Systems Theory & Feedback

This page introduces systems theory and its feedback cycles, which this website uses to discuss two issues: (1) the development of human problems, and (2) escalating climate change. It looks at:

• Amplifying feedback in a sound system
• The cycles that organise predator and prey populations
• The amplifying feedback cycles of physical fitness and decline.
• The damping feedback cycle that controls a sailing boat’s direction.

The Audio Feedback Cycle

You’ve probably experienced audio feedback: that sudden, piercing screech from a sound system. This amplifying feedback cycle drives audio feedback.

In this audio feedback cycle:

• An increase in the microphone input volume tends to
• Increase the amplifier output of the sound, which tends to
• Increase the loudspeaker volume, which tends to
• Increase the microphone input volume, and then the cycle repeats.

The louder the screech gets, the louder it gets.

The Causal Links are Tendencies.

The causal links in feedback cycles are “tendencies” because other influences can override these links. For example, in a sound system, increased microphone input volume only “tends” to increase the amplifier output. The increase does not always occur, as the sound operator can override it by adjusting the amplifier settings.

Amplifying Feedback Cycles in General

Any amplifying feedback cycle has a circular sequence of causal links between system attributes, in which an increase or decrease in one attribute tends to influence the next, which then tends to influence the next, creating a ripple effect around the cycle that then amplifies the initial change, enabling the cycle to repeat (Capra, 1996, p. 56).

Alternative Names for Feedback Cycles

You can call an amplifying feedback cycle:

• Positive feedback,
• Deviation-amplifying mutual causal process (Maruyama, 1968)
• Self-amplifying feedback loop,
• Self-reinforcing cycle,
• Vicious cycle, and
• Virtuous cycle

You can call a damping feedback cycle:

• Negative feedback,
• Balancing feedback,
• Stabilising feedback, and
• Deviation counteracting mutual causal process (Maruyama, 1968)

Unrestrained Amplifying Cycles Limit Themselves.

Any unrestrained amplifying cycle will eventually exhaust some necessary resource and then pause its amplification, having significantly changed the system.

For example, the audio feedback could become so loud that:

• The amplifier reaches its maximum power and cannot send a stronger signal to the loudspeaker. On reaching maximum power, the amplifying cycle would pause after having completed its transformation of the system, leaving a high, constant-volume screech, or
• The loudspeaker blows a fuse. The vicious cycle would pause, having completed its transformation of the system, leaving silence.

Feedback Cycles Reveal Organisation.

A feedback cycle shows the system’s organisation, distinct from its physical structure (Capra, 1997, p. 63).

Time Taken by the Audio Cycle

In this audio feedback cycle, each physical change takes time:

• The link between the loudspeaker and the microphone is via sound, which travels at 343 metres per second, so there is a small delay. Say the loudspeaker is 10 metres from the microphone; the sound travels that distance in 3 hundredths of a second.
• The link between the microphone and the amplifier is a rapid electrical connection, like flicking a light switch and the globe lighting up; it seems instantaneous, but it still has a small delay.
• The link between the amplifier and the speaker is another rapid electrical connection with a small delay.

Each causal link takes time as change ripples around the cycle. The rapid speed of the causal links in an audio system means that in small performance spaces, there is negligible delay between what you see and the amplified sound that you hear. The downside of the rapid links is that the feedback screech can rapidly escalate to an unbearable level – and the delays in the cycle are easy to overlook

Amplifying Feedback can be Intermittent.

In audio feedback, when it occurs, all causal links are active simultaneously. However, this is not a typical amplifying feedback cycle. I discuss several intermittent cycles on other pages:

• The cycle of natural variation and selection depends on intermittent events such as beneficial mutations, so the cycle has irregular bursts of activity.
• The warming Arctic ice albedo cycle does not reduce ice cover when it’s dark or freezing; it becomes active when it’s light, and temperatures are above freezing.
• The amplifying cycle linking dread, gambling and gambling damage is also intermittent, as gambling and the gambling damage are both sporadic.

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Dominant, Active, & Reversed Cycles

An amplifying feedback cycle is:

• Dominant over a period in which, comparing the start and finish of the period, each change encouraged by the cycle occurred.
• Active, when one causal link is active.
• Inactive or dormant when none of the causal links is active. Intermittent: some causal links move between being dormant and active; for example, in the natural variation and selection amplifying feedback cycle, the cycle must wait for the intermittent occurrence of a favourable natural variation, e.g., a mutation. See the evolution feedback cycles page.
• Reversed: Some cycles can run in reverse. (see below)

I discuss dominance and reversal on the Arctic ice-albedo feedback cycle page.

Maruyama & his Second Cybernetics

Maruyama (1968) revolutionised systems theory by focusing on amplifying feedback cycles and their creative nature. He called his theory “the second cybernetics”, in contrast with earlier cybernetics, which focused on the control functions of damping feedback cycles and the destructive nature of amplifying feedback. According to Maruyama:

• Amplifying feedback cycles are widespread (p. 304).
• Amplifying feedback cycles can disrupt the existing order and create a new order. For example, rock weathering is an amplifying feedback process that is (1) a vicious cycle in that it destroys rock, but also (2) a creative, virtuous cycle in that it creates fertile soil and forests (p. 305).
• These feedback cycles interact and can support or counterbalance one another, producing stability, oscillation, or transformation. (p. 312).
• Amplifying feedback cycles between people can cause problems; for example, two aggressive individuals can easily escalate a misunderstanding into a physical fight.
• These cycles can also occur within a person, causing problems. For example, reduced self-confidence can lead to poor performance, which in turn can further reduce self-confidence (p. 312).
• In psychotherapy, the goal should be to break vicious, damaging feedback cycles underlying the presenting problem and to initiate virtuous feedback cycles that alleviate the problem (p. 312).

Damping Feedback Cycles.

Damping feedback in sailing

Here’s a classic example of damping feedback: it shows how a sailor controls the sailing boat’s direction using the tiller.

In this damping cycle, the sailor:

• Monitors the sailing boat’s direction, and when the boat deviates to the right, they tend to
• Increase control by pushing the tiller further right, which tends to reduce the deviation, and the cycle repeats with continued monitoring.

Damping Feedback Cycles in General

In general, a damping feedback cycle is a circular sequence of causal links that triggers corrective action when a system attribute deviates from its target value.

By contrast, amplifying feedback does the opposite: an increase in one system attribute causes a further increase in that attribute.

Damping Feedback in the Audio System

In an audio system, control also occurs. The sound operator monitors the system, and when they hear the audio feedback shriek building up, they tend to adjust the amplifier to eliminate it. This control is called damping feedback or negative feedback.

Reversible Amplifying Feedback Cycles

Some amplifying feedback cycles can operate in reverse. Here are several examples.

The Physical Fitness Cycle

You can become physically fit through training, but the reverse is also true: physical decline sets in when you do not exercise. Here is a feedback cycle amplifying physical fitness.

In this cycle:

• Doing more of a physical activity, exercising until fatigued and then allowing time for the body to repair and strengthen the stressed tissues tends to
• Increase your capacity to do it, which tends to lead to
• Doing more of the activity, and the cycle repeats.

The causal links in this cycle are not certainties; they are tendencies, as other factors can intervene. For example, when the activity brings injury, doing more does not tend to increase your capacity to do it.

The Physical Decline Cycle

The training amplifying cycle also works in reverse: “If you don’t use it, you lose it”. In this amplifying feedback cycle:

The Audio Feedback Cycle is not Reversible.

The amplifying feedback cycle driving the audio feedback screech is irreversible. If a person put their hand over the microphone, reducing the microphone’s input volume, the cycle would not produce further decreases in volume. It would continue to increase the volume.

Arctic Ice-Albedo Heating Cycle is Reversible.

The Arctic ice-albedo heating cycle is currently amplifying global heating, but if cooling were to occur, it could also amplify global cooling. See my page on the Arctic Ice Cycle.

Reward and Punishment

See my page on rewards and punishment.

Predator-Prey Population Cycles

Feedback cycles can interact in complex ways. Consider the interaction of three feedback cycles that organise the populations of a predator and its chief prey: foxes and rabbits. In this model, there are three cycles:

• The breeding of foxes
• The breeding of rabbits, and
• The interaction between foxes and rabbits.

Here is the rabbit breeding cycle.

In this breeding cycle: (1) more rabbits tend to produce (2) more breeding, which tends to produce (3) more rabbits, and then (4) the cycle repeats.

The fox-breeding cycle has precisely the same form as the rabbit-breeding cycle:

Diagram: The breeding feedback cycle amplifying fox numbers.

Now, foxes prey on rabbits, as shown in the following cycle.

In this cycle:

• More foxes preying on rabbits tends to produce
• Fewer rabbits, which tends to produce
• Fewer foxes, which tends to produce
• More Rabbits, which tends to produce
• More foxes, and then the cycle repeats.

Mathematical models of predator-prey populations predict that these populations tend to oscillate, and investigation of natural populations supports this. See the Wikipedia entry on the Lotka-Volterra equations.

This example shows how feedback cycles can interact in complex ways observed in nature.

Amplifying Feedback: Supporting and Limiting Influences

Amplifying cycles drive change, including the emergence of problems and recovery. So, it is helpful to understand what limits and what supports an amplifying cycle. The following table provides an overview.

First consider influences that can support amplifying feedback cycles.

Supports: Self-reinforcing

All amplifying cycles are self-reinforcing.

Supports: Mutually reinforcing cycles

Amplifying feedback cycles can support one another; often, a group of mutually reinforcing cycles exists.

For example, many cycles amplify both Client Zed’s gambling and his dread of not being respected. Here are two of these cycles.

The first is the vicious cycle driving Client Zed’s gambling as discussed in the example counselling session.

The second is the cycle around Zed’s denial of the gambling shocks he experienced due to his gambling.

Climate change offers another example of mutually reinforcing feedback cycles. I describe nine amplifying feedback cycles that are driving global warming.

Supports: External Events

External events can reinforce an amplifying feedback cycle. For example, the external event of humans burning fossil fuels supports the Arctic ice albedo warming cycle and each of the other amplifying cycles driving global warming.

Limits: Exhausting a needed Resource.

Now consider influences that can limit amplifying feedback cycles.

Any unimpeded amplifying feedback cycle will eventually exhaust a resource it needs to continue and pause, having transformed its system. For example,

The feedback cycle that is accelerating the melting of Arctic sea ice threatens to pause only when the Arctic is ice-free in summer. After more ice forms over winter, the melting cycle could resume, but it would have transformed the Arctic, leaving it with no permanent ice.

The resource that commonly limits problem gambling is running out of money.

The resources that could limit an audio system: discussed above.

Limits: Slow causal links in the cycle

Some cycles contain inherently slow causal links, for example, the Arctic ice-albedo warming cycle.

The causal link between higher temperatures and less ice cover involves melting the ice, and this is slow because it takes a large amount of energy to melt ice. See my page on Arctic ice decline.

This contrasts sharply with the very short time each process takes in the audio cycle.

Limits: Damping feedback cycles

A damping feedback cycle can control an amplifying feedback cycle.

You can see this in the sound system example discussed above. As the audio amplifying feedback cycle escalates, the sound operator monitoring the sound levels hears the feedback shriek (damage) developing and adjusts the amplifier to control the feedback.

Limits: Opposing amplifying cycles

Amplifying feedback cycles often oppose one another. For example, a cycle driving problem gambling opposes a cycle driving recovery. Here again is the vicious cycle driving Zed’s gambling:

This vicious cycle would oppose the following virtuous recovery cycle, which involves Zed helping others via Gamblers Anonymous meetings:

Limits: Delays in the feedback cycle

An unconstrained amplifying feedback cycle causes increasingly rapid change. For example, when a person leans back past their chair’s tipping point and crashes to the ground. However, in most systems, something limits the change, e.g., a friend catches the chair before it crashes to the floor, or some processes are inherently slow, like melting ice.

Limits: Disruptive influences

In my description of feedback cycles, I generally say event A tends to cause event B because an external influence can suddenly dominate. For example, the ash from an enormous volcanic eruption could reduce the sunlight hitting the Earth and temporarily disrupt the ice albedo warming cycle.

Similarly, a long hospital admission could temporarily disrupt a vicious gambling cycle.

Amplifying cycles & Tipping points

Once an amplifying feedback cycle becomes and remains dominant, it brings escalating change, initially slow and then explosive, until the transformation it initiates reaches a limit and the amplifying cycle stops.

For example, when a person in a chair leans back past the tipping point, a vicious cycle takes hold. The chair’s rotational energy increases as it tips. The only way to stop the vicious cycle is (1) an external intervention, e.g., someone catching the chair, or (2) the cycle running its course and hitting a limit when the chair hits the floor. See the tipping point of a brick & amplifying feedback page on this website.

Self-organisation and Chaos Theory

I briefly touch on complementary branches of systems theory:

• Chaos Theory, which shows how feedback can produce complexity, unpredictability, and instability, and
• Self-organisation of human behaviour, which shows how feedback can produce order.

Conclusion

When I worked as a problem gambling counsellor, I found amplifying feedback cycles useful for understanding and assisting my clients. In particular, cycle diagrams help people understand what is happening to them. Then I realised that amplifying cycles also drive global heating. It hit home that systems theory offers insight into how any system works.

“Structures [feedback cycles] of which we are unaware hold us prisoner. Conversely, learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with and change them.” (Senge, 1992, p 94)

Amplifying feedback cycles do not exist in isolation. Recognising how the influences discussed above can increase or decrease the impact of these cycles enhances the credibility of systems theory and our understanding of how amplifying feedback affects our lives and our planet.

Related pages

Hub Pages: See the Footer below for links to the three hub pages, or the menu at the top of the page.

Systems theory underlies both the counselling and climate change sections.

First loaded Nov 2025. Updated: 22 Sep 2026.

Featured image: MS Word audio feedback. TABSOK