Proposed Principles for Systems Engineering: From Science to Practice

The AI team takes a deep dive into Prof Joseph Kasser's draft manuscript which proposes a scientific foundation for systems engineering to resolve the discipline's long-standing identity crisis and its conflation with management. The framework moves away from defining the field by observed workplace roles (Systems Engineering The Role (SETR) , instead focusing on Systems Engineering The Activity (SETA) as an enabling discipline grounded in objective system science axioms. This structure is organized into a four-layer hierarchy that translates universal truths about systems into action-oriented systems engineering principles. These proposed principles require systems engineers to produce verifiable outputs, such as interaction architectures and unintended consequence registers, ensuring designs are rooted in system science rather than heuristics. Ultimately, the proposal seeks to begin to provide a rigorous conceptual scaffold that justifies the value of systems engineering through measurable outcomes and ethical accountability.