Lewis Works

This open, on-line Newsletter is published weekly, every Friday Afternoon at 5:30 PM PST. It is updated with new announcements and articles each week.

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Lewis Works Newsletter* 

*Systems Theory & Method Revisited

The E-zine of Applied General Systems Science

By Hugh M. Lewis, PhD, MA, general editor

Vol. I, No. 11

4/09/04 Copyright 2004 ©, Hugh M. Lewis.  Facsimiles of this page or parts of this page may be printed and distributed for non-profit research, consulting and educational purposes only, as governed by fair use policy.

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We are announcing a new time for the publication of our weekly newsletter. Our newsletter will now be published at 5:30 PM, Pacific Standard Time, every Friday.

In this issue we have switched gears once again and we revisit primary points in theory & method that have emerged over the last couple of weeks. 

We continue to attempt the articulation of a systems based framework, both conceptually in writing and in the applied form of actual working systems. We do so in the effort to create greater awareness and appreciation of a systems based perspective in the world, and to promote the actual development of a systems based framework for the sake of providing a realistic context for alternative development in the world.

We are announcing the completion of our consolidation phase, and the new launch of our promotional development phase.

Our recruitment continues for JP's.

Benefits for joining us are considerable, and will increase as we grow ourselves. This is a true ground floor opportunity, and you will have the chance to directly influence the direction and outcomes of our new company. Inquire with Hugh about becoming a senior founding partner and its benefits.

If are interested even slightly, or you know of anyone who may have such an interest, or who might even remotely benefit from such partnership, you are strongly encouraged to inquire with Hugh

We invite you to submit any kind of information you would like to see published on these pages.

Suggestions, Criticisms, Comments, Advertisements & Feature Article Submissions are most welcome.

All submissions or other materials must be received by me by e-mail attachment no later than Thursday Evening, the day before publication, otherwise they will be posted the following week.

If you would like to submit your own feature article, please inquire.

Mission Statement

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Lewis Works is dedicated to realizing new human adaptive possibilities as the result of the global systems knowledge revolution in order to create alternative long-term frameworks for human & biological systems development, both on earth and beyond.

The primary mission of Lewis Works is to fundamentally empower all human beings, without regard or reference to their individual or cultural differences, so that they may function in a more constructive and non-violent manner by means of their integration within an applied systems framework that enables them to contextualize and focus their independent developmental efforts toward comprehensive solutions to common problems in resource distribution, environmental adaptation, and social-structural interaction.

• 1. Lewis Works seeks alternative meta-systems based development through applied general systems with the main goals of:

• a. Achieving a mutually stable and harmonic balance between future human systems and earthbound biological systems.

• b. Providing all human beings in unbiased structural or cultural contexts the alternative systems-based frameworks for their individual & social development by means of increased opportunities, productivity, security and resource availability that they would not otherwise have in conventional frameworks.

• c. Developing the infra-structural context and means for the regular extension of human and biological systems beyond the boundaries of the earth.

• 2. Lewis Works is dedicated to achieving a better world for all people and for all life-forms through the implementation and articulation of an applied general systems framework to general and specific problem sets that occur in the adaptive organization of human behavior in a shared natural environment.

• 3. Lewis Works is non-exclusive, open, non-authoritarian, philanthropic and pacifist in orientation.

• 4. Lewis Works pursues a combination of both profit and non-profit programs and projects to the achievement of its main goals.

• 5. Lewis Works protects and promotes universal human rights and human responsibilities throughout its various programs and projects by the systematic pursuit of human development strategies.

• 6. Lewis Works is law abiding and honest in all its dealings and transactions in all contexts, and respects and honors the customs and manners of all peoples and all ethnocultural groupings.

• 7. Lewis Works protects and promotes the confidentiality and legitimate interests of its clients and customers under all circumstances and in all cases.

• 8. Lewis Works seeks to efficiently provide a comprehensive range of profit-based services and related product lines within an open, web-based forum of exchange that is global in scope, regional in character, and local in focus, and that serves as the basis for the development of a structurally open meta-systems based context in the world transcending local, regional and national identities and affiliations.

• 9. Lewis Works seeks to promote non-profit programs in alternative human development for the sake of alleviating human suffering, educating people openly and in an unbiased manner, and promoting pro-social human development.

• 10. Lewis Works seeks to create trans-national meta-cultural orientations in the world through various organizational frameworks that promote open, democratic principles of government, fair-play and the rule of just law, and through the development of anti-structural multi-media based systems that provide humanity a common symbolic context for their meta-cultural integration.

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All relations and patterns observable or logically inferable in nature exhibit some degree of regularity & order that may be said to be structurally systematic upon a restrictive symbolic level. Natural patterning has an order that is comprehensible from a human standpoint, and which can be formulated into basic principles of design & process that are scientifically verifiable through empirical & experimental evidence. This patterning is stratified upon multiple levels that are distinctive and clearly definable, and this patterning tends to become compartmentalized into "sub-units" that are also distinctive and clearly definable according to intrinsic/extrinsic criteria. Often this stratification is ordered through time as well, leading to developmental series and processes of differentiation and emergence of new compartments and even entirely new levels of patterning. 

Overall we refer to these patterns as "structural" and the study of structural patterning in nature we define as "Systems" theory & method. In other words, this patterning forms the basis for development of models & ideas relating to general or particular systems, relative subsystems and comprehensive & contextual meta-systems that describe relationships between different systems and the organization of systems upon a super-systems level. These ideas and models in turn generate methods of research and experimentation that allow us to extend our observational & knowledge base, and that allow us to enlarge the compass of our worldview and improve our adaptive relationships with our world. This process is from an historical standpoint teleologically progressive and serves to provide us the platform from an emergent human civilization.

Systems theory & method is recognized as the basis for a unified scientific paradigm, or a "meta-scientific" philosophy & applied methodology, that can be said to constitute the foundation for a contemporary scientific orientation that is comprehensive, complementary & synthetic in perspective. Any branch or area of established scientific knowledge & praxis may be re-contextualized within this meta-scientific framework in a productive manner.

The key characteristic of any system or subsystem that is relatively delimited in time & space is that it exhibits a set or range of emergent properties that can be attributed to the design patterns distinctive for that system as a whole or in part, or that general type of system, compared to any other system or general type of system that exist in reality. The set of emergent properties associated with any one system or set of systems may be said to be unique & particular to those systems, and therefore can be used to characterize those systems compared nomothetically to any other systems, or set of properties associated with any other type of systems. 

The object of a general systems approach becomes therefore the development of a framework for the contextualization of human knowledge on the basis of the systems principles, properties and patterning that is apparent in different systems and different kinds of systems, and the development of a suitable functional typology of systems that would allow us to map the human knowledge landscape in a larger perspective than we normally have otherwise.

I offer below a tentative typological framework for understanding different kinds of systems:

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Thermodynamically & gravitationally speaking, there is no such thing as a perfectly closed system. Informationally speaking, there is no such thing as a closed system. All delimited systems are contextually defined within a larger meta-systems context, and hence all delimited systems are open to a larger context of relations and interactions within a surrounding meta-systems environment. At the same time, all systems are "semi-closed" as subsystems of a larger meta-system, in the sense that they have certain boundary-maintaining mechanisms, often in the form of feedback loops, that confer on such systems a relatively independent sense of stable equilibrium within a certain fixed time frame that can be characterized as that systems state-path trajectory in time & space.

1. All real systems occupy definite time and space.

2. All real systems have a definite state-path trajectory that is characterized generally by changing patterns of non-linear control and corresponding to the origination, concentration & growth, stasis and equifinality, and eventual demise of such systems.

3. All all real systems are relative to a larger meta-systems context definable in terms of relationships maintained between the components of that system and the larger framework & environment in which that system occurs and exists. These relationships may be referred to as "ecological" in character

4. All systems can be characterized by key boundary-maintaining mechanisms that mediate the relationships between its components and its environment in a regular manner, and that provide internalized control systems that serve to maintain the system in a steady-state level of equilibrium.

There are certain significant implications and consequences forthcoming from a model of open systems. The universe, as a whole, can be characterized as an open meta-system in the sense that we must assume basic principles of infinity and limitlessness to its structure in the largest sense imaginable. The hypothesis of the universal laws of thermodynamics, applied to all real systems upon all levels, demands this set of consequences for the largest structure of the universe. 

All systems, as open systems, exhibit properties referred to generally by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy as irreversible entropy. The components of systems exchange energy in organized but underdetermined ways with the environment, which exchange enables such systems to create, achieve and maintain for an indefinite period of time a "dynamic state" equilibrium in relation to its larger environmental context, such that perturbations originating from the environment result in fluctuations of the operation of the system that serve to restore and maintain an overall state of equilibrium. Such systems tend towards an equifinal state of long-term equilibrium that can be described as stable and self-adjusting within certain tolerance limits to exogenous environmental fluctuations.

Another way of looking at this is to describe all systems fundamentally as working systems, involved in the transmission of energy and information from one form, to another, at some level of achievable operational efficiency. What distinguishes different types of systems is the articulatory level, way and processes involved by which work is performed, the nature of the work performed, and the results of such work. Work in this general sense can be defined as the transformation of energy from one form to another over space and time.

All real systems, as delimited subsystems of some larger meta-systemic context, may therefore be said to be semi-closed, semi-determined working systems, or "machines" that are characterized by the regularity of relationships of the transmission & transformation of energy and information inherent to the patterning of relationships that defines the system  in a self-organizing manner.

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So far we know of only one living system in the universe, though conjecturally we believe that there must exist many similar kinds of systems scattered throughout our own galaxy, and through the many galaxies that are within our current observational compass. We have so far found no direct evidence of life that has spontaneously arisen outside of the earth's biosphere, but due to the fact of existence of life on earth we can infer the likelihood of a similar occurrence under similar set of conditions in other locations of our contemporary universe.

This living system is characterizable as the sum of all biotic components, relationships and organisms contained within the earth's biosphere. Life on earth, the living system as a whole, is a single global meta-system of which all forms are but instances of the same general system, and all instances are but enclosed in the same general system.

It is most important to characterize this entire system as "hologeistic" and "holothetic" in the sense that though we may analytically parse and separate individual organisms or even subsystems from the whole, all systems are bound up within a general, single meta-biotic context we refer to as the biosphere, and "Life" as a whole is represented by this biosphere, and earthbound Life or all living systems currently known, are presumed to be related to one another, however remotely, within a single family tree that dates back to a single period and place in our earth's history where and when life first originated. The biosphere is in other words a single well integrated web of life, with many levels and compartments of subsystems that overlap in the larger context of the whole, and that share many basic processes that are characteristic of all living systems, including a basic dependency upon some source of external energy, water, and the presence of various forms of essential elements. Such systems have come to depend as well upon some means of reproduction as well as upon the exchange of biotic-based energy & nutrients within a meta-biotic system. 

If we are to characterize this system globally, we must focus on the most general bio-geophysical feedback cycles and basic solar & geothermal energy inputs into such systems. This includes primarily the daily energy of the sun that is broadcast upon the earth upon a diurnal cycle, with a few minor instances of systems existing in relation to geo-thermal energy sources, and the great cycles that are driven by the system, including the hydrologic cycle, the carbon-oxygen & nitrogen cycle, the cycles of various basic minerals.

As far as we can tell, life on earth began in essentially a single place and period in earth's remote history, approximately 3.5 to 4.0 billion years before present, and the first clearly emergent life forms were probably most like prokaryotic or simple one celled bacteria that lived in some kind of water-based solution. This system was capable of expansion due to adaptation through mutation and evolution leading to elaborated differentiation of forms, and gradually extended from a few restricted locations & environments to encompass the entire earth in a highly evolved biosphere. It is likely that genetic transmission systems of early living systems at this level included means of horizontal transmission and the emergence of viruses or viroid self-replicating strands of DNA, as well as conventional vertical transmission of systems through cellular mitosis. The next step seems to have been the extension of such bacteria into extreme environmental habitats and the emergence of range of extremophiles that are characterized as archaeo-bacteria. Whether archaeo-bacteria may have emerged first, leading to a general form of prokaryotic bacteria with basic differences of cellular structure & metabolism, is an undecided question. 

Next to emerge was a form of eukaryotic bacteria that represented an advance in structure over simple single celled prokarya, and may possibly have occurred as the result of horizontal symbiotic interactions & genetic exchange between prokarya during which one or more bacteria became incorporated by and into the structure of another bacteria, and developed specialized structures and functions within the environment of the host bacteria. This led directly to the possibility of multi-cellular structures and organization leading eventually to the emergence of multi-cellular organisms. 

Living systems soon became spread around the entire earth, and began to develop its own meta-biotic contexts that tended in the long run to transform the earth's surface into conditions more suitable for biospheric development. Living systems thus became interdependent in a counter-adaptive and co-evolutionary manner to one another, especially across basic trophic levels of energy exchange, and thus became part of the meta-biotic context in which new life forms and new kinds of living systems could evolve. We cannot easily or simply disarticulate the biosphere today, or any of its components, in a manner that would allow us to say where one system clearly leaves off and another begins. We cannot know or forecast beforehand the indirect consequences upon the remaining meta-biotic system of removing any single species or set of systems from the larger picture of the entire biosphere.

With the advent of the Space age, with travel into outer-space and the view of the world as a single lonely planet in space, we have achieved a more apparent realization of the earth as a single meta-system, as a living planet, as a "space-ship" that harbors the only and most precious cargo we know of to exist--life in the form of biological systems. We are ourselves biological systems rooted to the same natural patterns from which all life forms have come. We cannot contradict the dictates and constraints of our own biological being without paying the price of such contradiction. 

It is vital to see that a meta-biotic framework for comprehending living systems on earth stems directly from this concept of holothesis/hologeisis of the earthbound biosphere. This is not merely for issues of future global ecology of human civilization, but for straight-forward purposes of scientific biological investigation.

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Mathematical Meta-systems--Ideal & Applied

The question of mathematical systems theory brings up issues of non-linear & dynamic systems & control theory. It is beyond the scope of this brief article to address this in any sufficient manner. I only want to address within this introduction to mathematical meta-systems some basic developments that I have pursued in the past and have a continuing interest in developing in the future.

Mathematical systems are pure symbolic systems of representation that are restricted and constrained by pure logical relationship and logical processes of deductive reasoning. Mathematics is referred to as the language of science (and engineering, in applied forms) and basically all computational systems constructed by human beings are mathematical systems in either an analogical or digital form. Artificial intelligence breaks down primarily at the point at which purely mathematical computational models are deployed to represent symbolic systems that are not necessarily mathematical in design, and artificial intelligence solutions have succeeded best in those restrictive problem sets, like chess playing and super-computing, in which complex solutions are derivative of purely mathematical & logical relationships. This leads to a rather interesting question of whether natural biological intelligence systems may be fully characterized by mathematical models & designs, as for instance, neural networks.

Formally speaking, mathematics in the pure theoretical sense represent the only known form of "ideal system" of knowledge that is purely abstract and that has no necessary forms of representation in reality, though it appears that upon a physical level all real systems and all relations of real systems are characterizable in a consistent mathematical manner. In other words, in terms of mathematical theory we may devise mathematical relationships and structures that have no necessary representation in any real form, and these structures may be claimed to be formally "true" in a strict logical sense, though they admit of no realized representation beyond the symbolic formula used to verify and express these structures. Ideal systems are the only form of knowledge system which may in the strictest sense be claimed to exist objectively independent of any necessary empirical verification of such systems, though many phenomenological & objective empirical verifications may be made of such systems, and though the first mathematical systems were in fact derived from empirical observation and logical deduction from real systems.

Upon a physical level of organization, all real systems are able to be characterized in terms of mathematical relationships, expressible in terms of one or more mathematical formulas, and to the extent that such systems are measurable in terms ultimately of time, space & count, are amenable therefore to parametric statistical description in terms of continuous, nonlinear & linear relationships between multiple variables. 

My pursuit of mathematical systems has led me to basic philosophical inquiries in mathematics and logic, and the problems of abstractive characterization of real systems by means of ideal systems represented by mathematics. It has led to basic philosophical investigations of number theory, theory of estimation, error & approximation, measurement theory, set theory, matrix theory, and to basic questions in statistical description of populations and points or entities of populations.

The challenge in the construction of such mathematical systems frameworks is in terms of the parsing of continuous variables in discontinuous terms, and manipulation of discrete, qualitatively defined variables in terms that are of a parametric and continuous character. It is also a challenge of handling relative systems in a non-relative manner, as it can be said unequivocally that ideal mathematical systems are the only non-relative form of knowledge we have, and it is for this kind of reason that some people speculate that the only manner that we may be able to communicate with alien life forms that are intelligent will be through the language of mathematics. Finally, it seems to be a challenge of deriving an ought from an is, or of working in a non-arbitrary manner from a descriptive system of denotation to a prescriptive system of connotation. Most philosophers would probably maintain that this last challenge is an impossibility, that there are no non-relative, non-arbitrary systems of value attribution in the human sense that are ultimately not the product of human choice, volition and preference.

When we characterize and describe entities in the real world as a system of some kind, we must take care in the terms we use to summarize, define and elaborate such a system as a whole or in part in terms of the relationships it may maintain within its meta-systemic context. If we seek to describe such entities as members of a larger set or population, we must take care in our description and designation of such an entity on the basis of count, presence or absence. In short, we should seek to understand that monothetic descriptors might disguise polythetic sets of traits and interacting variables with a very high degree of relational complexity occurring within such a system.

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Human systems may be clearly stratified at two levels, and though this has been the cause of some consternation for those seeking paradigmatic unification of the human & social sciences, it must be understood that these two levels interact in a fully complementary manner. We may observe human systems upon two levels primarily--the individual human organism within its variable adaptive contexts, and the social group also within its variable adaptive contexts. Both levels exhibit patterns & emergent properties that are unique to that level. In fact, the same characterization in general may be made for any biological system upon a species level, distinguishing between the individual organism on one level and the social group context upon another level. Human systems take on another set of emergent properties, that are said to be symbolic and cultural.

A great deal of controversy and somewhat misplaced theoretical development has been based upon the confusion of human biological and symbolic-cultural levels & properties, with the erroneous attribution of characteristics of human behavior or social organization to the former level without taking into account the causal or determinative factors of symbolic-cultural integration of human reality. Such conceptual systems that confuse levels and causes of properties in human system are frequently proffered and passed along in the name of science, though they largely represent pseudo-scientific and amateurish attempts at human systems theorization.

Human systems therefore cannot be completely or sufficiently described in terms that are primarily appropriate for the description of biological systems. It is apparent that human systems must be described on several levels simultaneously, and the interactions and patterning of relations between these various levels must also be described in a systematic and coherent way. It is not surprising that human systems remain extremely complex and intransigent of general description and it is not surprising therefore that no genuinely comprehensive theory of human systems has yet been developed or accepted paradigmatically as true and characteristic of all such systems.

What are some of the unique characteristics of human systems that are not found in the same form or to the same degree in any other species of living animal? 

The following sets of attributes are appropriate to the minimal definition of human systems:

1. All human systems are or become culturally patterned--there is no coherent corporate human grouping that cannot be characterized in terms of its cultural patterning. Cultural patterning is universal to all corporate human groupings.

2. The cultural patterning of human groupings depend primarily upon the horizontal social transmission of information within cultural constrained and constructed contexts. The horizontal transmission of cultural information from person to person, and group to group, is tied to the environmental conditioning, learning capacity and behavioral response patterning of the individual human being, and by extension, to the entire social grouping.

3. The transmission of cultural information is primarily mediated in terms of human language, and human language is unique in its symbolic structure and informational carrying capacity to the human species.

4. Human reality is linguistically & behaviorally mediated, and symbolically structured through the cognitive filters of human experience and understanding. Human behavior is by definition symbolic in structure and constructive/destructive or adaptive/maladaptive in its behavioral outcomes. We speak of the symbolic transformation of human experience and of human cultural reality in a shared sense, such that human beings are capable of behaving in ways not strictly dictated by biological constraints, and possibly in ways that deliberately violate such constraints. Human beings can be motivated to violent action or even systematic, deliberate self-destruction, through symbolic-behavioral manipulation, even if it is ultimately or in any larger rational sense contradictory to the primary dictates of adaptive survival.

5. Human social groupings upon a corporate level develop institutionalized structures of relation and behavior, symbolically & behaviorally reinforced, that transcend the capacity of the individual to control or determine, and hence can as a system acquire a life of their own, with their own state-path trajectory, irrespective of the variable interests or orientations of the individuals composing such a system.

6. In any such human social system, human role-players and actors will emerge who will carry through the structural relationship of the larger system to its logical and extreme symbolic conclusions, no matter what the contradictions to lived behavioral experience or the final destructiveness or mal-adaptiveness of the outcomes. These role-players can be considered "captives" of the cultural system of which they are a part.

7. Cultural systems become paradigmatic in the sense that they tend to describe a symbolic worldview that is as complete and comprehensive as possible and as satisfactory to the average culture bearer as necessarily to maintaining equilibrium and consonance of values upon an individual level. Such symbolic systems tend also to be "transparent" and therefore objectively invisible as such to the culture bearer because they are self-reinforcing of both received collective belief and behavior, and the symbolic facets of cultural reality, especially the everyday, habitual facets, become "naturalized" as if a necessary part of biological adaptation and survival.

8. Human beings organize their experience upon a symbolic level, and this provides them an arbitrary means of controlling and manipulating their behavior in relation to their environment in what can be described as self-fulfilling ways. Human beings have no choice really but to organize their experience in these ways, and this experience in general serves their interests in achieving basic adaptive and reproductive success, albeit in terms defined primarily by their socio-cultural milieu.

The organization of human experience upon symbolic levels of articulation are referable to as the anthropological construction of human reality, and it is the systematic structure of these processes, evident across individuals and across various cultural boundaries, that is amenable to empirical scientific investigation and theorization in terms of general human systems theory. Symbolic framing has been offered as the general and primary scientific methodology for such empirical, comparative examination of human systems upon both individual and collective levels of human behavioral response, with the operational definition of culture being in terms of the shared patterns of response by people of similar cultural configurations.

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The development of a genuine meta-scientific paradigm that is general & applied systems based has been delayed by the paradigmatic entrenchment of many fields & domains of science in a classical model of science and scientific method that tends to be analytically restrictive. Very few people involved in science have embraced a larger systems or meta-systems framework for the contextualization and reformulation of their respective disciplinary interests & involvements. Specialization and hyper-compartmentalization of research frameworks has reinforced a narrow-minded attitude toward the larger goals of science. Disciplines of science, analytically restrictive to certain problem sets and related areas of interest, have achieved great success in general in solving such problem sets and in elaborating alternative systems that were spin-offs of such specialized development. But this progress in the narrow sense of the term has been achieved only at considerable cost and loss of control over the larger framework and generality of worldview that permits the contextualization and realization of the relativity and relevancy of different forms knowledge within a common general framework of reference. Upon a social level we end up with a somewhat schizoid worldview that is compartmentalized into smaller spheres of interest and involvement.

To offer general systems theory & method as a new paradigm for the unification of all the sciences and their technological/engineering spin-offs, in terms of especially of natural systems theory and meta-systems methodologies, is to embrace the differences between the many, highly differentiated specializations of science, and to offer a shared conceptual and operational platform for inter-disciplinary collaboration, cross-fertilization of ideas & new designs, and to provide frameworks for new approaches and perspectives to what can be called received problem sets in established scientific disciplines.

The only manner in which we can conceive of a unified paradigm of science is in terms of systems based science--this is not only the most appropriate framework for the organization and unification of scientific knowledge across all fields of scientific interest and inquiry, but provides as well the coherent theoretical models and the consistent empirical methods by which to achieve new understanding of the order of our reality and to augment this reality through the creation and development of entirely new, alternative systems.

The development of a sufficient systems-based paradigm of science does not necessarily or only depend upon the opening up of the mind and processes within each sub-disciplinary field of scientific endeavor, but perhaps more importantly upon such a "meta-systems" based framework being able to devise an adequate analytical methodology and set of methods that is sufficient to the task of cross-disciplinary application.

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The methodological/operational basis of systems theory and method are the development of coherent representational models, in a variety of forms, that serve to accurately represent structural patterns, properties and principles of real systems. It is through the construction, development and refinement of representational models that we gain greater understanding of the structural patterns of systems of all kinds, and it is these models that are eventually applied in the development of new systems or in the progressive control of change and moderation of established systems.

All models are primarily conceptual and symbolic constructs in our minds, that are worked in some form in reality. The basis of all art and artistic creativity in human systems is in the development of representative models of reality, in some media or set of media, that are tied to conceptual models and frameworks of understanding or seeing the world.

Modeling and heuristic representation of real or ideal systems in the form of models provides an exploratory and experimental platform of the development of alternative systems by means that are relatively economical and efficacious in terms of cost of resources input into the creation of such systems, and the potential heuristic outcomes and benefits coming from such systems. Construction, prototyping and testing of models is a standard practice in most engineering efforts, and is always a precursor to the actual development of a real system.

Supercomputing has permitted a level of authentic virtual representation of extremely complex systems in a manner that is true and reliable, and has itself constituted a major technological advancement for the sciences, especially in those areas dealing with intrinsically complex data-sets and systems, like meteorology or ecology.

We may recognize certain design principles that might be appropriate to the construction and development of systems-based models relevant to our further understanding of real or ideal systems. We must distinguish in this regard between what can be referred to as general design principles that are appropriate across and for all kinds of systems, and what might be referred to as "system specific" or particular design principles that are appropriate of only a given kind or particular system to which we are referring.

Clearly it is the case that scientific domains have largely emerged around a distinctive body of knowledge and technical/technological methods used to access and augment this knowledge. We cannot conceive of the field of microbiology without a microscope, and we would be hard pressed to articulate a meaningful astronomy without access to even a rudimentary telescope. We must learn to recognize and appreciate the unique differences and specialized assets relevant to each field and domain of scientific research, and to consider these as a part of a larger collection and body of tools available to extend our knowledge of reality in systematic ways.

It is equally clear as well that principles and theoretical models that are appropriate for one area of knowledge or domain of scientific research, do not necessarily translate very well into any other areas or domain of scientific endeavor. The models that apply upon physical levels of stratification in natural systems are completely different than the systems-based models that apply upon biological or human systems levels. 

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Announcing MyNewsMedia as a web-systems based communications media forum geared towards news, information, education and entertainment.

Our Consolidation efforts continue on different levels. We finished the consolidation phase a month ahead  though there are many loose ends remaining to be taken care of. We have announced out promotional development campaign for the next two months which should include a coordinated and targeted marketing & advertising campaign, though we will avoid e-mail or telephone solicitations or marketing strategies.

During this phase, we hope to announce the opening of our new store-fronts, and further development of our entire framework. We are publishing our own business leverage (business cards, letter-heads, post-cards, etc) and will be setting up new contact details.

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We went E-commerce on November 1st, 2003.

On February 1st, 2004, we are entering a second period of consolidation. This period should be marked by considerable structural and content development of our web-system, by network development and by further script-based integration of the system. 

On April 1st, 2004, we announced the completion of the consolidation phase and the beginning of a new phase of promotional development. 

During this same month we hope to go on-line with the following networking frameworks:

• An affiliate program 

• An open membership program

• A home-based business partnership program

• A strategic e-business partnership program

Pending further development and restructuring of the central web-system, we have postponed our advertising campaign by at least one month, and intend to launch this in May rather than April, and this campaign should run until the end of the consolidation period on the first of June, 2004.

We expect to become officially incorporated in June of 2004.

Products/Services

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We act both as a reseller for other providers, and we also are increasing the product range that we actually own or buy ourselves wholesale and then resell. We also provide a range of peripheral options through associate/affiliate accounts.

We will soon be adding a comprehensive product service catalog link here.

We will be offering an increasing array of type of service and product we can make available to our clientele within the consolidation period. This services will include:

• Systems-based Consulting & Troubleshooting
• Systems-based Computing and Web-Design Development
• Systems-based Meta-scientific research & development services
• Systems-based Digital Publication and Production Services
• Systems-based Development Services in a range of areas, including Non-profit, Consolidated Business Services, Education & Human Development, Organization, Production & Engineering

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We have several non-profit domains organized:

Human Coop: promoting development of non-exploitative, grass-roots based, cooperative development & resource exchange network frameworks.

Aid Systems: organizing and deploying critical resource management & rehabilitation teams

Human Development Systems: promoting programs for alternative human development.

Lewis Library: promoting conventional & electronic literacy worldwide, developing an open, distributed-integrated common reference resource & comprehensive knowledge compendium resources.

Human Synergetics: promoting health in holistic, alternative lifestyles

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We also recommend our current Link Palette for related links & portals, though most of these are as yet unfinished.

For external topic-organized links, we recommend Hugh's Hot Links

For popular, top-search links, we recommend Haut Lynx

Query us for advertising on our Advertising Pages that are shown throughout our web-system on more than a eleven hundred distinct URLs.

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