[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/) # O que é Pensamento Sistêmico ## Details **Authors** Resck, Ravi **Year** 2022 **Publisher** Target Teal **Kind of work** article **Discipline** Business & Management **Secondary disciplines** Systems Science **Kind of engagement** public **Applied** false [Read it](https://targetteal.com/blog/o-que-e-pensamento-sistemico/) ## In authors' words ### What they set out to do (purpose) To introduce systems thinking in Portuguese as three things at once, a way of seeing the world, a scientific paradigm, and a set of methods for intervening in different contexts, and to correct the common reduction of it to causal loop diagrams or to holism. ### How they did it (methods) An introductory essay in eight sections, moving from traditional and post-modern science through a definition of system, then to Cabrera's four elements, then to reductionism and holism, the pitfalls of reductionism, and a survey of the schools of systems thinking. ### What they found (results) The post concludes that thinking systemically means making distinctions, identifying relations, moving between parts and wholes, and exploring different perspectives, and that reductionism and holism are complementary rather than opposed, with systems thinkers holding several perspectives at once. The author credits Derek Cabrera and Rosalind Armson with the position that systemic thinking uses both holistic and reductionist views to handle complexity. ## Commentary ### In short A Brazilian organizational-design consultancy builds the central section of its Portuguese-language introduction to systems thinking on Cabrera's four elements, and uses his separation of thinking about systems from thinking systemically to frame the whole piece. ### In more detail Resck takes from Cabrera the distinction between pensar sobre sistemas, identifying systems in one's surroundings and cataloguing their features, and pensar de forma sistêmica, seeing the world systemically in the first place, and reports Cabrera's claim that humans cannot perceive the world any other way. The four elements are then set out one by one and rendered accurately. Distinções is the drawing of a boundary that separates one thing from the rest, including self from other, and the section supplies the surrounding vocabulary of comparing, defining and labeling rather than a worked example. Sistemas is part-whole recursion, demonstrated by a book that contains paragraphs that contain words that contain letters that are strokes of ink, with the point that a system is understood only by studying both its parts and the whole they make. Relações is treated as a family, causal, correlational, feedback, input-output, direct and indirect, linear and nonlinear. Perspectivas is given with both of its elements, the viewpoint and the thing viewed, with the observation that the point is usually occupied unconsciously, and the associated vocabulary of frame of reference, paradigm, worldview and bias. Cabrera reappears later in the essay, paired with Armson, in support of the claim that holism and reductionism are complementary, while Meadows, Senge, Morin, Vasconcellos, Reynolds and Holwell, Bogdanov and Bertalanffy carry the other sections. The four patterns are the conceptual spine of roughly a fifth to a quarter of a long piece, and they are what the conclusion restates. ### Response The rendering is faithful on the points where popular accounts usually slip. Perspectives is given as point and view rather than as diversity of opinion, Systems is part-whole recursion rather than a list of components, and Distinctions is boundary-drawing that constitutes identity and other rather than a dictionary definition. The use of Cabrera's thinking-about-systems against thinking-systemically contrast is also the right one for this essay's purpose, since the author's target is the reduction of systems thinking to a diagramming technique, and that is the same reduction the contrast was formulated against. Vis a vis holism and reductionism: on the DSRP account part-whole structuring is one of four rules governing how information is organized, so it is not a rival to holism but a description of what holistic and reductionist moves have in common. **Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P **Added** 2026-10-12 **How to cite this** Resck, Ravi (2022). O que é Pensamento Sistêmico. Target Teal.