The empirical identification of fifty-one core general systems theory vocabulary components

This paper identifies 51 key general systems theory (GST) vocabulary components based on a sample of 400 GST articles. The sources of the articles studied were 2183 published works which make up the core of the GST literature. In addition, the paper presents both a descriptive and a factor-analytic grouping of the words. It is hoped that this work will serve as a core document for generating a dictionary of GST terms, the final goal being improved communication among GST researchers through the standardization of terminology. As such, the paper addresses James Grier Miller's call for the development of a general systems vocabulary and the paper applies to all system levels. Hence, it is of value in the development of cross-level hypotheses.