What isn’t in a System? — pt.1
Recognising obscured liminality in Systems Design.
Systems Thinking emerged in the 1930s as a holistic approach to solving increasingly complex problems in increasingly complex environments. As a combination of General Systems Theory, cybernetics, and complexity theory, Systems Thinking paints a picture of the inherent dynamicity, relationality, and complexity of the rules, inputs, processes, and outputs that form existence.
Systems Thinking has been gaining relevance in the past few decades, most notably with Donella Meadows making it more accessible outside of specialist disciplines. Design, given the vast breadth of knowledge and practices it touches, has found a particular fascination with it. This has, naturally, prompted many designers to start calling themselves ‘systems designers’ or ‘systems thinkers’ (including myself). But before doing so, I want to explore what it truly means to ‘think’ in systems.
A traditional solutionist understanding of systems sees one as a group of interdependent, interacting parts that form a complex whole to achieve a specific purpose. This, of course, is the most common understanding of systems and the foundation of Systems Thinking and Systems Design as we know it. However, Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory provides a less teleological perspective — a system can be understood as a collection of (biotic and abiotic) actors and their interactions (networks) that form or form from their existence — the key differential being the flat distribution of agency in the latter. An actant is understood as anything that produces an effect on another, and is instead treated as an equal part of a relational assemblage of actors and networks.
Traditional Systems Design intends to use Systems Thinking as a means to an end (in fact, design itself has been reduced to a ‘problem-solving’ activity, one that functions in short sprints that are bound by project timelines). I’d like to explore what Systems Design might look like if we approach it from a different perspective — one that escapes the epistemic bounds of capitalism. What are we losing by reducing a system to only what we can understand? What have we lost due to the fragmentation of knowledge, exacerbated by capitalist logics, in the process of achieving ‘growth’ and ‘progress’? What can we learn by looking beyond dominant Eurocentric epistemologies?
Visualising a system
A system can be as simple as a light bulb and the switch that controls its on/off status. However, as you identify more variables — the room it is in, the size of this room, the power consumed by the bulb to light up the room, the source of the electricity that powers it, the dam that was constructed to generate this electricity, the river that was redirected to build the dam, the lives that were displaced by the dam and the river — the complexity of the system in question is endless. The more you think, the more complex it gets. The butterfly effect comes to mind — everything seems to be interconnected and it seems impossible to fathom just how many networks there are between all the actors in your system. If you performed a mapping exercise, you would quickly realise a system cannot be fully visualised in a 2-dimensional plane (traditional systems mapping) because it will obscure certain interactions. You might then try to expand it in 3 dimensions (the way Geographic Information Systems (GIS) do), until you eventually realise it really can’t be drawn in its totality at all. Even if you could, given this endless complexity, what of all the gaps in between and beyond that you can’t possible visualise or even conceive of?
“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems
Systems cannot be conceived of in their totality, at least not by us or anything we know of, neither technologically nor mathematically. Systems Design in practice, as we know it, is a question of drawing a boundary around the system(s) in question and asking what is connected, why, and to what end. But in a world of ever-increasing complexity, where the sum total complexity of the various complexities of wicked problems (and how they relate to each other) is such that it is a “total that cannot be totalised” — how do we even begin solving these complex problems using Systems Thinking?
Capitalism has created paradigm of false control where attempts are made to conceive of and manipulate systems in their totality, ignoring the fact that systems in their totality are inherently incomprehensible. We force linear, mechanistic thinking onto natural systems. We treat Systems Thinking and Design as a means to an end rather than ways to enable sustained planetary coexistence. We are quick to map and use the systems that matter to the problem at hand while ignoring the systems, actors, and networks that are obscured — either due to a lack of trying or simply an inability to conceive of them. We continually choose to disregard things we can’t understand in favour of an imaginary moving goalpost that dances to the tune of productivism, shifting further every quarter. The lasting effects of colonialism ring loud across the planet, deeply ingrained in the ways we think and act.
Solving the wicked problems of the world requires a transformational shift in the way humanity conducts itself. It requires collective, situated responses that embrace complexity without forcing understanding, that recognise the entanglement of human and nonhuman worlds, that prioritise a collective effort towards futures of planetary wellbeing over immediate profit.
Systems Design must still deal in solving complex problems, but its focus must broaden to include things it normally wouldn’t venture to consider.
This, obviously, is easier said than done. So where do we begin?
Shifting our attention towards ‘gaps’
A recent publication by Fourquier et al. (2026) calls for an exploration into what they call a ‘gap system’ of thinking. A metaphorical connection is drawn between the gaps that form while weaving yarns and the gaps that form in knowledge — highlighting their significance as “sites of reflection, emergence, and transition”. An emphasised focus on these gaps over existing linear knowledge can give way to new modes of thinking, to new interactions between disciplines, and to new practices — leading us towards regenerative futures.
I have, of late, been enjoying the idea of ‘threads’ as a metaphor for systemic assemblage. Seen as threads, tangible and intangible interactions can be imagined through a vivid picture of entanglement, highlighting the inescapable messiness of existence.
‘Yarning’, I recently learnt, is a conversational mode that various indigenous cultures in Australia use to open dialogue among other humans and between humans and nonhumans. It requires a willingness to listen, understand, and share. The result can be seen as a messy ball of yarn that is far too complex to be understood mathematically, yet somehow easy to grasp at an emotional level.
Tim Ingold’s ‘meshworks’ is another metaphor that goes beyond networks which, he explains, are too static to be an apt representation of the dynamic nature of existence. Meshworks, as opposed to networks, are built from lines of becoming; they better capture the plurality of worlds emerging from multiple actors, their stories, histories, and unique narratives.
Admittedly, trying to imagine systemic assemblage as threads gives us a false sense of commensurability and understanding of existence in its totality. The coming sections, however, explore that there are and will always be gaps in our cognitive abilities that limit our understanding of reality. Although Systems Design must make every effort to widen its general understanding of existence as a whole — through inter/cross/transdisciplinarity and beyond — certain things will remain out of access, even technologically (a point worth bearing in mind as we attempt enter the world of computational ‘intelligence’).
Gaps in Thinking
As you went through the examples above, if your immediate sense was that they are not very actionable metaphors — that is a sign that our understanding of what is ‘actionable’ needs to change. Prevailing Eurocentric narratives have enforced that anything that cannot be ‘measured’ must be incorrect or inaccurate. Capitalist practices have further carried this narrative into nearly every facet of life.
From the very beginning of our educational journeys, we are taught that mathematics, science, play, craft, places of learning, places of entertainment, are all different things. Curriculums are fragmented with no meaningful links built between them, even though everyday occurrences are a complex entanglement of all those things at different times and in different ways. Understandably, as knowledge became far too extensive to be taught as a whole, subjects naturally formed to make them easier to grasp and apply. However, the division of knowledge that we see today, which creates the very foundation of our thinking, is largely done to cater to the market forces that direct education to align with the skills, technologies, and economic outputs demanded by employers in a capitalist ontology. There are massive gaps that have formed between disciplines as we know them. I believe this is, in part, responsible for the social fragmentation we are increasingly experiencing today. Technocratic forces have also separated the arts and humanities from science, creating another gap in knowledge — a loss of meaning, ethics, and human experience beyond raw data and economic priorities.
Gaps in Knowing
When it comes to systemic thinking, we, as humans, have a fundamental cognitive gap in perceiving things that are not in our immediate field of thought. Martin Heidegger (1962), in his analysis of tools, theorises that tools only ‘reveal’ themselves to human beings when broken (present-at-hand), meaning we don’t acknowledge something that exists so long as it continues to function as it should. Your mobile phone and the infinite videos you scroll through are all experienced as extensions of your hand (ready-to-hand) until something stops working — maybe the battery runs out, or you realise you were procrastinating — when it then becomes frustratingly evident that you were scrolling on this rectangular device of doom that has swallowed up 6 hours of your time. (Heidegger’s example was of a broken hammer and a nail, but this example better highlights the increasing level of complexity of material-immaterial entanglement that digital systems have surfaced.)
Graham Harman (2018) takes this idea further with Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) — decentring the human and applying a flat ontology, like Latour’s ANT — and applies it to any system; a system is withdrawn from our understanding until something in that system ceases to function as it should. Timothy Morton then built on this from an ecological lens — one that aptly explores spaces and timescales that human beings cannot possibly comprehend. His concept of Hyperobjects (2013), objects that are “massively distributed in time and space” and are incomprehensible to human beings, posits Global Warming as something we experience the effects of every day but can never truly understand the real scale of. A plastic bag, concrete, our phones, acid rain, fossil fuels, all surface as present-at-hand objects when we try to visualise the hyperobject that is Global Warming, but Global Warming itself is hidden away from our field of comprehension.
Hyperobjects, like threads, are another interesting way to understand systems and their incommensurable qualities. All of these ideas are philosophically fascinating and need a much, much deeper analysis to fully demonstrate. But for the purposes of the argument at hand, they help to illustrate that we are incapable of mapping a system in its entirety even if it is right under our noses. Imagine what we miss, then, that isn’t — entire deep sea ecosystems, mycelial networks, the human microbiome, nonhuman perspectives, erased indigenous histories, and more recently the effects and affects of digital ecosystems.
What can we do about these gaps?
The fact of the matter is that we will never be able to fill every gap. Trying to do so would be a replication of the same logics that capitalism employs — quantification, atomisation, control. What we can begin with is an acknowledgement of our place in the world — as a part of the system we call existence.
Get Tejas Bharadwaj’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Timothy Morton in Ecology Without Nature (2007) rethinks our idea of ‘Nature’ as something ‘over there’ to what is essentially ambience, a quality of the surrounding environment.
Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration.
— Timothy Morton, Ecology Without Nature
We are a part of this ambience just as much as ‘nature’ is. We are Nature. We seem to have forgotten this, and so this fact needs to be re-stated every time Systems Design is considered as a means of solving a problem.
Since we understand the world through disciplinarity, what is truly needed now is a transdisciplinary mode of being. Through transdisciplinarity we can start to explore these gaps without isolating them, as most modern practices do.
Nicolescu (2014) argues that “the reduction of transdisciplinarity to only one of its aspects is very dangerous because it will transform transdisciplinarity into a temporary fashion… Transdisciplinarity has no boundaries”. A truly transdisciplinary approach to Systems Design will mean entering a mindset that understands that the systems we are attempting to draw are not bound to disciplines or any other formulations of capitalist ontology. Sofia Batalha wrote recently that thinking itself is an ecological process — we cannot imagine without the “ecological relationships, material conditions, multispecies encounters, and historical entanglements that make our existence and perception possible”. We are Nature. And so, Systems Design cannot be realised without embracing the complexity that arrives from acknowledging that everything we design is inherently ecological. True Systems Design demands a field of view that exceeds the myopic vision of a capitalist mode of existence. The plurality implicit in complex systems forces Systems Design to account for complex, plural futures — and it is the role of the designer to make this fact explicit.
The way forward
How does one go about simultaneously solving specific problems while also bearing in mind the complexities of wider systemic implications? Do we employ a top-down approach that prioritises the big picture and then addresses smaller problems where they are (for example, clean energy transitions; solar power technology being developed centrally and distributed to various locations) or a bottom-up approach that starts local (for example, grassroots NGOs that solve a specific problem and then scale if possible)? If this article has made any sense so far, it should be evident that the answer can’t possibly be binary. It has to be somewhere in between.
The decision-making behind solutions needs to come from informed, situated responses to various factors in a place while their wider systemic impacts are also examined (for example, Regenerative Design — design that emerges through place-based responses to specific problems, but collectively contributes to overall positive futures). Common ground needs to be found between things that seem to have nothing in common (for example, more-than-human agency and entanglement; how do we theorise with rather than on/for things that aren’t us?).
In the following article, I will share a few examples of people, concepts, and initiatives that are (or have always been) trying to make this happen. It is imperative that we acknowledge and learn from these practices and begin to apply them in our own lives, thereby exploring the gaps in our knowledge that have been ignored because we simply haven’t been taught to explore them.
Systems Design approaches are necessary to start working towards preferred futures that ensure more-than-human planetary sustainment. But if it continues to work within and perpetuates the same reductionist, mechanistic systems and logics of capitalism, the state of the system will never change for the better.
written by a human
References
‘A Brief History of Systems Thinking’ (2024), https://systemsthinkingalliance.org/brief-history-of-systems-thinking/, accessed 31 October 2026.
Being and Time (Macquarrie & Robinson, trans.) (1962).
Butterfly effect | Chaos Theory, Popular Culture, & Facts | Britannica (2026), https://www.britannica.com/science/butterfly-effect, accessed 31 October 2026.
Canina M, Efremenko T, Canina M and Efremenko T (2026) ‘Co-creating sustainable futures — The MUSAE Factory Model for SDG-oriented innovation through art and technology’, AGATHÓN | International Journal of Architecture, Art and Design, 19:346–367, doi:10.69143/2464–9309/19202026.
Fourquier AC, Fantini Van Ditmar D and Nicenboim I (8 June 2026) ‘An exploration into the value of “gap system” within regenerative design’, DRS 2026: Edinburgh, doi:10.21606/drs.2026.1520.
Global Risks Report 2025 (2025) World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2025/, accessed 31 October 2026.
Harman G (1999) ‘Tool-being: Elements in a theory of objects’, https://www.proquest.com/openview/eaf85cddfd55e760aa00fe5ac96f9652/1?cbl=18750&diss=y&pq-origsite=gscholar, accessed 15 April 2025.
— — (2018) Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything, Pelican Books, [London].
Klenk N (2018) ‘From network to meshwork: Becoming attuned to difference in transdisciplinary environmental research encounters’, Environmental Science & Policy, 89:315–321, doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2018.08.007.
Latour B (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/oso/9780199256044.001.0001.
‘Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System’ (n.d.) The Academy for Systems Change, https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/, accessed 4 October 2026.
May M (2025) ‘A Conversation on Contrapractice’, RSD | Systemic Design Symposium, https://rsdsymposium.org/a-conversation-on-contrapractice/, accessed 1 November 2026.
Meadows DH (2009) Thinking in systems: a primer, Earthscan, London.
Morton T (2007) Ecology without nature: rethinking environmental aesthetics, Harvard university press, Cambridge (Mass.).
Nicolescu B (2014) ‘Methodology of Transdisciplinarity’, World Futures, 70(3–4):186–199, doi:10.1080/02604027.2014.934631.
‘(PDF) Theorizing With Nonhumans’ (2026) in ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/403036863_Theorizing_With_Nonhumans, accessed 29 October 2026.
Prall MC and Ounanian K (2026) ‘Arts-based methods for just co-creation of sustainable futures’, Futures, 182:103869, doi:10.1016/j.futures.2026.103869.
Substack (2026) The Ecology of the Imaginable, https://substack.com/inbox/history, accessed 31 October 2026.
