A system is an arrangement of parts or elements that together exhibit behaviour or meaning that the individual constituents do not.
Systems can be either physical or conceptual, or a combination of both.
Systems in the physical universe are composed of matter and energy, may embody information encoded in matter-energy carriers, and exhibit observable behaviour.
Conceptual systems are abstract systems of pure information, and do not directly exhibit behaviour, but exhibit “meaning”. In both cases, the system’s properties (as a whole) result, or emerge from: