Architecture is defined as the art and science of creating buildings. Systems engineering may be similarly defined as the art and science of creating… - Derek Hitchins

System engineering is the art and science of creating effective systems, using whole system, whole life principles.

The world about us can be looked at in a variety of ways. One way is to see the world as made up from many interacting systems: weather, societal, economic, ecological, floral, faunal, tectonic plate, oceanic, and so on. This is very much a connected view of the world: nothing is isolated and totally independent; everything is part of something bigger, and everything comprises many interacting parts — subsystems.

For continued system cohesion, the mean rate of system adaptation must equal or exceed the mean rate of change of environment.

A system is an open set of complementary, interacting parts, with properties, capabilities and behaviours of the set emerging both from the parts and from their interactions to synthesize a unified whole.