I assume by “particles” you mean “agents,” to use proper terminology.

The notion that different agents in a system should be alike is strange, and not in line with general ideas in complexity science.

According to your views an ecosystem would also not be a system, because no two species are like the others. Because the very definition of a species _requires_ that it is different from all the others.

But the environment it operates in may be complex which makes troubleshooting not so straight forward…

Read under the heading MYTH OF INTERCHANGEABILITY in my post
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2010/03/03/the-myth-of-knowledge-objects-the-gap-between-knowing-and-acting/

The ‘system’ is simply an abstraction of what’s real. The system itself is not.

However, sometimes a new word is necessary so that we use a different lens when trying to understand a particular problem. For example, we can say, “falls” when we drop a ball and it falls onto the ground. However, to understand why the ball falls down, we need another word – gravity. Gravity adds a new layer of complexity, but it is necessary for greater understanding.

To understand what I mean in the context of human relationships, you could read my manifesto in which I’ve applied Systems Thinking to the boss-subordinate relationship. The manifesto is available on ChangeThis.com at http://changethis.com/19.bossdictator (or you could read my full book of course!).

Chetan Dhruve
Author, Why Your Boss is Programmed to be a Dictator
Using Systems Thinking to understand boss behaviour

Surely any group of 2 or more people is a system.

Any group of people interact socially – they also live inside a group filter of a culture, they each have an individual filter which are their values that they learned from people and experiences close to them and they all inhabit the larger culture of the larger group.

Hofsteder’s work show that All IBMers are not the same – each regional and national group operates very differently – The org chart looks the same – but the human system and how it interacts , how it sees the world is very different.

The larger culture is affected by the world around them and interacts with the world – for we are now a planetary species that shapes and is shaped by the world – our culture enables us to react properly or not to what confronts us.

We are the only species to use culture as our main adaptive process – all others have to make physical changes. We used fire, clothes, hunting tools etc to cope with the Ice Age.

Our culture in organizations also blinds us to opportunities – see what is happening to the media as most are locked into the old and cannot and will not see the alternatives – the history of medicine is full of stories about outright rejection of new things that work – this is not stupidity it is how cultures work.

Culture not the organization itself is the system that we all swim in. Differences in culture express themselves in what organizations value and hence see and react to.

Again sorry if I am just butting in and have missed lots of what you have said in the past but I am reacting to your point that “Organizations are not systems”

Chetan’s statement; ‘A system is an entity that exists because of the interactions among its parts. Without the interactions, there is no system (i.e. a pile of sand). Hence, every relationship between two people (or more) is a system.’, is a classic example of how people define systems and in my experience you end up arguing more about the definition than doing anything of value. Of what practical value is it to say that, ‘every relationship between two people (or more) is a system’? To me, every relationship is exactly that, a relationship, calling it a system simply adds more complexity as you now have two ‘things’ to deal with. One is the actual relationship which can be observed as patterns of interaction, and the other is this so called ‘system’ which is an abstraction and often a reification of the process of relationship. The system, as Chetan says, does not exist without the interaction so why bother with it at all? Why spend time looking for this abstraction when the pattern of interactions is right there happening in the living present.

I have yet to find anyone who has found a ‘system’ when it comes to people interacting that is anything other than the patterning of interactions between people and it is much, much more practical to work with that patterning of interactions than trying to understand this abstraction called a system.

In my experience calling interactions between people, systems, far too often takes people out of what is really happening, takes people away from taking their actual experience seriously. They move into this abstracted world of systems and deal with what is happening as if it was happening outside of the real interactions they are having and that just makes things harder and more complicated to work with. It also stimulates very traditional thinking about organizations and how they operate. For me, I just don’t find the concept very practical or useful.

A system is an entity that exists because of the interactions among its parts. Without the interactions, there is no system (ie a pile of sand). Hence, every relationship between two people (or more) is a system.

Organizations are fundamentally composed of human interactions – hence organizations are systems too (if human beings in an organization don’t interact, we effectively have a pile of human beings).

If there are more than two people in the system, the removal of one person apparently doesn’t make the system disappear. I would argue that indeed, the old system has disappeared (say, one with four people) and a different one (with three people) has come into existence.

Hence, given that human relationships are systems, every organization is really a collection of many systems, turning into a large system itself.

Chetan Dhruve
Author, Why Your Boss is Programmed to be a Dictator
Using Systems Thinking to understand boss behaviour