Unfortunately, the word "system" has many colloquial meanings, some of which have no place in scientific discussion. In order to exclude such meaning… - Arthur David Hall III

The basic functional elements of any automatic control system: sensing, converting, storing, communicating, computing, programming, regulating, actuating, and display (Chestnut, 1967). Many kinds of systems in being, speculated about, or even intuited, ranging from computers, most factory processes, communication systems, road networks, automatic farms, etc., have structures which can be invoked as zero-order matches to proposed sets of throughputs, especially for single- thread designs. This method of structuring is related closely to analogical design, of which a special form is called synectics.

Has mankind evolved to a point that there exists, or that with creative additions and re-combinations of modest proportions, there can be shown to be available, a common systems methodology, in terms of which we can conceive of, plan, design, construct, and use systems (procedures, machines, teams of people) of any arbitrary type in the service of mankind, and with low rates of failure?

History becomes one model needed to give a rounded view of our subject within the philosophy of hierarchical holographic modeling, defined as using a family of models at several levels to seek understanding of diverse aspects of a subject and thus comprehend the whole.