no longer work in a very different world that is more interdependent and connected than ever before in human history. Even if you don't have a science background the authors present the material in a coherent way. This is a must read if you are interested in complexity and systems theory or if you are looking at issues of sustainability.

This quick read provides a very good overview of systems thinking. It helps one get familiar with the vocabulary and model types that are necessary for building a good foundation of knowledge. It’s a great jumping off point and I found myself constantly highlighting passages and ideas to come back to.

This book helped me to learn and understand concepts and ideas that I was oblivious to. The Systems Thinker is a must have for anyone who wants to start learning to think and reason in an effective and successful way. I enjoyed this book greatly, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about logical thinking. One does need to have a beginners understanding to some fundamental concepts, but otherwise the book is great for 14 years up. The book is also easy to read and understand. Thanks for a great and inligtening book!

If you studied a field other than science at a college or university which was heavily focused on the sciences, as I did, you'd readily recognize the pattern of this book. But not in a good way. Every aspect of an introductory book should be laid out in straightforward, careful fashion. The author clearly worked toward that goal. Many of the basic concepts are defined in easy-to-understand terms, virtually every concept is supported by an easy-to-understand example. In those ways, this book does, in fairness, remind me of the texts I studied in science courses at my university. Where the book falls short it also reminds me of the texts I studied in science courses at my university. Taking the book as a whole (in a sense, at a systems level), my overall impression of this book's shortcomings is that it does not seem that the author wrote at any meaningful length as part of his day-to-day work, which might be expected from reading his brief biography. It also does not seem that the publisher devoted any meaningful effort to editing the text. It's easy to criticize a text for tangential sentences written without tying up the loose ends of the tangential sentences, faulty subject-verb agreement, lack of parallel structure (all of which are found in this book with some frequency). Those unnecessarily distract from the author's points, but not so badly that the learning points are obscured, they just leave this reader (and expect I speak for more than myself) with minor disappointments about the author's writing abilities and the publisher's lack of meaningful editing effort. More importantly, the arguments in favor of systems thinking are incomplete or disorganized (a few in this book are incomplete, most are complete but the sentences are out of order - sometimes very badly, distracting the reader from the learning points by forcing the reader either to fill in gaps of basic information or to reconstruct paragraphs of out-of-order sentences to make sense of the argument. The gaps and lack of order don't give any impression of being used as a pedagogical tool to force the reader to think, they apparently were simply poor writing. I spend time on them here in this review because, in my experience, the author forced me thru those corrective steps *so* frequently that it was badly distracting from the overall purpose of the book, so much so that I was already struggling halfway thru the book with the idea of finishing the book. After all, I was here for the sake of learning about systems thinking, not to decode what the author meant (which contributed virtually nothing to understanding systems thinking, it only left me less and less interested in the subject) . But for the sake of gleaning as much as I could from the book and having a growing sense that I wanted to write a review of it, I did finish this book. The Conclusion section of the book is truly excellent, it's obvious that the author spent a great deal of time and effort on this, so good that I think it would have worked just as well (maybe even better) in the Introduction section of the book. I think this is a worthy subject (systems affect all of us, and we should all know more about systems thinking), taught by a worthy teacher (he obviously is very bright and knows what he's talking about...if he were teaching in a classroom, I imagine his lectures would be better than the written material), with enough good material to justify 3 stars. If you want good material and don't mind deciphering the writing of a technical mind, this book is for you.

The book is a great read. It teaches you systems thinking fundamentals, which are key in wholesome problem sloving. I really recommend it to anyone who wants to provide lasting solutions to individual and corporate challenges.

Eu esperava encontrar mais exemplos de aplicação, aprofundamento no pensamento sistêmico e melhor explicação de frameworks para uso dele. Encontrei uma explicação rasa para o preço e tamanho da leitura. Alguns pequenos erros de edição também, com textos se repetindo.

Contains some useful examples and anecdotal evidence but is not well written compared to many other books on similar subjects.

I have read several books on critical thinking and mental models. This book connects it all in systems thinking. I never made those connections before. Quite an eye opener!

Material can benefit from better organization, explanation and uniform treatment. Also, looks a bit raw, draft like with most of the pictures compressed horizontally and turned upside down. Expected better for the price.

The world is more complex than most people think. It's not just input and output, it's about systems. The book does a good job of giving a structured overview of the topic with good examples.