by Hugh M. Lewis

I undertake this work as a result of a year of synthesis since completion last year of the previous book Natural Systems (2000). This work is a direct successor to the Natural Systems work, and seeks to extend the basic models in each of the main areas and to elaborate a wider basis for these models in terms of meta-systems theory than covered previously. During this past year, these models have been extended in a number of directions. Because of the inherent complexity of comprehensive studies, there is always some danger of the work splintering off in any number of possible spin-offs or tangential subjects. Subsequent works developed immediately after the Natural Systems book demonstrated this tendency clearly to me, though the various excursions down different avenues of thought were in hindsight extremely productive. It is now necessary to tie these diverse tendrils back to the coherent and comprehensive unity that was originally intended for this kind of work in Natural Systems.

This manuscript has been undertaken under trying conditions that debilitate against establishing a concentrative focus for the book. An arbitrary deadline was imposed for its rough draft which has meant that it will undergo successive editions before it achieves a level of maturity that the subject demands. The original draft of this work is intended to be as succinct as possible in a skeletal form, outlining the essential concepts and ideas involved in meta-systems science and natural systems theory at each of the main levels.

I have chosen to adopt as much as possible a textbook style and point of view in the presentation of the subject matter of this text, hence the subtitle, Primer in Natural Systems. A textbook manner seemed appropriate to the nature of the subjects involved and in their mutual and common frame of organization. On the other hand, the work achieves a degree of comprehensiveness, thematic unity and breadth of focus that I believe does justice to the broad and deep terrain it seeks to explore. It is not just a mile wide and an inch deep--it comprehends an entire ocean of unknown dimensions.

The book was undertaken during a period of substantive and existential resonance between basic-level coursework that somewhat serendipitously represented the three basic levels of division that exist within natural systems theory. This has been helpful if somewhat frustrating, for learning the basic language styles, exemplars and, need I say, the scientific cultures and cognitive styles that prevail within each level. I have therefore deliberately sought to seize the advantage of the moment in order, making lemonade from lemons, to push this work through its birth throes.

The outline consists of an elaboration of basic natural systems theory on the three primary levels on which such knowledge and patterning is stratified (ie. the physical, the biological and the anthropological) in three chapters covering each area respectively. In these chapters I aim at the construction of truly comprehensive theoretical viewpoints at each of the levels of the basic stratification of natural phenomena. The objective of comprehensiveness has taken precedence clearly over the elucidation of detail or specializations of knowledge on specific topic areas.

These central chapters are complemented by three other chapters--an introduction dealing with meta-systems science operationally and philosophically (metaphysical, ontological and metaphysical) and the two next to the last chapters that deal with the general question of alternative meta-systems as these have been emergent in the world, and with the possibility of applied meta-systems as these may be emergent in the future. The book concludes with some basic philosophical (epistemological and ethical) issues that the elaboration of meta-systems and natural systems theory stirs up.

This first edition of the book is intended to be as brief and succinct as possible in an outline form. The emphasis is upon concise explanation of the train of main points covered in each theory and system elaborated. The work is intended as a skeletal outline to be expanded and elaborated with greater detail in subsequent editions. At the same time, it was intended as an initial reconnaissance into as yet unknown scientific terrain.

Like the previous book, this work is only the result of the last year of diverse efforts and thinking on a variety of interrelated topics. It could not have been written but on the back of the previous book, and the previous posturing in anthropology that I have undergone over the last two decades. Maturity in the perspective of the anthropology of knowledge allows us to take a step further away from the train of anthropological relativity that we are riding in. If we want to develop a genuine anthropology of science, and by extension, an authentic reflexive anthropology of anthropology, then such an approach as this is a necessary prerequisite. Only by such means can we step away from the paradigmatic boundaries and ideological conundrums that serve to define and in many ways frustrate the diverse fields of science that are defined more by their specializations and applied successes than by grand unifying theories and their comprehensiveness of theoretical view.

Once this sense of relative objectivity about our knowledge, all of our knowledge, is achieved, then it becomes possible, indeed necessary, that we adopt a wider point of view such as is encompassed by natural systems theory. Such theory forms a basis for the unification of all the sciences, and for a unified understanding of science in general--its functions, its purposes, and its patterns in the real world. It comes perhaps as a grand paradox that this objectivity only arrived by means of embracing in a basic sense the ultimate anthropological subjectivity and relativity of our human understandings, even in our sciences, from which we can never hope to escape unless we eventually encounter some form of alien intelligence who can then inform us of our own anthropocentrisms of perspective. In a sense, science does this for us already, but it speaks to us only indirectly through the data and the patterned relationships that we do see in research.

The purpose and value of this work is mainly heuristic. It is to offer a set of alternative points of view on basic issues in the main scientific areas. In this regard, no received theory in any field is so sacrosanct that it cannot be questioned or alternatives not critically evaluated, and even accepted if they seem to fulfill the general requirements set down by the sciences. This work is a far cry from the paradigmatic jargon that fits into peer-review journals. For most it is "fringe" and will be treated initially as any marginal perspective would be. Science serves as an impartial witness in these proceedings. It will in time render its own judgments separately from the opinions and prejudices of those who control its praxis and its purse strings at any one time in our shared social history.

A point is reached eventually in one's own intellectual development that somewhat arbitrary and conventionally defined boundaries between knowledge domains appear to dissolve in consideration of larger issues, especially complex real world problem sets that demand knowledge and expertise from a across a plethora of academic perspectives. At the same time such boundaries eventually also come to be frustrating and downright stultifying for the questioning imagination and the open exploratory mind if they are kept too strictly or followed too narrowly. Many a bright and brilliant light bulb peters out at the edge of its domain.

I take this work to be a personal and professional testament to the power of independent thinking in the world, to see past illusion and delusion to the realities that lie beyond, whatever our material condition or our relative social status. It was accomplished in a context that basically discourages independent thought and that is designed to interfere with the cultivation of independent thinking at all but the most superficial levels. I have suffered and survived such authoritarian systems before, and the actors caught up in the articulation of its power are, on average, oblivious to its full moral implications. It is clearly the case that the basis for a free and open world rests in a free and independent mind, and the capacity to communicate clearly and in an unconstrained way one's ideas. It is daily demonstrated to me that all the money in the world cannot buy one's sense of freedom and independence in the world in a genuine way. Money is at best a poor substitute for independence. Of course, this lesson will be lost upon most people of the world today if they have any significant investment in the maintenance of a status quo that is heading the human race the way of the Dinosaur.

The original and primary intention of this work is to awaken the reader and the reader's world to the possibilities of alternative realities. Without an awareness of such alternatives, we are limited in our choices and in the long run in our shared destiny upon earth. It is increasingly clear in so many ways, ways now no longer disputed by scientists, that we must seek out such alternatives or, failing, risk the end of the world as we know it. Beyond discovery of the wonder of the supremely sublime beauty of scientific understanding and pattern in nature, beyond the value of science to provide us with a sane and coherent view of reality, we must see increasingly that science shares a growing obligation to use its knowledge for the improvement of the world and for its, or our, perpetuation in the world. Our hard-won lessons of the 20^th Century were that indeed knowledge creates responsibility, whether we wish it historically or not upon ourselves, and that once created, as with the atomic bomb, it cannot be simply recalled.