System

System:
The Random House Dictionary has seventeen different descriptions of the word system with many of them varying widely. While the first description relates to architecture in the traditional sense stating "an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole: a mountain system; a railroad system," most others talked about a wide array of topics from numerology, biology, geology to the mundane checkers. Organization, organism, and cosmos are synonyms for system and while organization is a topic regularly used in architecture and organism's biological roots are sometimes introduced as descriptors, the cosmos, which is a large part of the word, is almost never used.
The Etymology Dictionary dates this word back to 1619 and describes it as an “an arrangement” in L.L. systema which was taken from the Greek root systema, an “organized whole, body.” It was then recorded in 1638 taking on a less physical description as a "set of correlated principles, facts, ides, etc." Approximately fifty years later, system begins to refer to our biological understanding of the word stating system in terms of an "animal body as an organized whole, sum of the vital processes in an organism." Finally the word refers to a "group of related programs" established from a recording "all systems go" by the U.S. space program.
A typical pragmatic architectural use for the word system is discussed by Nikken Sekkei when describing the Kansai International Airport terminal's jack-up stands. Stands made up of adjustable parts are use for mechanical services and huge stands are used for the buildings nine hundred columns. He does not talk about the parts being a system on the micro scale, rather these smaller assemblies together creating a working system to level the airport. Further a description of the Swiss Re Headquarters describes its' ventilating elements as a ventilation system, the typical use for describing many elements of the HVAC (Heating and Ventilating System). On the other hand the book Operating book for spaceship Earth uses systems to describe life, energy, and stars all within almost the same paragraph.