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Discussion on: What is a system?

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Dustin King

I'd define it as a thing with one* or more interacting parts, considered together. But each one of those parts could be considered a system either by itself or consisting of smaller parts, or you could consider a different grouping. So it's a grouping for human understanding, not necessarily a perfect description of reality.

(* Would it make sense to call something with only one part a system? I would say yes, as long as it has some kind of behavior (such as input/output). But then this is just a human grouping, meant to allow the same kind of language we use to talk about multi-part systems to apply to single-part ones.)