New science is called "the systems view of life" because it involves a new kind of thinking — thinking in terms of relationships, patterns, and context. In science, this way of thinking is known as "systems thinking," or "systemic thinking." It emerged in the 1920s from a series of interdisciplinary dialogues among biologists, psychologists, and ecologists. In all these fields, scientists realized that a living system — an organism, ecosystem, or social system — is an integrated whole whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller parts. The "systemic" properties are properties of the whole, which none of its parts have. So, systems thinking involves a shift of perspective from the parts