Meta-systems can be defined as systems of systems interacting. We can make a case that all of the universe that comprises all of physical reality is a grand meta-system that contains many different kinds of subsystems. Nature tends towards a level of dynamic organizational complexity and integration that is unavailable to mathematical description. The objective of this approach in natural systems theory has been to understand the natural world as an a priori meta-system, a priori, that is, to our own comprehension or even perception of it, and in this sense standing scientifically apart from our own worldview as something that is objectively real, the "thing in itself." The objective of this approach has also been to apply principles developed in relation to general systems science and natural systems theory toward the development of a meta-system as an applied framework guiding our collective future. In this second sense, we may say that meta-systems integration of the earth is probably, in the long run, inevitable, if we are to embrace the notion of equifinality and attainment of an optimizing solution and strategy of adaptation. I say probably inevitable, because the possibility remains, nowhere near as remote as I would wish it were, that we have the capacity to destroy ourselves and the rest of the life on earth in the process, if we really choose to do so, or if we allow things to get so beyond our control that they happen without our ability to control it. At the same time, authoritarian power structures can continue with conservative resistance to positive, constructive change and support of the status quo of uneven and corrupt power relations, and can serve to systematically retard, in an indefinite manner, at least some if not all of the integrative aspects of meta-systems development.
I would therefore define meta-systems development as the overall integration of technology, communication and related human systems, including the systems that relate humans environmentally and ecologically with the biosphere, as a single corporate global and even super-global system. As such a global system, it would no know political or other social boundaries. Its only boundaries would be the furthest reaches of outer-space it can achieve.
Many aspects of the meta-system have essentially been within our grasp for some time, but the overall problem of integration of such a framework prevents these systems from coalescing in the manner that they need to in order to make it work. The advent of the Internet has given a global vision to communications and information networks, and this has in turn generated the imagination of a level of integration and operation only the thing of dreams before. After the world wide web, the possibility and imagination of something like a meta-system became more credible and anchored to a concrete sense of reality. The internet showed us a sense of the realization of truly integrated global systems, and even a hint at how it might be accomplished. I can therefore realistically imagine a world of the future in which development proceeds in an integrated and coordinate manner globally, rather than chaotically, myopically and haphazardly, and in which the entire system is in a sense "housed under one roof." I see this trend towards increasing systems integration, along a common solution pathway, as inevitable if we are to secure and guarantee our future indefinitely and without threat of holocaust or self-extermination by the human species.
There is no need to fear a tyranny of machines or of a machine like state. If anything the development of a global meta-system will prevent the occurrence of a totalitarian world regime. A meta-system will be by definition a human based and human oriented system, an extension of the culture creating and culture constructing processes that has lead to the development of human civilization in the first place.
All real systems are underdetermined systems. They are so not only for their mechanical, gravitational and thermodynamic aspects but because real systems are constituted as subsystems of a larger framework that can be defined as a natural meta-system, and no real system can be constructed that is not a part of this larger, all encompassing framework. Hence all systems share relations and influences within a larger systemic context that has to be taken into account, that cannot ever be taken fully into account, in our analysis and understanding of how things in the world really work.
Being underdetermined, real systems have a degree of stochastic complexity and unpredictability about their behavior that runs against the grain of what we can now refer to as a traditional view of positivistic and analytical science. Instead, we are forced to broaden out view of what sciences is about and how it relates to the natural world that is inherently uncertain in its structure and dynamic processes of change. The complementariness of systems is not about establishing historically determined causality structures, but rather about analyzing developmental cycles and emergent systems that pass through stages or along a continuum of change, complex change, that involves multiple points or nodes, interacting, at the same time. There is no point in time when these nodes, in complex interaction, are not influencing the change dynamics of the overall part of the system or any component of the system. We may look for prime movers or primary determinants, depending on what model of causality we may wish to adopt, but we are begging a problem that is like the hen and the egg--we are hung on the horns of a dilemma about what a system is and about the reality of natural systems.
Natural systems, all real systems, are structured by rules that can be said to be embedded or are implicit to the functioning and patterning of relationship, flow structure and dynamic change processes of the system. These "rules" are not available to us in any direct sense. They must be inferred from the detailed observation of systematic phenomena in situ, in the natural context of their occurrence, or at least experimentally in conditions in which the control factors are well defined. They become rules by the fact of our denotative definition, after the fact of their demonstration and observation of the patterning that they are alleged to relate to in some deterministic manner. Being directly unavailable to our perception and comprehension, the test of these structural rules, that define the skeleton of the systems framework in relation to a particular kind or general set of systems, becomes primarily one that can be called a natural or applied "Turing test." If we can simulate or replicate at least the primary features of a system in terms of formalized rule structures, and the general behavior of the simulated or artificial system provides us with a sufficient representation of the behavior of the system being modeled, then we have achieved what can be called a form of scientific understanding about the structural aspects and functioning of a particular kind of system, with the caveat that the system as it is modeled is incomplete and imperfect, just as a portrait or even a photograph cannot be a perfect or complete representation of the object.
Naturally occurring systems can be said to be heterogeneously integrated in an underdetermined way. This comprehends a very broad class and range of patterned phenomena in the real world. If we are to seek to understand the environment, especially to take completely into account the role the weather and climate will play in any particular area, then there are a great many variables that must be taken into consideration, not all from the same sets of sources and not all of the same magnitude or epistemological terrain. We would have to look at the flora and fauna, the geo-physical landscape, the weather pattern, the relation of surrounding areas, and the role played by the sun, the moon, and its longitude and latitude on the earth's surface, etc.
I would claim that most natural phenomena articulate in this complicated, mixed manner, and that only afterwards do various kinds of researchers enter a region or epiphenomenal landscape and parse up the problem into so many distinct and separable lines of inquiry. This is very evident in the history of the human sciences. An anthropologist will enter an area, say a village in Vietnam, and see an entirely different problem set than say an economist, or a political scientist, or a psychologist, or an ecologist or agriculturalist, much less an historian, a Marxist, a military strategist or a medical doctor or researcher. Thus, it is quite clearly the case that most bottled specialist knowledge on certain topics has been pre-analyzed and centrifuged and separated for our sakes, and we are supposed to swallow it as if it were whole, realistically representative of the realities it deals with.
There is something both unnatural and unrealistic about a divisive perspective on reality that is segregated into different and often mutually unintelligible fields of expertise. A meta-systems perspective followed in its original development upon an ethnocultural orientation in anthropological studies that has attempted to holistically reintegrate knowledge across different domains when dealing with a central set of topics. Rarely are real world problem sets studied in a truly interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary manner, and it has frequently been the case that completely separate dialogs about a central topic have been carried on independently of one another, without a sense of mutual awareness.
The intention and design therefore of meta-systems research is to overcome these kinds of obstacles that stand in the way of holistic problem solving in real world contexts, by providing both a methodology and a consistent theoretical framework that permits an approach to real problems in a manner that does not privilege one class or kind of information, or one framework of understanding of that information, over any other, in a selective or preselective manner. In a sense, it permits the data and patterning of the phenomena to speak for itself, and provides a means for deriving the intrinsically salient and structurally important features of any natural problem set from the standpoint of multiple interacting systems.
Blanket Copyright, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.
Last Updated: 04/19/05