General Meta-Systems Paradigm

Lewis Works framework is founded upon what can be called a meta-systems paradigm, which is considered to be an extension of a general systems view of the world: 

All reality is organized on the basis of systems. Nature stratifies itself stochastically on the basis of systems integration and developmental differentiation. Systems organization is the only basis of natural determinism in reality, and we can only explain events and the rise of things in the world on the basis of the self-organization of systems. Systems organize themselves in an open context, in an environment defined by energy-exchange relationships. The stratification of the natural world becomes a "system of systems" or meta-systemic in the sense that systems are relative to their level and place in a larger context of the articulation of reality.

Science is a systems based methodology to the understanding of reality. Science has developed as a successful form of knowledge because it has worked and it has led to the development of new applied systems that perform work. Conceptualization of science and scientific knowledge in any form as an intrinsic part of a meta-systems paradigm is to shift attention from an analytic to a synthetic and holistic framework that considers not so much the internal organization of systems, especially as these are conceived as occurring in isolation, and becomes instead primarily interested in the external meta-systemic relationships, and boundary-mediation of these relationships, that result in the formation and developmental differentiation of systems and the natural stratification of reality.

Our Operational Alternative Systems Paradigm

1. All Known Alternative Systems are Human-Made or Constructed Systems, and are a subset of real and natural systems, just as human beings themselves are a subset of real and natural systems in which they exist.

1. a. There may be non-human alternative systems in the universe (they are logical and therefore plausible), but we have not yet discovered these.

1b. Alternative Systems are special instances of natural systems that objectively preexist in the real world before our human apprehension and apperceptive realization of them as such.

1c. All natural systems are self-organizing systems and partially determined systems in an inherent structural sense, but alternative systems are also partly humanly-determined systems in a rational and logical manner. Non-alternative systems are not directly human-determined in the same way.

1d. All Alternative Systems, the total Set of Possible Alternative Systems, exist as possible systems before they are made known to humans. The process of coming to knowledge of alternative systems is referable to as the anthropological relativity of all systems.

Conclusion: All Systems are therefore Knowledge Based, and all known systems are symbolic in their knowledge organization because Human beings think in symbolic terms and relationships.

Any system we cannot know, see, infer or deduce to exist, cannot be a system within the compass of our anthropologically constrained comprehension.

2. All Systems, even apparently simple systems, are infinitely complex from both an analytical and a holistic perspective.

3. Each Delimited Ideal System represents an implicit problem set that challenges our understanding and our ability to replicate its design & functional performance.

4. All Solutions to Ideal Systems are partial and incomplete.

5. A Real system is a representation of an ideal system constrained by the laws of thermodynamics and gravitational dynamics.

6. From the standpoint of Ideal Systems, Real Systems are imperfect working exemplifications and instantiations of ideal systems

7. There is for any Ideal Problem Set a single most optimal solution that may be reached only through approximation but never completely obtained.

7a. Any Real Delimited System (for example, an automobile engine of a specific design configuration and date of production) represents a phenomenological exemplification of an Ideal Type of Delimited System embodied by that Real System. 

10. All Real Systems are part of a larger developmental process that determines their general patterns of reproduction, change and alteration through time as the consequence of their cyclical regeneration.

11. For each Real System, there is a developmental trajectory of the represented Ideal System that tends either to progressive stream-lining under optimizing conditions, or towards destabilizing disintegration of the system and its eventual extinction as a self-maintaining system.

12. In the long run real systems become organized into meta-systemic frameworks and evolve in a teleological manner leading to the convergence and integration of such systems in adaptation to the implicit problems they represent.