Symmathesy adds to Systems Thinking by:

  • changing the vocabulary away from a mechanistic worldview
  • focussing on the connections or interfaces between the parts (now known as vitae)
  • not neglecting time, change and learning.

Still, to me as an engineer this sounds a lot like boxes that each might do Bayesian inference and communicate via changing interfaces.

Everything is a process. There is no such thing as a “finished product” (see this take on software engineering).

And the real world is just incredibly complex (e.g. read this great The New Yorker article about Why Paper Jams Persist).

Maybe my frustration with “everything being imperfect” (and “nothing is simple if you just look close enough”) is rooted in looking at the world in terms of static parts, seeing that every part is flawed, instead of recognizing that the whole (the symmathesy) is an ever changing process and accepting that. But still, perfection, simplicity and truth are such alluring concepts…