This paper proposes a contribution to the domain of systems thinking skills.  Empirical studies have repeatedly shown surprising misperceptions and inabilities in subjects confronted with tasks involving very simple stock and flow systems.  Here it is proposed to represent these skills as implicit integration, by which Polanyi modeled our ability to know.  In this framework, Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ five stage model of learning is used to construct three hypotheses concerning the learning of systems thinking and its importance for learning from modeling and interaction with models.  The tests elaborated by Ossimitz are adapted for this purpose and some tasks are added, to serve in the experimental corroboration of the hypotheses.   Since the empirical work is currently under way, only few results can be presented; consequently the main contribution is the conceptual construction of the hypotheses.