system

system 1 System, scheme, network, complex, organism, economy can mean an organized integrated whole made up of diverse but interrelated and interdependent parts.

System usually implies that the component units of an aggregate exist and operate in unison or concord according to a coherent plan for smooth functioning

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the digestive system

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amid a system where the classic principles of capitalism still work successfully— Laski

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comprehend all experience in a closed system— Inge

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it does not form an independent system, like the universe: it exists as an element in human culture— Mumford

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Scheme may replace system but tends to stress an overall design for the interrelation of components, often a design carefully calculated or planned detail

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the cheerful, sanguine, courageous scheme of life, which was in part natural to her and in part slowly built up— Ellis

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our complex system, presenting the rare and difficult scheme of one general government, whose action extends over the whole— John Marshall

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the Newtonian scheme of the universe does not banish God from the universe— Times Lit. Sup.

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but sometimes scheme may carry a suggestion of irony or depreciation that is absent from system (see also PLAN).

Network suggests a system with interconnection or intercrossing at salient points sometimes involved but susceptible to analysis or control

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a network of abandoned narrow-gage logging roads penetrates the wooded areas— Amer. Guide Series: Mich.

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even the lowliest savages live in a social world characterized by a complex network of traditionally conserved habits, usages, and attitudes— Sapir

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Complex stresses an elaborate interweaving, in-terconnection and interrelationship of components difficult to trace

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for these ancestors of ours, in one half of their thoughts and acts, were still guided by a complex of intellectual, ethical and social assumptions of which only medieval scholars can today comprehend the true purport— Trevelyan

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this complex of conditions which taxes the terms upon which human beings associate and live together is summed up in the word culture— Dewey

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modern science, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that man is a bewildering complex of energies— Henry Adams

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Organism basically applies to systems having life, but it is sometimes extended to systems felt as analogous to biological systems (as in capacity for growth and development)

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not because of an interest in the individual himself as a matured and single organism of ideas but in his assumed typicality for the community as a whole— Sapir

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the Church grew, like any other organism, by responding to its environment— Inge

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Economy implies a system concerned with needs and their regulation and fulfillment by individual, species, household, business, or government

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the plantation economy, with its base in slavery, was not conducive to the growth of industrial enterprise— Amer. Guide Series: N. C.

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the principle may operate successfully in the close economy of a good family, or even within a small religious community— Hobson

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Antonyms: chaos

2 *method, mode, manner, way, fashion

Analogous words: *plan, project, scheme, design: procedure, *process, proceeding