In 1956, Jay W, Forrester, holding the basic patent for magnetic core memory, decided to put aside his electromechanical research and apply the principles of feedback control to socioeconomic systems. Accepting a position at MIT's School of Industrial Management, Professor Forrester began applying these principles to the problems of managing a corporation, resulting in the publication in 1961 of Industrial Dynamics, a comprehensive treatment of the use of feedback principles and simulation to aid in the management of a company.
Over the past three decades, system dynamics has been applied broadly in such areas as environment change, economic development, social unrest, urban decay, psychology and physiology. There has been a corresponding growth in the base of tools being developed and applied including things such as causal loop diagramming, chaos theory, statistical analysis and interactive learning environments.
Though eclectic in content and methods, system dynamics retains certain underlying principles that form an important bridge between reality and our ability to understand:
Taken from the System Dynamics Society pamphlet.