Conclusions

Alternative Systems Theory

Fundamental Questions & Answers

by Hugh M. Lewis

In terms of physical systems, we must ask, is the universe infinite? Whether it is infinite or not, how did it all begin?

In terms of biological systems, when we encounter new alien forms of life, how will they be constituted and how will they take shape and change? Will they follow a similar organic DNA structure, and will they follow similar lines of evolution based on natural selection?

In terms of human systems, what are our future prospects? If we perchance encountered alien intelligence in the universe, would it follow a symbolic patterning similar to our own human intelligence?

The first two sets of questions stand as they are, and will be left open. The last set of questions, relating to our own prospects on earth and the issue of alternative intelligence, is the principle subject of this last chapter, as it seems to me to be ultimately the most pressing and important question to try to answer. Of course, we cannot see into our own futures. We can look at the solar system, and we can expect that in one million years, it will not have changed very remarkably than it has since the last million years.

But of ourselves and of our earth we cannot be so sure. Life has a wonderful way of adapting and surviving in all kinds of conditions, but even the future of life appears fundamentally uncertain in the universe. Increasing evidence from Mars suggests that the conditions prerequisite to biological informational patterning are perhaps very delicate and fragile indeed.

The last set of questions appear to me to be interrelated, such that the part answer to one provides a partial solution to the other, even though neither can be answered definitively at this time.

I will "answer" first the question of alternative intelligence. Then I will turn finally to the question of our own future prospects.

*****

I had thought to do a fourth part on alternative systems theory, but I realized that at least at this stage these would technically be artificial systems, i.e., the product of human construction, and therefore by definition things that are not directly natural. This is perhaps a minor equivocation, as we could claim that even artificial or constructed systems are still natural human byproducts. But I believe it is important to natural systems theory that it is in the naturalistic encounter of self-organizing systems that are not of our own construction that scientific worldview and objectivity must be based. For now, the alternative systems produced by people are largely products of human cultural construction, a form of applied science to technological development, and thus they are an extension of human information systems much as are ideological systems themselves. We appear to have a fundamental need to escape the conundrums of either kind of construction in our scientific constructions.

Informational systems abound in the natural world, occurring at every level we seek. They occur at the smallest levels imaginable, far smaller than what we can see with our own eyes, and they occur on a scale that is scarcely possible to imagine. They recur in life, repeated in an infinite variety of forms and organisms. They abound in the human world also, in almost every aspect we can find. In fact, I think it is impossible to find an instance of anything occurring in nature, that is not a part of or explainable in terms of one system or another, and frequently, in terms of two or more systems simultaneously.

The implication of this work has been that systems theory is a natural approach to a scientific worldview. There is something about systems that seems humanly good to think about, in fact, naturally good to think. It is a function of our rationality and our need for a coherent and integrated view of the world that naturally gives itself to systematic formulations of ordered patterning of phenomena. We normally seek out rules that govern relationships in the world, because, not only are we normally rule-governed, but we think in terms of rules as well. The mythology of non-literate oral cultures is no less systematic on a symbolic and natural level than are our own scientific explanations of the world. In their own internal world, in their own cultural context, they make as much sense of the world as does our science in our own context. And science has its own style of magic that was originally descended from witchcraft and alchemy.

But at this stage, there is a danger that systems theory, in encompassing and meaning everything, can be rendered to mean nothing important at all. Systems theory goes beyond the mere enumeration of the facts of any case, to attempt to infer the rules and systemic relations that account for most if not all observable patterns within a system, as if this system were hypothetically independent of our knowledge of the system. This is an important relativizing caveat that makes all knowledge, hence all objectivity, ultimately conditional upon our ability to know.

Beyond this, the agenda of systems theory is to try to relate systems together at multiple levels in a way the leads to grander theoretical synthesis. Systems in nature do not every occur in isolation or in a vacuum. Such presumptions infect our understanding of the natural order at almost every level, leading us to theories as if such systems were occurring in a natural vacuum.

Granted, systems theory was born of an information age when computers made the handling of complex bodies of information fast and relatively easy. We came to see the world as if it were a grand system of organized information. Indeed, systems theory could not have been developed, even imagined outside of the framework of computer sciences.

There has been a danger in this, not just in the connotations of applying systems theory to organizational management or in business or economics. It is a danger of over-extending a model as an analogy or homology only, without adapting the model to fit the requirements of the natural patterning encountered. Thus, models derived as systemic constructs are useful only to the extent that they allow us to represent realistically and accurately hidden relationships in complex sets of data. But they become worse than useless when the serve to blind us from the discovery and understanding of such relationships that occur all about us. Thus no systemic model is so sacrosanct that it cannot be questioned and toyed and tinkered with.

Thinking about natural systems theory at its various levels, and considering some of the philosophical and logical outcomes of such theory, leads to another question concerning the possible existence of other information systems that are not describable within the present framework of understanding.

In fact, it is possible to imagine and suggest the possibility of existence of such alternative systems at each of the basic levels we have outlined in this book. Furthermore, it is possible that we can also come to encounter new levels of natural information patterning that we did not know existed before. In this regard, it must be wondered that if we dip too far below the level of the subatomic particle, whether what we encounter can be described in strictly physical terminologies as we conventionally define things. Or else might it call perhaps for another kind of science altogether, that we might at this time only refer to as extra-physical. At this point this is just speculation but all bets are off in a general wait and see attitude.

Such alternative systems might include any of the following:

Extraneous systems, including "non-systems" and a-systemic patterns.

Inbetween or Intermediary Systems, including hybrid & multiplex systems.

Unknown or Imaginary Systems, including any possible system not otherwise known.

I would include in this list especially the notion of alternative natural intelligence, which could be some form of extra-sensory perception or guided intuition, shared consciousness, etc., as well as alien forms of intelligence occurring in the universe.

We must set certain criteria for inclusion of any phenomenal patterning in our natural systems theory. There must exist some potentially measurable and observable effect or pattern that provides at least indirect evidence for the occurrence of a possible system, and when no other system explanation appears satisfactory for its theoretical accounting. We must call this a "reality-testing" presupposition about any natural systems theory.

The conceptioning of alternative informational systems arises from the very real possibility of the natural occurrence of other kinds of systems than those that are known to exist in the natural scheme of things or as the direct or indirect result of our own artifices. We can imagine alternative universes, alternative kinds of life, and even alternative forms of advanced intelligence, but until we encounter evidence of these phenomena, we can only imagine and guess at their possibilities.

The purpose of such an exercise is not only to provide a heuristic system that gets at basic design principles that might be generally involved in the organization of information at various levels. It allows us to develop a general heuristic system itself that would have use and applicability in a wide variety of informational contexts. We can derive models, and a system of model building, that are coherent and relevant to the data constructs we are attempting to understand.

It means to provide a more comprehensive and general framework for construing the systems that do occur naturally. It gives us a handle for stepping outside of our own systems, and to help us to objectify as such those systems which are in some way a part of our lives. Knowing that a system is just that, a "system," entails that we can work flexibly with its components.

It also should help us to be more open to the possibility of alternative interpretation and the discovery of new systems in nature when and if we do serendipitously encounter them. There is more than serendipity involved in such discovery, as often as not significant discovery is prepared and preconditioned by much planning, searching, preparation and creative trial and error. It requires an open frame of mind that asks questions before seeking answers.

Our general lack of experience or awareness of such alternative possibilities makes the conceptioning of alternative systems inherently difficult. It is inherently difficult to learn or grasp something that remains remote from the world of everyday experience and understanding.

Alternative systems theory thus complements natural systems theory at several levels of understanding, and serves to reinforce and improve our research and understanding of naturally occurring systems. But so far it only occurs on a heuristically theoretical level, in analogies based on game theory, nonlinear control theory, design theory, and exotic forms of mathematical theory.

The closest we can come at this time to the imagination of such systems, beyond pure science fiction which appears quite fertile territory for unbounded scientific imagination, are the artificial human-made systems under our own noses. We have elaborated numerous systems based on some level of information manipulation and control that do not naturally occur in nature. If humans were meant to fly, they would have sprouted wings. The fact of flight today is commonplace, and there is in a sense nothing natural about our flying machines. They are based on the success of our science and systems theory. And so it has been for some time now that we have created artificial technological systems that do work and exchange or convey information in some way or another, and these have had the effect of transforming our world in ways we could not have previously imagined.

In these artificial systems we can find a great deal that is theoretical about them in their explanation, much of which relates to engineering and other applied sciences. Therefore they provide us a good foundation for understanding abstractly the kinds of things that any and potentially every system should contain in an ideal sense. There is one class of artificial system in particular that has arisen basically since World War II that has critical bearing upon our understanding of possible systems, and upon our possible futures, that I would like to finish upon. This is of course systems of artificial intelligence that exist as the result of our advancements in the computer sciences and computer information theory.

*****

The last part of this work treats the subject of other kinds of informational systems possibly occurring in reality, or that are possibly imaginable. Science cannot extend itself beyond the bounds of its own natural subject matter, unless these boundaries are extended through new discoveries. It is unlikely that there will be a radical reinvention or discovery of science that includes an entirely new level of informational patterning than what has been treated within this work. Even the discovery of a new universe or of a new alien life form will not represent an entirely new range of phenomena that destroy the foundations of our sciences--science will probably be able to deal with these alternative phenomena in ways that incorporate them sufficiently into the preexisting frameworks.

But the application of science in numerous areas of technology is rapidly creating a world in which new possibilities are being created at an accelerated rate. Informational patterning as this occurs in nature, has been transformed through such scientific applications and engineering to create artificial systems. Because these artificial systems derive from and remain rooted within natural systems, they represent yet a new stratum of informational patterning within our reality. To some extent, this confuses the boundary between what is natural and what is artificial, but it is clear that both are equally the provenience of science.

It is beyond the scope of this work to go into great detail concerning developments in artificial intelligence languages and applications. We can talk of a number of areas of successful applications of computer and cognitive sciences in language parsing, speech recognition, visual recognition, in robotics, in problem solving, in symbolic modeling, in neural networks, game playing and game theory, in genetic algorithms, expert systems, and so on and on. We can talk of different architectures of computer design as well, that solve the basic bottleneck problem of a single processor in the explosion of complex informational search spaces. It is evident that whatever progress we have made already, we are likely to make even greater progress in the near future, and that not all possibilities for the development of computer and cognitive sciences have been even explored, much less exhausted.

Successful applied solutions to general problems constitute a kind of possible proof about such systems, that they can work in such and such a way. Thus these kinds of solutions can be considered a form of experimental research that advances our understanding of complex natural problems, particularly the problems relating to human intelligence. It is clear that we do not even remotely understand the functioning of the human mind, how it works and why, much less have we been able to even remotely represent its potential through our programs and sciences. But computers are growing more and more powerful, and possibilities are being systematically explored with increasing rapidity.

Even if we develop highly successful artificial intelligence programs and interfaces that fundamentally solve the basic requirements posed by the Chinese room model, we still would not know if we can realistically cross that mind-brain dichotomy that comes between our hardwired systems and the soft mental imagery of the natural brain, particularly what is known as the binding problem. Does the best chess-playing computer actually function in the same way that the best human chess player naturally functions? An affirmative answer to this at this time is quite dubious. And it is likely to remain so.

Anthropologically speaking, all human knowledge and intelligence is culturally situated in constructed realities. It makes sense to assume that our definitions of intelligence, and even our natural examples of intellectual functioning of human brains, begs an important question about the social construction, distribution, articulation and change of this knowledge that so far our models of artificial intelligence have not yet addressed. This is especially true when we consider how our cognition is inherently linguistic in basic ways, such that many "thought" problems turn into problems of linguistic expression, or rather, the ability to convey meaning, especially the correct meaning.

Cognitive sciences to date have been framed almost exclusively by psychologists, linguists, computer scientists and philosophers interested in fundamental questions posed by the mind-body dilemma. Other people are knowledge engineers such that, if junk spills out, we can blame the one's who put in the junk in the first place, and we can sidestep the issue of structural design or faulty programs.

In principle, information theory should transcend this kind of issue, such that it should not matter what the content or origin of knowledge, or even its exact natural function, so long as the design of this function can be emulated. But in our stipulation for basic criteria of strong artificial intelligence especially, we seem to be hung up upon a largely anthropocentric model of what intelligence is or should be.

This is perhaps the legacy of the standard of the Chinese room that has been imposed upon these fields. It should be obvious that there are other kinds of brains in nature other than human brains, and many of these may be just as inherently complex as that of people. Examples of primates and dolphins jump to the foreground in this regard, and it seems that it would be fundamentally easier to model the brain of a fly or an ant before proceeding somewhat boldly to that of a human being. Part of the issue here seems to me to be that we can get inside of our own heads to some extent, while the brains of any other animal remains something of a locked black box.

Thus the criterion of the Chinese room has been ultimately subjectively based--whether or not the computer really functions in a manner that is convincingly humanlike in its intelligence and responsiveness. We can hold this criteria for computers, but we cannot maintain similar criteria for models of other kinds of brains. Thus, it seems, we adopt anthropocentric notions and standards of artificial intelligence, because we cannot get out of the subjective reality bubble that our own anthropocentric condition imposes for us. I would call this the anthropological relativity of intelligence, and by extension, of informational patterning in general.

If we could develop communication with some other intelligent life form--direct communication-- then we might find a way out of this anthropocentric conundrum of our own intelligence. Talking to animals is still to be figured out. We teach Chimps and Gorillas sign languages, and they can communicate their desires, thoughts, intentions and sense of reality to us on some limited level. Perchance this kind of dialogue may allow us some handle to the problem, but it seems that this is perhaps fortuitous in the sense that it is based more on similarity of brain structures between the Great Apes, including humans, than it is on establishing effective means of inter-specific communication.

Of course, the real challenge of this will be when and if we do encounter a real alien intelligence in the universe. Then we will have something to talk and think about, in ways that fundamentally relativizes all presumptions of our own anthropocentrism of information, knowledge and intelligence. It is presumed that it would be relatively easy to establish communication with an intelligent life form, as some bridge of mutual intentionality and understanding can be built by means of shared sign systems. But it would not be a simple matter of building a translation box that instantly converts our words to theirs and their words to our own. We cannot even yet do this with only one of our own languages, even with massive computers. But presumably meeting the challenge would provide us new insight into how we ourselves think, as well as how thought occurs in reality.

The emphasis upon our own anthropocentrism in the definition of intelligence, and the paradoxical neglect of the anthropological functions and patterns of human knowledge and symbolic intelligence in the world, entails that successful applications of artificial intelligence may be better served to the extent that we can step outside of these boundaries and apply what we know and can do to non-humanlike systems. In this sense, soft and applied artificial intelligence solutions are much more successful and perhaps more intrinsically interesting and non-trivial than somewhat spurious attempts at hard AI. This is true especially to the extent that they are productive of new and alternative kinds of working systems.

Our anthropocentric view of artificial intelligence is best stereotyped by the anthropoid robot, the android, that attempts to be humanlike in every way, even in appearance, bipedality, voice, and emotion. But at some point, it must be legitimately asked, that if we built machines intelligently enough, even if they just sit in little black boxes and did nothing but process digitized signals at enormous rates, whether or not they can be shown to somehow transcend the boundary between a machine and a sentient thing, or a consciousness. It would be the difference between the dead brain of an appliance and the spontaneously active machine that we call living, then can we be morally justified in denying or turning off that intelligence.

It is clear that technological progress in these fields has been rapid and is accelerating. The possibilities for its applications in our lives have not been even broached, much less exhausted, hence we are liable to witness entirely new kinds of alternative artificial information systems that serve to expand our understanding and models of intelligence and information in some fundamental ways. Still, we are liable to find ourselves boxed in by our black box, by the limitations imposed by our own inherently anthropocentric brains.

*****

Not every alternative information system needs to be about artificial intelligence. It is also necessarily about communication, information storage and design. In this regard, especially with the development of the Internet and the worldwide web, we are witnessing a veritable digital information revolution that on the surface at least appears to have little to do with chess-playing computers and esoteric hard AI experiments.

Behind this revolution is a transformation of human noetic consciousness that is occurring as the result of electronic information storage and a retirement of traditional textual information storage systems. Thus we are also witness simultaneously to worldwide communication networks and a form of electronic orality that is serving to turn us into a global village after all. If the medium is the message, then the medium has become virtual and therefore the message has become inherently intangible in our mind's eye. It is transforming the basic structures of how we are doing things--in business for instance, and in education. It has opened areas of sensual exploration and sexual de-repression that were long taboo and underground and created new problems of control, responsibility, freedom and explicitness and violence that still need to be defined, much less addressed.

The possibilities of this information revolution also have not been fully realized. Totalitarian governments that have depended upon strict information control are finding that they are increasingly unable to prevent access to information in their society. On the other hand, open "democratic" societies appear to be experimenting with new means of secret information control, eavesdropping and monitoring that makes more direct forms of totalitarian censorship look benign and honest. And yet so far, the function of the Internet appears mostly superficial and inherently limited by human nature itself. Especially in this regard is the lack of depth of information on the Internet and the lack of participatory interaction via the Internet. These indicate that the limitations of the Internet, in not living up to their full informational capacities, are mostly cultural, human and institutional rather than technological.

The structure and distribution of knowledge itself is changing fundamentally because of the Internet, and thus the function of that knowledge must also be changing in fundamental ways. How we use, conceive and organize knowledge and information in our world and in our daily lives will change automatically as a result of this. The intrinsic and extrinsic value of knowledge or of any byte of knowledge must change, much less our understanding of what a bit of knowledge may be. We become in many ways more dependent upon computers, such that we cannot normally function even in basic ways without them. And this new kind of dependency has its own problems and complexities that serve to complicate, not simplify, our existence. Computers have come to invade and shape our private lives and our inner worlds of consciousness as much as they have mediated our social worlds.

In this regard, computers often serve as a direct extension of our own consciousness, and one effect of this is, I believe, a kind of neurotic dependency upon the computer for our symbolic understanding and framing of our realities. The computer is increasingly used to test reality in virtual but non-concrete ways. What we get is an electronic image, a signal, in lieu of a real perception. One side effect of this pattern is, I believe, the transformation of our sense of time, and our relationship to the clock. Our experience of time seems to be shaped fundamentally through the computer, such that brief moments of download time are unbearable, and long periods of web surfing are like a timeless flash. In this we can refer to a kind of consciousness altering state-dependency that is induced and fostered and reinforced by the lives we build and spend upon the computer.

The point of this digression is only to suggest that as we look out upon the future, and ask basic question about alternative futures, we must be cautious not to jump to too many conclusions derived only from our past experiences. Our fundamental sense of reality of our previous experiences is bound to be usurped in the unexpected future of rapid change and "hyper amplified" informational patterning and processing. Our information revolution puts up an open question mark hanging above our collective heads.

I would suggest that what is happening with our current information revolution has been a process of the continuous embedding and stratification of knowledge. It is leading to a process of communication and exchange of information over which no one has complete control and which no one can monitor or understand in its total complexity.

*****

I wanted finally to do some grand synthesis of natural systems theory, some grand theory of all theories that would explain how and why there are so many levels of patterning in the universe and what is the true hierarchy of determinations between them all. But I have arrived at this point somewhat anti-climactically without a sense of a grand synthesis about scientific reality, except to say somewhat prophetically that things are as they are, and will be.

There is a sense in the sciences that causal explanation tends to take linear directions that are perhaps the product of our classical logic. Thus, we seek ultimate and efficient causes, prime movers and simple mechanistic explanations for naturally occurring patterns. Such thinking implies a sense of there being some absolutely discrete states in reality, which implies some form of logical discontinuity of identity between things.

At almost every level, relational evidence of patterning tends to contradict this kind of premise. Very rarely can clear prime movers be found to have caused a complex set of events. A systems approach basically construes all natural patterning, at every level of its analysis, as nonlinear programming and control theory involving partially closed feedback cycles. Natural patterning appears non-discontinuous, or, more simply, relatively continuous, such that the identity of things is always relative to our definitions of those things.

Natural patterning at every level appears to follow this structure. To see such self-organizing systems in linear terms of classical causality is to be confronted with an hen and egg dilemma that leads to a dichotomization of terms that does not naturally occur.

Natural systems theory therefore is not so much interested in causal determinations as it is in relational patternings that are consistent and regular. But explanation in such terms must go beyond a mere description of these relations, as it attempts to accomplish two things. The first is the generalization of the basic structure of such systems in terms that reflect the basic equations of equilibrium with the least number of variables required for its sufficient description. That all natural patterning, even that of human societies, appears to seek some kind of complex equilibrium state within the terms and framework of the system being described, seems to be a fundamental and wonderful design principle underlying almost all of the natural order.

Tautologically speaking, nothing would be a system if it did not exhibit some sense of order. If it has some sense of order, it must have some fundamentally stable or static pattern, and that pattern becomes the object of our understanding and explanation. Otherwise, the system would be regarded as totally chaotic or randomly disordered, and therefore would be a non-system. We could not recognize it for what it is, because there would be no sense of repetition of pattern to identify it as such.

The virtue of this kind of system is that it is essentially a puzzle-type problem for which there is only one correct solution for one instance of the problem. Thus, theoretically speaking, there is no inherent ambiguity in our theoretical descriptions of such systems. If there is ambiguity, it means that are descriptions are at least partially incorrect.

This is not to say that there might not occur alternate variants of the same type of system, with each variant being a little different, which appears to be the case. But for each subtype, and each type, there appears to be one hypothetically correct generalizable solution that serves to explain the order of the system. This is a paradox of natural identity of self-organizing systems. We may state it like this:

1. For each instance of a particular type of system, there is one correct pattern to be explained.

2. For each particular type of system, there may be multiple alternative instances. Each alternative instance would be not exactly the same; such that the correct generalization for each subtype would not be the correct generalization for the alternative subtypes, but there would still be one approximate generalization for all the types.

The second effort is to explain the system as a synergistic part-whole pattern, and then to see how the parts are articulated, and themselves describable, at a lower or higher level of analysis. This analytical explanation of the operation of the parts is complementary to the synthetic description in general terms, and together they provide a sufficient understanding of the system at the level in question.

While systems theory stresses functional order and relational coherence, as implied by models of equilibrium, it must be understood that at all levels of phenomenal patterning that we can observe or infer, numerous exceptions and disordered phenomena occur. These are not accountable in strict terms of equilibrium-type theories that emphasize order or stasis.

Thus change processes that are a part of the entire patterning of reality, follow chaotic unintended outcomes that cannot be directly deduced by the sum of the operation of the parts.

Thus, at almost every level, we witness enormous self-organized complexity, all of which seems to be derived from basic systems that are fundamentally underdetermined. It is as if the chaotic historical patterning of these systems is a form of random determination arising as the result of incomplete and therefore fundamentally open and entropy-based structures.

We can seek to understand these kinds of change processes at all levels and in all instances. We are not technically incorrect to claim that a huge meteorite brought about a mass extinction event, if we observed this to occur. This would fit clearly with our preconceptions of normal scientific explanation. But the meteorite impacting at a particular moment of time, at a moment when perhaps a mass extinction event was primed to take place, cannot be predicted by any known theory. It is a matter of happenstance, the product of inherent uncertainty built into the natural organization of the universe. Thus, we cannot build a science of certainty on explanations that are based on fundamental uncertainties.

Change in complexly interconnected systems and the randomization of chaotic pattern that it leads to, can be described in terms of natural systems theory in a number of ways, each of which would be appropriate and part of the general understanding of the history of any given system.

We can reduce all change events to the function of "entropy" in the natural world, and this is not technically wrong, though inherently insufficient as a causal explanation. We can distinguish between exogenous and endogenous kinds of changes, depending on whether the origin of change is derived from within or outside of the system in the external relation of this system to other and larger systems.

We can also distinguish between periodic or harmonic change patterns, that are in a sense state alternations of ordered patterning, hence occurring with a certain regularity, from changes that are essentially random or disharmonic. The latter recur with fundamental irregularity, but which recur frequently enough such that there is some long-term rate of expectability of such patterning. This kind of change process embraces the continuous variation of pattern found in all naturally occurring systems, and which define multiple alternative instances of a system. In this we can infer cycles of changes, and cycles of cycles of changes, within systems of systems of systems, and we can see that each cycle may lead to variable results in subsequent stages of this kind of development.

On a general theoretical level, we seek to understand and explain in general terms the predictable or at least expectable kinds of transformations that take place within a system, if such and such kinds of events take place. On a more mechanical and operational level, we seek to describe in analytical terms the actual change mechanisms and processes we observe themselves, such as the crashing of meteorite or the eruption of a volcano. Normal and especially naturalistic science usually stops at the particularistic level of causal analysis, but it is evident that scientific theory is incomplete unless it can move to the level of theoretical explanation.

Again, we have a complementary analytic-synthetic dualism in our explanation and description of natural patterning. Whereas most conventional scientific theory appears to be primarily analytical in its general approach, systems theory must always have both analytical and synthetic components. It therefore encompasses a kind of theoretical-methodological dialectic that moves from analysis to synthesis back to reanalysis and re-synthesis. In this dialectical loop, new synthesis emerges and the loop grows larger and more comprehensive, incorporating newer and finer levels of analysis.

Furthermore, analysis always follows upon the heels of synthesis, and re-synthesis is always a consequence of analysis. We have nothing to analyze if we have not at least implicit something synthesized, however intuitive or hypothetical it may be. Even the terms and conditions of our analysis are predefined by the structure of the synthesis. The product of analysis must always be re-synthesis, because analysis always leads to disruption of the relational pattern implied in the original synthesis.

The possibility for analysis and synthesis exists internally and intrinsically to the patterning of natural phenomena at all levels. Hence, the patterning of stasis or order, and change, that is inherent to the self-organization of natural patterning at all levels of observation, is the basis for our ability to derive both a sense of synthetic pattern, and an analysis of this pattern into its composite part-whole relationships. We can say that our science, as natural systems theory, is objective to the extent to which the synthetic generalizations and analytic inferences we make about natural informational patterning are consistent with and faithful to the inherent patterning of this information.

There are therefore two levels of uncertainty we must deal with in our sciences. The first has to do with the natural imperfection of our own knowledge, the lack of objective fit with the patterning we describe and explain. The second has to do with the inherent, or objective, imperfection of the natural order of the patterning itself.

As it turns out, both forms of error pattern in our natural systems theories both drive and guide us to seek better, or more correct solutions to the problems that natural order poses for our knowledge.

In this sense, randomization of pattern both within systems, and of systems within systems, within still other systems, leads to error patterns in the operation of such systems which provide us with a great deal of information about the implicit rules that underlie the normal structure of such systems. Such errors give us a methodological handle upon the general explanation of naturally occurring systems at all levels, and the systematic induction of error even provides us with means of experimental control in the analysis of such patterns. We study stasis by inducing change in systematic ways, and we study stasis in systems because we seek to understand how and why they change. It is the systematic study of error pattern that guide our sciences, as it points the way from one system to the next more encompassing system.

Natural systems theory leads to a worldview that all systems are interconnected to all other systems, however indirectly, such that wherever we begin our research, we can eventually, hypothetically at least, come to embrace the entire system in a comprehensive sense. This suggests that, even if the total universe is in some fundamental sense infinite, we can still comprehend sufficiently its total structure. It entails also that eventually we will be able to correctly infer indirectly the entire system, if even many aspects of this system remain essentially unobservable to us. The paradox of this is that no matter how complete and comprehensive our explanation, there will always probably be a larger system of which the subsystem remains essentially a part, and of which we remain uncertain. Thus, natural systems theory will strive for comprehensiveness, but will always remain fundamentally incomplete.

A fundamental part of the conundrum of our sciences is that natural information patterning at all levels always presents itself simultaneously to us. Thus, in a total sense, we are observing at all times the functioning of the system at all possible levels of its analysis at the same time, concurrent to one another. This is a principle of universal concurrence of natural information systems. It means, among other things, that where we find energy, we are likely to find matter, and where we find matter, we are likely to find gravity, and therefore, it is unlikely that we are likely to find gravity without the co-occurrence within the same system of energy. And even if these alternative physical systems do not actually co-occur at the same moment and place, it is possible that they could co-occur simultaneously.

The dilemma of this is that we are presented at all times with as comprehensive a slice of the universe as we are likely to get, barring the design of new instruments of measurement and observation that extend our abilities to observe. Thus, the challenge of natural systems theory is the analytical excoriation of the natural stratigraphy that such information always presents to us concurrently.

This is especially true with ourselves as human beings, as we are the central observers. All experience must be validated ultimately through our own sensibilities. We can imagine alternative systems, and even deduce or logically derive by inference alternative systems that we cannot directly observe, but all reality must however indirectly be experienced through ourselves as principle subject knowers of the system.

And as we are biological beings on planet earth, the entire natural system presents itself to us at all times as full-blown, multi-level, stratified, and complex. The biological system will always surround us and be interposed between ourselves and the rest of the physical universe. Of course, symbolically we have the capacity to imagine, even infer, disembodied states of understanding, because symbolization allows such displacement of reference to occur.

In a philosophical sense, perhaps we can deduce the infinitudes of the Universe from the standpoint of a derivation of the initial presupposition made at the beginning of this work. If we presume that:

There cannot be nothing.

And if we had a finite universe, there would be nothing beyond or before it, which would be impossible. Therefore, the universe must be infinite.

Then we must also conclude that if the universe is infinite, then anything is always a part of something else which contains that something, and which is itself a part of something else. Therefore, we can never describe or explain the entire system.

If we decide the opposite, that:

Nothing can exist.

Then we can have a universe that is bounded by nothing, that is fundamentally finite, and at some point in our theoretical explanations, we will reach a critical moment, or absolute threshold, of describing the entire system in a comprehensive way. A lot else would follow from such a set of conclusions. In such a universe, it is feasible that there would be truly fundamental elementary particles that would account for all physical phenomena. In such a universe, a big bang" becomes an acceptable explanation of historical change.

Nothingness appears to be only a relative state that is possible only by its contrast to something. If there is an absolute nothing, there must therefore be an absolute something to which it is contrasted. The theory of universal relativity proposed at the beginning of this work is based on the idea that everything that is something, is relative to itself, and hence to the relative nothing by which it is contrasted. It implies an infinite universe.

If there is a finite universe, then we can have an absolute state of everything. We might conclude, in some grand philosophical sense, that because the universe is relative, it's ultimate origination rested upon the possibility of its existence versus its relative nonexistence. In other words, what is possible may happen, and this is enough to satisfy our scientific curiosity. In other words, we can say: it happened this way because it was possible, no matter what the likelihood of it not happening this way. If we look at the fundamental structural patterning of change in natural systems, this is pretty much what we get at all levels. The problem is that we cannot know the ultimate likelihood of anything happening, its absolute, non-relative probability of occurrence, because everything appears to be relative to everything else.

If we find something that is non-relative and absolute in the universe, then that thing is not subject to change or variation. It is a universal constant, an absolute universal constant, and our explanation must stop there, even if it leaves us in a dilemma of explaining how that thing happened without any likelihood being attached to its non-occurrence.

Only a few universal constants are presumed to exist at this time. This is the constant of the speed of light, and absolute zero. But they are constants in the sense that they apparently describe absolute limits, or universal state-thresholds, beyond which we cannot pass within the physical universe. Some evidence suggests that, like the laws of thermodynamics, the speed of light may not be an absolute universal constant, after all, but rather a very general covering constant that applies to most things. After all, light itself does not always travel at the speed of light. If the speed of light itself is variable, it is hard to imagine how the speed of light can be a universal constant in an absolute sense. It tells us about the general relativity of the universe, among other things, but it may not comprehend all phenomena of the universe without exception. If this is true, then at this time only absolute zero remains to be explained as a true universal constant.

There is only one other thing that I might hypothesize as being a universal constant, and that is change itself. The universe is fundamentally dynamic, and change appears to be an irreducible property of its structural patterning. Natural systems, depicted as non-linear control systems, are systems that attempt to control and regulate change at every level that the occurrence of change can be observed or inferred to exist. Ultimately, time is the measure of all change, and time must therefore be a measure of a universal characteristic of the universe. I cannot imagine a universe or a reality that does not exist in time. Technically speaking, even space itself may just be a function of time, even though it appears to us that time is a relative function of space.

Naturally occurring control systems, the subject of our theory, are basically working systems. All naturally occurring systems are therefore bounded by there own definition in our knowledge, as systems and are therefore implicitly finite, and therefore they will also be transient systems in the structure of the long run. They are non-linear fundamentally because the change they control is fundamentally non-linear (ultimately random) in structure. I suggest they are non-linear primarily because they are anti-entropic systems, and therefore cannot be "perpetual motion" machines.

Even the observed universe is to be construed as such an anti-entropic system that cannot be a perpetual motion machine. A perpetual motion machine is impossible, not because it contradicts the laws of thermodynamics, but because it would imply a condition of absolute non-change. Its pattern as it is observed must be decaying in some minimal way. Thus change itself must be fundamentally relative to the things and system that changes. The universe therefore is not a steady-state affair, but a dynamic-state affair that ultimately arose from the possibility of itself.

This leads to an understanding that entropy, as the random pattern inherent to change processes, is somehow a relative measure of these change patterns. It leads to a kind of conclusion like this: Absolute Zero is a limiting condition that can only be inferred from observations of physical change phenomena, but cannot be directly observed to occur in the universe. Absolute Zero is the complement of the measure of relative entropy characteristic of any state or system. Absolute Zero would be the equivalent of total entropy or a state of nothingness in a system. Such a state would be equivalent, theoretically, to a state of Absolute Nothingness.

Absolute Zero as this is technically defined may itself be a relative covering condition applicable only within a thermodynamic system. We can imagine a non-thermodynamic system, possibly, but at this level of analysis, there would be some other limiting state, like Absolute Rest, that would be the non-thermodynamic equivalent of Absolute Zero.

In other words, even if we constructed a device that would allow us to block out all thermodynamic radiation from its internal vacuum, such that we could conclude that there is a total vacuum of energy sealed within such a container, (a kind of perpetual motion machine, by the way), I do not believe that we would could consider the internal state of that machine to be free of gravitational energy, at another level of analysis.

If we could imagine some rift in the fabric of space-time, such that we can infer that there is an absolute void of anything within the dimensions of that rift, then we have the possibility of the occurrence of nothingness, or of Absolute nothing. It follows that if this is possible, then the universe would ultimately be a finite affair, at least in one or more dimensions.

I believe at this time that this can be considered to be a physical impossibility. Even if we can conjecture such a void as bereft of space-time itself, we cannot be sure that it is still not composed of something other than space-time. Such a rift would entail a fundamental discontinuity of the universe, which would violate the principle of its universal coherence and synchronicity. Therefore, I believe it is not possible. Therefore, among other conclusions, the universe is probably infinite and always in a dynamic state of equilibrium.

This is not to say that space-time rifts or holes cannot occur. It is only to say that there may be other levels of physical reality that make up and account for the levels that we can observe or infer.

Natural systems, as working control systems, describe a kind of dynamic stasis or imperfectly static systems that resist change to some relative degree. They are nonlinear because they are "imperfect" hence incapable of perpetual motion. Work in such systems is achieved by means of control, which is achieved by some means of "resonance binding" in the system. This can be explained in terms of an equation of dynamic equilibrium such that changes in state "a" lead to changes in state "b" which lead to changes in state "c" which lead to changes in state "a", or "a₂."

If we compare in time "a" and "a₂" and they appear significantly different or basically similar in some way, we can describe the entire system as relatively homeostatic or dynamic. Any working system is by definition dynamic and non-homeostatic in an absolute sense, such that we can state that a and a₂ are always unequal, or never exactly equal.

And yet, principles of equivalence that imply some sense of conservation in the universe, entails also that no matter what entropy may be associated with any physically occurring system, we will always have a net balance.

Another way of considering this is that no matter how dynamic and entropic the universe may have been, or be, or become, in the total system there must always be a net balance in any change equation. Whatever the most fundamental level of substance or energy we are considering, there will be measure for measure, the same amount after the change as before. Thus the account books of natural systems theory appear to be always balanced, and always subject to mathematical description on basic levels.

It also follows that if the account books do not appear to add up on one level, as for instance, in the dynamics of gravitation, then we must assume some conversion process to be occurring at another level that we have not taken into account.

Such systems, if they are periodic or harmonic in some cyclical manner, are internally like conventional clockwork. But like all clockwork, in the historical structure of the long run, they are also developmental systems such that their states change fundamentally in either continuous or discrete ways that are irreversible. Natural change processes are fundamentally "irreversible" processes, and this follows a basic principle about the universe. Time's arrow flies in one direction, and one direction only. To reverse this process is to destroy the very foundational principles of the universe.

If there cannot be nothing then the universe is somehow infinite and unbounded. If it is infinite and unbounded, it therefore had no beginning and will have no ending. Therefore, whatever developmental state it is currently in at any given moment, which appears to be naturally decaying from the previous state, is in the structure of the long run only the current state of a long succession of states that is endless. Therefore universal and absolute rest is impossible--implying a state of total equilibrium--and therefore, entropy producing changes happening in this universe at this time are part of some unknown larger system that is in some imperfect state of cyclical control and is itself entropy producing at another level.

I will conclude that it must be this way, and not some other, because even if we suppose there can be nothing, then we must still explain something by which that nothing is made known. If the accounting process applies only to the something that is known, the balancing of the books remains the same. And if we can assume something, which we can safely do, and that something appears always to be a part of something else, which it appears to be, then any presumption of the possibility of nothing, at any level, must entail the coexistence of something. A way of looking at this in any model is to say that if we assume the model is basically bounded and finite, it is still part of nothing that surrounds it, and that nothing that surrounds it is part of a larger system containing something. Therefore, there cannot be nothing in an absolute sense.

If we can assume partial infinitude of something in the Universe, then we must conclude that there cannot be nothing in the Universe. If we can assume only incomplete finiteness of something in the Universe, then also we must still conclude that there cannot be nothing in a complete sense in the Universe.

Something can exist without nothing, but nothing cannot exist without at least something.

It leads to the following kind of statement, that I will call the universal disjunction:

There cannot be both nothing and something at the same time.

There is either something or nothing.

There is something.

Therefore, there is not nothing.

Another way of putting this might be to say that in natural systems, the existence of something fundamentally contradicts the presupposition of nothing. If something is true, then nothing must be false. It is only because something is always relatively true, that nothing can only be relatively false.

Comprehensiveness of general perspective is possible in natural systems theory because of a sense of something, or orders, that can be said to be innate to the universe. If there were no order a priori to the universe, there would be no change, and there would also be no balance sheet. Indeed, it is what makes natural systems theory possible and worthwhile to consider. But it appears that comprehensiveness must always remain incomplete and unfinished, because of its inherent relativity and this comes as something of a paradox in our inquiries into nature, such that our knowledge is always incomplete and uncertain, i.e., relative.

We are humans who construe things from a human perspective. We cannot step beyond the framework of this perspective. We are a part of the universe, and we cannot in a fundamental way detach ourselves from the universe in order to observe it in a conventionally objective way. Thus, most of our sciences are derived by logical inferences from observable patterns. Among other things, it implies that our presentational experience of the universe is always paradoxically both comprehensive and yet incomplete at the same time.

Beyond this, it is critical to understand that all systems are interconnected to one another, within a kind of hierarchy of determinations that, no matter how dynamic, is in theory at least always balanced in the total outcomes. This natural stratification of informational phenomena in objective reality is the natural outcome of self-organizing systems that create greater and smaller systems. Thus the universe is a system within a system with a system, so on and on ad infinitum. The paradox of this seems to be that we can never really exhaust our research efforts in the investigation of reality. How it all happened in the first place--there's the real rub.

We are left with a model of our natural systems theory in which we ourselves, as hypothetically objective human observers, are always at the center of some total structure of natural pattern. We can see only a portion of this total pattern, but from our observations we can infer a larger portion. And from this inferable portion, we must assume always that there is some larger area, consisting of both extra-physical phenomena and all other physical phenomena, which remains unknown and un-inferable to us at the present time. And because the universe is probably infinite, and we can never be certain of this, we must conclude that there is yet a larger region of the universe that lies beyond even non-inferability itself. It becomes part of the unknowable universe, that is part of the inherently uncertain universe, which is part of the totally chaotic or random universe.

In this model, there are no naturally occurring systems of which we ourselves, as principal subject knowers, are not at the center. This is an inherent limitation of our ability to know, and represents the human relativity of our knowledge of the possible universe. We can imagine and even infer the probability of such de-centered systems, but even the imagination or inference of such systems is part of our own knowledge base. We cannot ourselves escape from the center of this configuration of our natural information systems. If perchance we meet some exotic intelligent life form in the universe, we are likely to expand our definitions and knowledge and inferences of the total system considerably, but we could not fundamentally exchange our positions with theirs in an absolute sense.

There are possible two alternative versions of this system. In the zero-state system, or the bounded universe model, we at some point would reach a state that extra-physical systems are incorporated into our understanding of physical systems in some fundamentally elementary and ultimate way. Beyond this zero-boundary, we would hypothesize that there is nothing in an absolute sense. At this point, the internal, bound system of the finite universe would be absolute and non-relative. It could not change in this state, at least in some fundamental sense.

The alternative version is the non-zero state system, and this is a system that states that no matter how much we incorporate extra-physical systems into our physical observations of reality, there is no ultimate or final boundary about such systems, such that there cannot be nothing beyond that boundary. In such non-zero state systems, everything remains relative at all times, and the system would be forever dynamic and never absolutely static. There would be an inferable or hypothetical net balance but it would never come due. There would be some hypothetical absolute rest state but it would never be achievable.

It is clear, that the bulk of the evidence of our physical universe appears to support the model of a non-zero state universe, in spite of constructions of big bangs to the contrariwise. The observable physical universe appears dynamic even if in fundamentally non-thermodynamic ways. In fact, the very fabric of the structure of the physical universe, that of change, appears to indicate, to me at least, that the universe has a net balance that will never come due, and a potential state of absolute, universal rest that it will never achieve.

There are reasons of internal coherence, rather than those of known external consistency, for rejecting a zero-state universe and accepting the probability of a non-zero-state universe. These have to do with the structure of both the inferable universe, and of our knowledge itself, which appears to be fundamentally a part of that universe. A zero-state universe implies a fundamental discontinuity underlying all apparent continuities. Logically, it would imply a contradiction of identity--that something may be also nothing at the same time. This may be possible in a relative and complementary way, but not in any final and absolute or non-complementary way.

Paradoxically, neither a steady state nor a big-bang model of the universe appears suitable to an explanation of a non-zero-state universe. The only description of a non-zero-state universe is one of a dynamic-state universe. Even more paradoxically, neither a steady state nor a big-bang model are sufficient to the explanation of a zero-state universe either.

There is a strange kind of uncertainty principle working in all this. It can be stated like this. We can be uncertain of our certainty, but we cannot be certain of our uncertainty. Uncertainty therefore always encompasses certainty, and certainty is always a subset of what we are uncertain of. Thus, what we know is always encompassed by what remains unknown.

We may never ultimately or logically answer the question of a zero-state versus non-zero state universe one way or the other, at least not without some fundamental leap of faith. But we may say something like this. If we cannot be certain of nothing, but we can be uncertain of something, then it follows that there is likely to be nothing of which we are certain of, at least in some absolute, non-relative way. But there is always likely to be something of which we are uncertain. Therefore, there is probably always something in a relative sense, but never absolutely nothing in an absolute sense. We may not be able to bet in absolute certainty, but we can always hedge our bets with relative uncertainties.

******

We are left only to ask and at least partially answer one remaining set of questions. What will it be in the future for humanity, and will we survive our selves and the outcomes of our own selection processes?

Evidence suggests that something as minor as some lethal, mutant pathogen can virtually wipe out an entire species like Homo saipiens. And the possibility of such a pathogen occurring is not as remote as we may wish. The biggest mass human deaths ever recorded have not be due to warfare, but to disease epidemics. And if we don't die from bacteria created in our own collective guts, we have still perfected the art and mad science of warfare to such a destructive level that we can easily annihilate ourselves at the push of a single set of buttons. Now who has their hands on those buttons? I bet, on average, they are fairly authoritarian in character and attitude.

But we do not even need to consider these extreme consequences to understand that our predicament at this brief moment of our natural history is very precarious. The huge hole in the earth's ozone layer in the Southern Hemisphere can safely be ignored by those living in the Northern Hemisphere. But it is not going away, and does not seem to be a transient phenomenon. And no one can escape the unknown global consequences of uncontrolled global warming. We have the examples of Venus and Mars to clearly tell us that we do not want to pursue the prospect of a runaway greenhouse effect.

And what about human nature? If we take the social competition theories in this book seriously, then we must consider the consequences of human social competition and coalitional structures in the world, and where this will drive us, especially under conditions of increasing social environmental circumscription and some finite level of net global carrying capacity. If not this world order, then whose world order will it eventually become?

I wish to close this work on a positive note for humanity. We are not foredoomed by our genetic predispositions to annihilate our selves and probably all the rest of life as well. We have reached a human global climax, and structures of the long run determine that, if we don't do something about it sooner than later, then it will lead to collapse on a global level. Some life will undoubtedly survive, but a great deal will disappear.

The reason that we are not preordained to our own mass extinction, is that we have been unfinished and left undefined in any complete sense by our own world-openness. Thus, we have left a residual possibility of being able to make our own choices, and impose upon ourselves a world of our own making. But if we are able to build such an alternative future world for ourselves, then it probably must be one that function not because of ourselves and our nature, but in spite of ourselves and our nature.

The enlightened and idealistic framers of the U.S. constitution clearly had this in mind when they sat down to hammer it all out. They understood that human nature has a poor track record and people cannot be counted upon to check themselves. Thus they designed a system of government unparalleled in the history of humankind for its incorporation of checks and balances to insure than no one individual or institution could gain an all powerful upper-hand or total control, not even a majority of people themselves. And so it seems to me the way we must proceed in our definition of possible alternative world systems and world orders.

Devising a system that works against the possibilities of our own nature, and yet in terms of our nature, must entail as well some global commitment to basic issues of human rights and responsibilities and to some notion of fundamental and minimal human structural equality in the world system. This would include both political and social-economic equality, as well as a principle of equality of opportunity.

It is beyond the purpose of this paragraph and ultimate section to offer a meta-ethical justification for human rights and responsibilities on earth. Such justification is possible, if we consider what is considered a global international legal paradigm, and the history of international conventions governing war crimes and cruelty that in general recognizes and reinforces such rights. I therefore propose that we impose such a set of moral standards arbitrarily upon all peoples of the world, regardless of the degree of native cultural dissonance this may entail.

It is clear that human rights and responsibilities are largely culturally relative in the world, and this seems to be inversely proportional to the degree to which authoritarian power structures have achieved an upper hand in totalitarian control over their people. Such nation-states tend by nature to be aggressive and prone towards violent transgression in the aggrandizement of power. If their leaders have few qualms or limits about abusing their own people's rights, they cannot be expected to care too much for the rights of others in the world.

Claims of cultural relativity, anthropologically legitimate on a superficial level, do not by themselves negate the legitimacy or meta-ethical propriety of an international paradigm of human rights and responsibilities. Most people today, to the extent that modern civilization has united them on basic levels in spite of all their purported cultural diversity, would only disagree on the details rather than upon the basic principles of such a paradigm.

We might even be able to imagine a kind of normative science, if this science is like an applied social science that is grounded in basic anthropological and human considerations. Thus, as a science, it would be meta-ethical in the sense of transcending basic ethical positions or ideological propositions about the world. It would be a worldview of a moral worldview. Such a system can only be one based on universal tolerance and diversity in the world. It is one that would permit freedom of religion and freedom of belief and serve to protect these freedoms in effective ways. Somehow, it makes sense that such a system would be fundamentally democratic and open in terms of possession of private property, etc. Democracy is not only more egalitarian for everybody concerned, but also it is a necessary structural precursor to effective socio-economic development.

So why has such a paradigm, in spite of much lip service, remained an unrealized dream even in our advanced modern era? I can only state that human nature, if left unchecked cannot be counted upon to live up to its own ideals. Thus our world system remains a very imperfect system.

This is not to say that we need to impose a police state upon the world, per se, at least not an extremely authoritarian police state. We may not need to impose such a structural world order if we can foster a global cultural pattern, attached to reformed values of modernization, that positively sanctions the values inherent to such a paradigm, and negatively sanctions the violation of such a paradigm.

But it is unlikely that such a global human culture will be able to arise soon enough and effectively enough to offset the predominant tendencies occurring in the world today, or that would sufficiently supplant pre-established cultural patternings, especially at the level of ethno-national cultural groupings. We can seek to impose it by "choice" if we invest a fair-minded international agency with the responsibility and the means to effectively enforce such a paradigm within an international framework. Better everybody's world order than anybody's world order.

*****

The principle of progress is important in considering possible future systems. This principle has moral connotations when construed from an ethnocentric point of view, and much of this underlies the ideologies of modernization that have led us to our current state of global development. But we can divest this principle of its moral implications in our current world. We can construe it in an objective and in a meta-ethical manner. I see three kinds of progress that have been evident in human development:

1. Scientific progress of our knowledge of natural information systems upon all levels.

2. Technological progress in the functional development of artificial information systems.

3. Human social progress in the emancipation of people and in their realization of broad-based egalitarianism in the world.

From a systems standpoint, all three forms of progress can be seen to be interrelated, such that we can talk about a grand sense of systemic progress. Progress is a fundamental principle that suggests that there is overall net gain or improvement in our knowledge and design of alternative systems in the world. Kuhn emphasizes this point clearly.

We measure progress by what has been achieved compared to previous states of knowledge. We can also negatively measure progress as an always-imperfect achievement when we weigh what has been achieved against our goals that still need to be achieved.

Thus, each form of progress constitutes its own kind of problem set that can be defined as the region of difference between ideal progress and achieved progress in each area, or rather, the contrast of realized and potential states.

It is especially, I believe, in the third form of progress above that we can see that our sense of achieved progress remains very limited and imperfect in scope when compared to our vision of an ideal world or a sense of paradise. We need such vision and such goals to direct our attention and our intentions in the construction of our human systems.

It is evident that a great deal of resistance, emanating culturally and socially from people themselves, impedes and seems to forever frustrate the achievement of the third form of progress. It seems that much of our progress has been achieved, not because it has been good for people, but in spite of a great deal of resistance by people to change.

It is not my purpose at the end of this overwrought work to fully elaborate this sense of vision or alternative systems that might enable our achievement of such goals in our collective future. I wish to emphasize that in the conceptioning of a grander sense of systemic progress, all three kinds of progress are integral to one another and each in turn can be used to justify and define the structure of the others. This is especially true when we contrast all three kinds of progress, and the problem sets each entails, against the general problem sets that confront humankind today.

Thus, progress itself constitutes a kind of grand goal system that requires its own analysis and synthesis in relation to the general problem sets that challenge humankind in its collective future. This is an important point that cannot be avoided or long ignored.

*****

I will close this overwrought work on natural systems theory with a vision of our collective future. This is a vision of alternative global development. I see a world that has turned down another path of development than it is currently upon--the fossil-fuel path that follows the dinosaurs. I see a world that runs on hydrogen gas and solar energy, in which water and people are the most precious resources, instead of the least precious. I see a world where the tide of life and evolution does not have to recede at every advance of humankind, and a world where humans know better how to control their own reproductive and death rates, and can genuinely live together in collective harmony, peace and mutual prosperity. It is not very difficult to imagine such a world. So why should it be so difficult to realize?

This is in a sense a vision of the future of natural systems. It is true that the world will keep spinning about the sun whether we are here to witness it or not, or whether life remains on the earth to soak up the energizing rays of the sun or not. But it is equally true at this time that if we disappear from earth, and if we take most of life along with us to a mass grave, then natural systems will keep on turning and changing. But there will be no known intelligence remaining by which to comprehend and appreciate those systems.

Our theories then will be non-existent, even if the metallic and plastic carcasses of our then useless machines remain. And that is a thought even more profoundly ambiguous than the ultimate questions of infinity and life beyond earth, for it is better to have been nonexistent in the first place, than to have arisen and lived in a reality that is ultimately meaningless. Thus is the truly ultimate question we must answer. What does it mean to become extinct?

To close, I would finally answer that the clock of our reality is ticking steadily away. How much longer will it continue to tick?

Natural Systems

2001