混沌理论
General Systems Theory (GST) laid the foundation to systemic thinking. Ludwig Von Bertalanffy was known as the founder of the original principles of GST. Prior to 1968, when GST was introduced in Bertalanffy’s book, "General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications", the traditional approach to development used linear thinking or cause-and-effect thinking. GST was influenced by many different types of theories such as “Chaos theory, complexity theory, catastrophe theory, cybernetics, fuzzy set theory, and learning matrices” In 1990, Peter Senge, author of "The Fifth Discipline", wove systemic thinking approach into development.