Expanding our Vocabulary: Operational Causal Terms for Studying Problems in Complex Systems

A cornerstone of the field of System Dynamics is understanding feedback and causality in complex systems, as stated in the inaugural issue of the System Dynamics Review (SDR) in 1985. How have we used causal language since then? In a systemic review of the SDR, I analyzed nearly 300 articles for terms related to causality and complex systems. The findings show our usage is sparse and our vocabulary limited: only seven terms account for 88% of our usage, and even when we use those terms, we often only mention them once or twice in a paper, if at all. This article proposes expanding our vocabulary with 20 terms across five categories: hierarchy, bottom-up, top-down, transitional, and experimental. These terms aid our efforts to conceptualize and construct models of problems in complex systems while maintaining an operational perspective on causality.