system-environment thinking

With system-environment thinking, the dominant focus is on the relationship of the parts. Also there is the division of the parts into the 'system' an its 'environment', the boundary definition being essential to defining what is the system.

Understanding the whole is not subject to reductionism. This is not an efficient ""if-then' notion in which one can take the parts separately and understand the nature of each part as adding together to give the whole.

Kant's view is the parts are functional and that the relationship between them functions to form the whole, which is a final, mature form.

Variations of how the parts relate to form the whole can exist on the path to the end state, within pre-given limits.

In this teleology there is an end state, or final form, enfolded in the sense that the whole exists in some sense before the parts.

System-environment thinking is also called synthesis, systems thinking, and holistic thinking.