In 1993, Donella (Dana) Meadows completed a draft of the book you now hold. The manuscript was not published at the time, but circulated informally for years. Dana died quite unexpectedly in 2001—before she completed this book. In the years since her death, it became clear that her writings have continued to be useful to a wide range of readers. Dana was a scientist and writer, and one of the best communicators in the world of systems modeling.
1993年，Donella (Dana) Meadows 完成了你现在手中这本书的草稿。这份手稿当时还没有出版，但是已经非正式地流传了很多年。丹娜在2001年意外去世——在她完成这本书之前。在她去世后的几年里，很明显，她的作品仍然对广大读者有用。Dana 是一位科学家和作家，也是系统建模领域最好的传播者之一。
In 1972, Dana was lead author of The Limits to Growth—a best-selling and widely translated book. The cautions she and her fellow authors issued then are recognized today as the most accurate warnings of how unsustainable patterns could, if unchecked, wreak havoc across the globe. That book made headlines around the world for its observations that continual growth in population and consumption could severely damage the ecosystems and social systems that support life on earth, and that a drive for limitless economic growth could eventually disrupt many local, regional, and global systems. The findings in that book and its updates are, once again, making front-page news as we reach peak oil, face the realities of climate change, and watch a world of 6.6 billion people deal with the devastating consequences of physical growth.
1972年，Dana 是《增长的极限》的主要作者，这是一本畅销书，被广泛翻译。她和她的同事们当时发出的警告如今被认为是最准确的警告，说明如果不加以控制，不可持续的模式将如何在全球范围内造成严重破坏。这本书因其观察到人口和消费的持续增长可能严重破坏维持地球上生命的生态系统和社会系统而成为世界各地的头条新闻，而追求无限经济增长的动力最终可能会破坏许多地方、区域和全球系统。书中的发现及其更新再次成为头版新闻，因为我们已经达到了石油峰值，面临着气候变化的现实，并且看着一个66亿人口的世界正在处理物质增长的毁灭性后果。
In short, Dana helped usher in the notion that we have to make a major shift in the way we view the world and its systems in order to correct our course. Today, it is widely accepted that systems thinking is a critical tool in addressing the many environmental, political, social, and economic challenges we face around the world. Systems, big or small, can behave in similar ways, and understanding those ways is perhaps our best hope for making lasting change on many levels. Dana was writing this book to bring that concept to a wider audience, and that is why I and my colleagues at the Sustainability Institute decided it was time to publish her manuscript posthumously.
简而言之，丹娜帮助我们树立了这样一种观念，即我们必须对我们看待世界的方式及其体系做出重大转变，以便纠正我们的行为方式。今天，人们普遍认为，系统思维是解决我们在世界各地面临的许多环境、政治、社会和经济挑战的关键工具。系统，无论大小，都可以以相似的方式运作，理解这些方式也许是我们在许多层面上做出持久改变的最大希望。Dana 写这本书是为了把这个概念带给更多的读者，这就是为什么我和我在可持续发展研究所的同事们决定是时候在她死后出版她的手稿了。
Will another book really help the world and help you, the reader? I think so. Perhaps you are working in a company (or own a company) and are struggling to see how your business or organization can be part of a shift toward a better world. Or maybe you’re a policy maker who is seeing others “push back” against your good ideas and good intentions. Perhaps you’re a manager who has worked hard to fix some important problems in your company or community, only to see other challenges erupt in their wake. As one who advocates for changes in how a society (or a family) functions, what it values and protects, you may see years of progress easily undone in a few swift reactions. As a citizen of an increasingly global society, perhaps you are just plain frustrated with how hard it is to make a positive and lasting difference.
另一本书真的会帮助这个世界，也会帮助你这个读者吗？我想是的。也许你正在一家公司工作(或拥有一家公司) ，正在努力看清你的企业或组织如何才能成为向更美好世界转变的一部分。或者你是一个政策制定者，看到别人“反击”你的好主意和好意。也许你是一个努力解决公司或社区中一些重要问题的管理者，却发现随之而来的是其他挑战。作为一个倡导改变社会(或家庭)运作方式、价值观和保护方式的人，你可能会看到多年的进步很容易在一些迅速的反应中被毁掉。作为一个日益全球化的社会的公民，也许你只是因为想要做出积极和持久的改变是多么的困难而感到沮丧。
If so, I think that this book can help. Although one can find dozens of titles on “systems modeling” and “systems thinking,” there remains a clear need for an approachable and inspiring book about systems and us—why we find them at times so baffling and how we can better learn to manage and redesign them.
如果是这样的话，我想这本书会有帮助。尽管我们可以找到许多关于“系统建模”和“系统思考”的书籍，但我们仍然明显需要一本关于系统和我们的、平易近人、鼓舞人心的书——为什么我们有时会觉得它们如此令人困惑，以及我们如何才能更好地学会管理和重新设计它们。
At the time that Dana was writing Thinking in Systems, she had recently completed the twenty-year update to Limits to Growth, titled Beyond the Limits. She was a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, was serving on the Committee on Research and Exploration for the National Geographic Society, and she was teaching about systems, environment, and ethics at Dartmouth College. In all aspects of her work, she was immersed in the events of the day. She understood those events to be the outward behavior of often complex systems.
在 Dana 写《系统思考》的时候，她最近刚刚完成了《成长的极限》的20年更新，书名是《超越极限》。她是皮尤环境保护学院的学者，在国家地理学会的研究和探索委员会任职，她在达特茅斯学院教授系统、环境和伦理学。在她工作的各个方面，她都沉浸在当天的事件中。她理解这些事件是往往是复杂系统的外在行为。
Although Dana’s original manuscript has been edited and restructured, many of the examples you will find in this book are from her first draft in 1993. They may seem a bit dated to you, but in editing her work I chose to keep them because their teachings are as relevant now as they were then. The early 1990s were the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and great shifts in other socialist countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement was newly signed. Iraq’s army invaded Kuwait and then retreated, burning oil fields on the way out. Nelson Mandela was freed from prison, and South Africa’s apartheid laws were repealed. Labor leader Lech Walesa was elected president of Poland, and poet Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia. The International Panel on Climate Change issued its first assessment report, concluding that “emissions from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and that this will enhance the greenhouse effect and result in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface.” The UN held a conference in Rio de Janeiro on environment and development.
尽管 Dana 的原始手稿已经被编辑和修改过，但你在这本书中能找到的很多例子都来自她1993年的初稿。它们在你看来可能有点过时，但在编辑她的作品时，我选择保留它们，因为它们的教义现在和当时一样重要。20世纪90年代早期是苏联解体和其他社会主义国家巨变的时期。北美自由贸易协定(North American Free Trade Agreement)刚刚签署。伊拉克军队入侵科威特，然后撤退，撤退途中焚烧油田。纳尔逊 · 曼德拉被释放，南非的种族隔离法被废除。工党领袖莱赫 · 瓦文萨当选波兰总统，诗人瓦茨拉夫 · 哈维尔当选捷克斯洛伐克总统。国际气候变化专门委员会(International Panel on Climate Change)发布了第一份评估报告，其结论是,”人类活动的排放大大增加了大气中温室气体的浓度，这将加剧温室效应，并导致地球表面进一步升温联合国在里约热内卢举行了一次关于环境与发展的会议。
While traveling to meetings and conferences during this time, Dana read the International Herald Tribune and during a single week found many examples of systems in need of better management or complete redesign. She found them in the newspaper because they are all around us every day. Once you start to see the events of the day as parts of trends, and those trends as symptoms of underlying system structure, you will be able to consider new ways to manage and new ways to live in a world of complex systems. In publishing Dana’s manuscript, I hope to increase the ability of readers to understand and talk about the systems around them and to act for positive change.
在这段时间里，Dana 在出席各种会议的同时，阅读了《国际先驱论坛报》 ，在一周的时间里，她发现了许多需要更好管理或完全重新设计的系统实例。她在报纸上找到了它们，因为它们每天都在我们身边。一旦您开始将当天发生的事件视为趋势的一部分，并将这些趋势视为潜在系统结构的症状，您将能够考虑在复杂系统的世界中管理和生活的新方法。在出版 Dana 的手稿时，我希望增加读者理解和谈论他们周围的系统的能力，并为积极的改变采取行动。
I hope this small approachable introduction to systems and how we think about them will be a useful tool in a world that rapidly needs to shift behaviors arising from very complex systems. This is a simple book for and about a complex world. It is a book for those who want to shape a better future.
我希望这个简单易懂的系统介绍，以及我们如何看待它们将成为一个有用的工具，在一个需要迅速转变非常复杂系统的行为的世界中。这是一本关于复杂世界的简单书籍。这是一本为那些想要塑造一个更美好未来的人准备的书。
—DIANA WRIGHT, 2008
戴安娜怀特，2008