open system definition

An open system is a type of system that, due to its characteristics, exchanges information, energy and/or matter with its environment, environment or suprasystem. In other words, it is a system that has external interactions.

These interactions can take the form of transfers of information, energy or material within or outside the boundaries of the system, depending on the discipline that defines the concept. An open system contrasts with the concept of an isolated system that does not exchange energy, matter, or information with its surroundings.

In practice there is no such thing as a completely open or completely isolated system; there are different degrees of openness of a system.

The open system concept was formalized within a framework that allowed the interrelation of the theory of the organism, thermodynamics and the theory of evolution, a concept that was expanded with the advent of information theory and, later, of systems theory. . Today the concept has its applications in the natural and social sciences.

In the natural sciences, an open system is one whose boundary is permeable to both energy and mass. For example, a tree is an open system because it exchanges matter with its environment. Carbon dioxide, light, water, minerals enter the tree… and leaves, oxygen, waste…

In thermodynamics, a closed system, on the other hand, is permeable to energy but not to matter.

The definition of an open system assumes that there are energy supplies that cannot be depleted; in practice, this energy is supplied by some source in the surrounding environment, which can be treated as infinite for the purposes of the study.

Another example of an open system is the radiant energy system, which is one that receives its energy from solar radiation – an energy source that can be considered inexhaustible for all practical purposes. A closed system contains limited energies.

An important property of open systems is that the time evolution equations, called the equations of motion of that system, depend on variables and factors contained outside the system, in its environment. On the other hand, a closed system depends only on itself.

Examples of open systems

Examples of open systems are: a human being, a company, a state, a cell, a dog.

A tree from the systemic point of view

Open system in social sciences

In the social sciences, an open system is a process of exchanging materials, energy, people, capital, and information with its environment. The Franco-Greek philosopher Kostas Axelos argued that seeing the «world system» as inherently open (albeit unified) would solve many of the problems of the social sciences, including that of praxis (the relationship between knowledge and practice), in a similar way. that various disciplines of the social sciences would work together instead of creating a monopoly in which the world would only appear at the sociological, political, historical, or psychological level. Axelos argues that theorizing a closed system contributes to making it closed, and is therefore a conservative approach. The Althusserian concept of overdetermination (based on Sigmund Freud) posits that there are always multiple causes for every event.

David Harvey uses this to argue that when systems like capitalism enter a crisis phase, it could happen through one of several elements, such as gender roles, relationship to nature/environment, or accumulation crises. . Analyzing the crisis of accumulation, Harvey argues that phenomena such as foreign direct investment, privatization of state-owned resources, and accumulation by dispossession act as necessary outlets when capital has accumulated too much in private hands and cannot circulate effectively in private hands. the market. He cites as examples the forced displacement of Mexican and Indian peasants since the 1970s and the Asian and Southeast Asian financial crisis of 1997-8, which involved the «hedge fundraising» of national currencies.

Structural functionalists like Talcott Parsons and neofunctionalists like Niklas Luhmann have incorporated system theory to describe society and its components.