Efficiency in ecological and evolutionary frameworks are relative to the system and the surroundings being described. A mechanical definition of efficiency is a relatively high ratio of output to input in a working system. An maximally efficient system accomplishes a set of effects (an end state) with the minimum of waste or effort. We can contrapose efficiency of a working system to the complementary state of entropy we can assign to a system, which for a closed thermodynamic system becomes the measure of the amount of total energy unavailable for work, or the relative measure of disorder or randomness in a system (in any given state). All naturally occurring systems, including human systems, must obey the laws of thermodynamics, which means that we can have no perfectly efficient or perfectly non-entropic system.

Work is defined as the informational (nonrandom) organization of energy to achieve some desired effect or product or to maintain some systemic state of order within a given amount of time. Work in its most fundamental sense can be defined as the systematic transfer of energy from one form or state to another, or state transformation. Work induces a kind of change therefore, and results a form of change. This form of change is the opposite of natural entropic tendencies towards increasing randomization. I will therefore call "positive change" any state transformation that results in an increasingly non-entropic state, and a negative change as any state transformation resulting in an increasingly entropic state.

All naturally occurring systems change.

No system that exists cannot change--there are no static systems.

There are no perfectly entropic or random states in reality.

There are no perfectly ordered or non-random states in reality.

All systems are changing either towards increasing order or increasing disorder.

All other things being equal, all systems will tend towards increasing disorder if no work is done to increase order.

Since work is always be definition imperfect, and because all systems tend in the long run toawards increasing disorder, all working systems must eventually become dysfunctional as systems.

Naturally occuring systems can therefore be called informationally stochastic or "self-organizing" systems because there occurs no well-defined, external causal agency that determines the organizational structure of the patterning of a system.

An organized system is one that is intelligently ordered, or "informationally coherent," to perform some minimal form of work. Intelligent ordering of any system is a measure of that system's integration and relative state complexity.

1. All systems are part of a larger, more entropic environment that constitute the surroundings of a system.

2. All systems are thermodynamically open to their surrounding environment.

3. All systems are composed of multiple components and thus are multi-factorially determined.

4. The determination of any system, according to the laws of thermodynamics and of informational dynamics, is always incomplete--systems are thus complexly underdetermined.

5. Systems are therefore subject to continuous state change that is both exogenous and exogenous.

6. The complex underdetermination of partially open thermodynamic systems entails that all such systems can perform only a limited amount of work for a given duration of time.

7. Eventually, all naturally occurring systems must disintegrate and cease to function (to do work) as informationally coherent systems.

It is important to distinguish between total entropy of a complex system and the net entropy of such a system.

1. Naturally occurring systems are self-organizational working systems that achieve some sense of complex equilibrium within its environment.

2. Equilibrium is an entropy dependent and temporally dependent relationship of a system, such that the higher the equilibrium of a system, the lower its total entropy, and the longer lasting the system will be.

3. This equilibrium can be understood in terms of the ratio of net efficiency of the ratio of energy input into a system (E_I) over the energy output from the system (E_O) plus the energy lost from the system, or the instantaneous disorder of the system (S) equals 1.

K = E_O / E_I - S = 1

4. All natural systems will tend towards some optimum value of equilibrium that will be a function of the time and size of the system. Equilibrium of a system is a time dependent function, such that a system will increase in order towards equilibrium, achieve a stable state-path trajectory, and eventually then decrease in order back towards total disequilibrium.

5. The measure of the efficiency of a system is positively correlated with the measure of the integration and informational value of a system.

6. A totally disordered system is a one that exists at the lowest potential energy state and has the least amount of informational value, whereas a hypothetically and totally ordered system is one that exists at the highest potential energy shate and that has the greatest amont of informational value.

Define natural physical systems.

Distinguish these from biological systems and define these.

Distinguish these from human systems and define these.

I will venture a basic set of propositions about biological systems in general and their eco-evolutionary tendencies:

1. Natural biological systems tend to evolve towards higher energy utilization or a higher energy budget but at a cost of greater entropy to the system.

The primary concerns with human systems theory are to explain:

The processes underlying the original and historical development of human systems

The processes underlying the organizational patterning and integration of human systems.

The processes underlying the transformation of human systems from one state into another.

Because human beings are mammals and are social, they represent animal populations. Human populations are therefore subject to the same basic biological imperatives that all biological systems are subject to. These imperatives, defined within an eco-evolutionary framework, are the challenges of adaptive survival and reproductive success. These become expressed in animal populations primarily in terms of three primary biological goals:

1. feeding as a primary measure of environmental adaptation

2. avoiding negative selection, primary by predation or parasitism

3. achieving positive selection by successful breeding

Because within a natural eco-evolutionary framework, no trait-development will be tolerated or successful in the long-term unless it promotes evolutionary success, the rise of human trait-complexes relating to and underlying human cultural systems can only be understood within an eco-evolutionary framework.

All natural systems are governed by basic thermodynamic rules and all biological ecosystems can be understood in terms the energy exchange dynamics that occur in such systems. Early eco-systems models were based upon energy exchange dynamics of foodwebs within ecosystems.

Reliance upon plants is an inherently more energy efficient strategy than reliance on other animals, and leads to greater biomass.

Larger biomass systems are determined either by greater population densities and/or greater body size per individual.

The rise of human cultural systems can be fit squarely into this eco-evolutionary framework. Human systems, as natural systems, will increase in order, scale and complexity as the result of increased working efficiency by which it achieves these basic biological imperatives. This is definable as the use of information (or know-how or "basic science") to improve the efficiency and likelihood of success in all three areas of adaptation.

It follows that the rise of human civilization and the evolutionary development of cultural systems can be understood clearly in terms of the degree to which these goals have been achieved with increasing efficiency through the use of knowledge.

1. early humans relied primarily upon high-energy cost/low efficiency patterns of Type III response and numerical response predation and attack-abatement/defense by which to accomplish biological goals 1 & 2. Predation strategies represented always mixed animal-plant dependent eco-trophic niche profiles that entailed a great deal of local and regional variability of patterning. Hunting and gathering strategies that were primarily opportunistic modes of adaptation that entailed active pursuit and defense and put humans at the top of the eco-trophic niche pyramid in competitive exclusion with other top predators: i.e. large cats. In order to survive, the earliest strategy adopted by human populations were those of niche diversification and niche generalization, requiring high levels of mobility and relatively small and flexible group formations that were most highly responsive to alternating environmental circumstances.

2. subsequent development of cultural patterns were tied to the alteration of food-getting and processing strategies that permitted lower energy costs per returns of food value, increasing security and increasing the potentiality of reproductive growth. Waterways adaptations to lacustrian, lotic and coastal systems were an important intermediate adaptation, as were the pre-pastoral reliance upon great herds of ungulates.

3. This process led eventually to multiple forms of plant and animal domestication, early forms featuring the domestication of horses, possibly reindeer, dogs, pigs, cattle, as well as many different kinds of plants and cereal cultigens like barley, early strains of wheat, rice, yam, taro, sago, bananas & plantains, etc. In this regard, it would be important to ask what pre-domesticated strains and patterns might have been like, such as broad-cast planting and harvesting of wild strains of rice, etc.

We can understand the net energy balance in human eco-systems in terms of the amount of free energy that could be achieved from any particular mixed or heterogeneous strategy that would be adopted by a group of a certain size. We can assume that in any given context, low energy expenditure would be the preferred pattern over high energy expenditure. We can assume as well that high energy returns would be preferred over low energy returns. We can expect a calculus in foraging strategy that would attempt to optimize gains over costs. The general pattern therefore was the following kind of game theory framework:

It is evident in this model that we can derive correlation coefficients of systems relative to their total inputs and outputs. For any real system to be effective, it would depend upon a positive correlation between low energy expenditures (of human physical effort) and reasonably high energy returns (per unit of human effort). Systems must at least break even in this formula, and will soon go extinct if they fail or achieve a high negative correlation. As a result, humans have learned through information and know-how to substitute the labor or work of other animals to maximize their gains while minimizing their own expenditures. Much of the other "animals" have been other humans, and this formula underlies our history of complex social stratification. Domestication has represented a process of systematically substituting the labor of other animals in the management and procurement of increased resources. Later on, industrialization permitted humans to substitute physical machinery, coupled to natural energy sources, to drive sophisticated systems of production that tended to displace human labor. It cannot be said that the efficiency ratios under these alternative developments of second and third order systems were necessarily absolutely efficient per unit energy consumed, but it can be said that these systems tend to provide more stability and hence food-getting security for human populations, and relative to human labor, they provided net greater return. At the same time, these breakthroughs that permitted greater system stability at the same time provided a platform for dramatically increased population densities to be permanently sustained. It gave rise therefore also to new forms of social organization and new problems and issues that have yet to be solved.

Human population growth would be made possibly only under circumstances where favorable environmental conditions permitted favorable food-getting strategies and minimized negative selection. These would be the preferred locations-systems that humans would have found and they would have invented for themselves means to achieve this preferred pattern of pro-adaptive systems via adoption of various modalities of cultural selection (the use of know-how & information) to achieve either: 1. Higher energy systems; 2. Higher net gains in systems.

There were two general tendencies in human systems:1. the drive towards adaptation at lower eco-trophic niche levels, which permitted greater net energy returns in terms of total biomass of human systems; 2. the drive towards higher eco-trophic niche levels, which permitted humans to survive as secondary and even tertiary consumers which entailed that humans operated at lower overall biomass.

As long as these tendencies were achieved primarily through patterns of natural selection, the drive towards 1. Usually meant a form of adaptive-niche specialization and probably higher levels of predation. Thus, as long as this was primarily a naturally mediated processes through genetic character displacement, such groups would have run a high risk of extinction. 2. The alternate pattern entailed a form of adaptive-niche generalization and diversification, which entailed maximization of populations but at a narrower base near the top. This would have resulted in competitive exclusion of possible interspecific predators, and would have been evolutionarily the preferred pattern of development.

Human cultural systems achieve mostly a balance between these two tendencies, except in regions that prevent one or the other from occurring, such as in extremely cold or extremely hot and dry climates where plant productivity is comparatively lower.

We must distinguish between natural selection patterns, both positive and negative, as well as, in human systems, what can be called cultural selection patterns that were both positive and negative. Cultural selection factors can only be construed within an eco-evolutionary framework if they result in some form of natural selection pattern. Cultural selection factors therefore represent of form of indirect natural selection. The general trend over time was an increase in cultural selection factors and a decrease in influence of direct negative selection factors. This indirection was mediated within human cultural systems that achieved greater work load and/or greater efficiency and therefore carried heavier informational load and/or greater communicational efficiency.

Social & cultural stratification and the rise of second order systems.