What Is a Nation? and continues to be invoked. Political historian Karl Deutsch, in a quote sometimes mistakenly attributed to Renan, said that a nation is "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours". Benedict Anderson's 1983 work Imagined Communities, which states that a nation is an "imagined political community", argues that Renan contradicts himself when he says French people must have forgotten the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, yet does not explain what it is. In other words, Renan assumes that all his readers will remember the very massacre he says they have forgotten.
The purpose of a system is what it does be balanced by a more straightforwardly descriptive view. The term is used in many fields including biology and management. The purpose of a system is what it does The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a systems thinking heuristic coined by Stafford Beer. Stafford Beer coined the term POSIWID and used it many times in public addresses. In his address to the University of Valladolid, Spain, in October 2001, he said "According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes