 System's thinking is what we call a paradigm. A dictionary definition of a paradigm would read something like this. A worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject. Thus, we can understand a paradigm to be the foundation that shapes our way of seeing the world. It is the assumptions and methods out of which we build our theories. Now there are two fundamentally different paradigms within science. One is called analysis, and the other, synthesis. Analysis is the traditional method of reasoning taken within modern science, whereby we try to gain an understanding of a system by breaking it down into its constituent elements. On the other hand, synthesis, which is the foundation to systems thinking, works in the reverse direction trying to gain an understanding of an entity through the context of its relations within a whole that it is part of. Let's start by talking a bit about analysis. Analysis is based upon the premise that our basic unit of interest should be the individual parts of a system. From this follows a process of reasoning called reductionism. Reductionism is the process of breaking down or reducing systems to their constituent parts and then describing the whole system primarily as simply the sum of these constituent elements. Reductionism is often described in terms of a three-step process that we use for analyzing things. Firstly, we take something and we break it down into its constituent elements. This is deeply intuitive to us when we wish to understand how a car, bird, or business works. The first thing we do is isolate it by taking it into a garage or lab and decompose it into its constituent parts. Secondly, once we have broken down the system into its most elementary components, we analyze these individual components in isolation in order to describe their properties and their functioning in isolation. Lastly, we recombine these components into the original system that can now be described in terms of the properties of its individual elements. The reductionist approach is the fundamental method behind modern science and by extension our modern understanding of the world and it has proven highly successful in many ways from understanding atoms and DNA to designing the modern corporation and nation-state. But as successful as it has been, it also has inherent limitations to it. Because we understand systems by breaking the parts down and isolating them, the reductionist paradigm systematically and inherently promotes the relationships between these components. Thus, within this paradigm of reductionism, the whole system is implicitly thought to be nothing more than the sum of its parts. Thus, analysis works well when there is a low level of interconnectivity and interdependencies within the system we are modeling. Although this may be true for some systems, it is certainly not always the case. Many of the systems we are interested in describing are all of interconnectivity and interdependency, examples being ecosystems, computer networks and many types of social systems. These systems, in contrary, are primarily defined by the relations within the system and not the static properties of their elements. We can and often do continue to use analysis to try to describe them, but the reductionist approach is not designed for this and thus we need to change our basic paradigm that is more focused upon these relations as opposed to the components and this is where synthesis and systems thinking comes in. Synthesis means the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole. It is a process of reasoning that describes an entity through the context of its relations and functioning within the whole system that it is a part of. Systems thinking is the process of reasoning called synthesis and it is also referred to as being what is called holistic, meaning that it is characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole. Thus, synthesis focuses on the relations between the elements, that is to say the way those elements are put together or arranged into a functioning entirety and like with analysis, we can also identify a few key stages in this process of reasoning. The first step in the process is to identify the system that our object of interest is a part of. Examples of this might be a bird being part of a broader ecosystem or a person being part of a greater culture. Next, we try to gain a broad outline of how this whole system functions. So for example, a hard drive is part of a computer and to properly understand it, we need to have some understanding of the whole computer. Lastly, we try to understand how the parts are interconnected and arranged to function as an entirety. By completing this process, we can identify the relations within which our entity is embedded. Its place and function within the whole and within systems thinking this context is considered the primary frame of reference for describing something.