systems with similar feedback structures produce similar dynamic behaviors
Systems with similar feedback structures produce similar dynamic behaviors. One of the central insights of systems theory, as central as the observation that systems largely cause their own behavior, is that systems with similar feedback structures produce similar dynamic behaviors, even if the outward appearance of these systems is completely dissimilar. A population is nothing like an industrial economy, except that both can reproduce themselves out of themselves and thus grow exponentially. And both age and die. A coffee cup cooling is like a warmed room cooling, and like a radioactive substance decaying, and like a population or industrial economy aging and dying. Each declines as the result of a balancing feedback loop.
Link:: Thinking in systems