https://summaryshelf.app/authors/donella-h.-meadows/Recent content in Donella H. Meadows on SummaryShelfHugoen-usWed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://summaryshelf.app/thinking-in-systems/Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://summaryshelf.app/thinking-in-systems/<p>The behavior you keep blaming on people is usually coming from the structure they are standing in. A system, as Donella Meadows defines it, is a set of parts — people, cells, molecules, anything — connected so that together they generate their own pattern of behavior over time. Swap out the parts and the pattern survives them. Change how the parts connect, and it doesn&rsquo;t. Meadows led the team behind <em>The Limits to Growth</em>, the 1972 Club of Rome study, and taught environmental studies at Dartmouth until her death in 2001. She drafted this primer in 1993; Diana Wright edited it into a book, published in 2008. It is the least mathematical book ever written about system dynamics.</p>