- 1945–55 General Systems Theory (proposed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and others)
- 1948–55 cybernetics (W. Ross Ashby, Norbert Wiener) Mathematical theory of the communication and control of systems through regulatory feedback. Closely related: "control theory"
- 1956 Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Ralph Garard, Kenneth Boulding establish Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory.
- 1970 catastrophe theory (René Thom, E.C. Zeeman) Branch of mathematics that deals with bifurcations in dynamical systems, classifies phenomena characterized by sudden shifts in behavior arising from small changes in circumstances.
- 1980 chaos theory (David Ruelle, Edward Lorenz, Mitchell Feigenbaum, Steve Smale, James A. Yorke) Mathematical theory of nonlinear dynamical systems that describes bifurcations, strange attractors, and chaotic motions.
- 1990 complex adaptive systems (CAS) (John H. Holland, Murray Gell-Mann, Harold Morowitz, W. Brian Arthur, ...) The "new" science of complexity which describes emergence, adaptation and self-organization, all of which are basic system principles, was established mainly by researchers of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and is based on agents and computer simulations and includes multi-agent systems (MAS) which have become an important tool to study social and complex systems. The study of complex systems today is often subsumed under the term 'complexity theory'. (see for example Edgar Morin, Stuart Kauffman and Stephen Wolfram, passim).
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