Introduction

Natural Systems Theory

& The Philosophy of Science

by Hugh M. Lewis

Natural systems theory is rooted to the application of a wonderful premise that there is a fundamental order and unity underlying most if not all that we can see, observe and do in our reality. Natural patterning coheres on distinct levels and the basis for the essential ordering of the processes can be generally understood and explicated. It begins with a search for order in our shared reality. This quest is at first but a form of creative intuition, to see "problems" and contradictions where they might exist in our knowledge, and then to search for patterns of correspondence and symmetry that might fill in these gaps.

With the physical stratification of information at multiple levels, and the synergism, chaos and complexity that is manifest at all levels, science becomes hard pressed to develop even a consistent and coherent language for describing the basic sense of order. This is true in physics, biology and especially in the anthropological fields. In physics where mathematical description is usually necessary for theoretical construction, a level of analytical reduction is reached where we lack even the proper mathematical formulas for description. In biology, many basic processes can be reduced to formulaic expression, but the attempt to extend these mathematical formulas in any meaningful application tends to quickly bog down in the astronomical complexity of multiple variables, values and uncertainties. At this level, even our basic terminology begins to resist exact denotative definition, such that any term's meaning must be expanded considerably to be generally useful in making sense of the world. The problem of language is especially acute in the anthropological sciences, where even basic terms lack precise definitions and there are almost no interesting mathematical formulas, and it is almost as if we are riding an entire scientific perspective on the grounds of faith and intuitive presupposition alone.

The purposes of this work are several. First, I propose that Natural systems theory forms the basis for a scientifically objective worldview, one that has a comprehensive orientation that has been mostly lacking so far in our shared world. The worldview of science to date has been fractured into different and sometimes competing sub-disciplinary interests and monopolized lines of inquiry. Natural systems theory has a structured approach that is quite useful in all areas of scientific inquiry.

Secondly, I am proposing a body of new theoretical frameworks within this book as heuristic devices for the organization of research and theoretical perspective across many fields. I propose within the framework of natural systems theory new unified theories or "synthesis" in the area of the Physical sciences, as well as in the area of the Anthropological and associated human sciences, which has been my professional bailiwick. The Physical theories are of course sketchy and lacking in many details, but they are powerful and at least heuristically suggestive and lead to many unusual conclusions about the physical universe. Theories in the anthropological sciences were derived from years of research work and theoretical-philosophical searching. Paradigmatic fragmentation of perspective and a lack of central unifying constructs mark both these areas.

Physics is noteworthy for maintaining a number of highly successful and essentially correct "partial" or "covering law" theories, but so far these theories have not been organized into a central theoretical interpretation or grand synthesis as I have attempted to do in this work.

The Anthropological fields have been even more difficult to render, primarily because of the irreducible nature of the patterning of human activity at multiple levels, and the lack of empirical precision of constructs and theoretical closure and the general historical complexity of this patterning. The data units themselves, being individual human beings, are extremely complex entities, and they are always found in quasi-coherent groupings and sub-groupings in social analysis. I believe there is a central unifying theory, or synthesis, but I will not at this time claim its paradigmatic completeness or comprehensiveness. I would say it is a part-whole theory that requires more work, but will never be complete.

For the most part, only the field of the biological sciences has accomplished the necessary unity of perspective under the aegis of the theory of Evolution and the subsequent explication of genetic transmission. This has been a very powerful model, and one of the most important sets of contributions to modern scientific worldview yet made. All its mechanical details have not been worked out as of yet, and most biologists are probably still expecting some "new synthesis" that will bring a greater sense of order to their field. We still do not well understand processes of ontogenetic development, or the first origins of life. We do not clearly know how microscopic processes of genetic transfer dovetail with processes of speciation and natural selection, much less with macroscopic processes of mass extinction and complex regimes of natural selection.

What I propose in the biological sciences is a revised model of natural selection operating at the levels of the individual and the population, and fundamentally underlying speciation and complex equilibrium in evolving eco-systems.

Any claim at paradigmatic unification must only be met with extreme controversy in part due to the highly politicized and structured nature of most of this inquiry, which entails the competition for always limited funding and there strong paradigmatic commitments.

This work will be met by controversy as well by disciplinary divisions and territoriality of perspective. Some have asserted aggressively and quite politically the claim that there can in essence be no such thing as a human science in a total sense, that paradigmatic unification is impossible, and that the most we can accomplish are alternative humanistic perspectives. At the outset, I will state that there is a real role and profit from scientific inquiry in human systems, because these are in essence natural systems. There is a role for humanistic inquiry and understanding as well, just as the subjectivities of people are natural patterns that are the result of complex and creative brains in extremely social creatures. But forays into the humanities are essentially a-scientific, and do not in themselves replace science. I would say that if we are anthropologists or any other variety of "social scientist," then we should not claim identity as such if we seek to throw out or completely abnegate the scientific aspects of such inquiry.

For instance, I am both a writer of fiction and poetry, and of humanistic inquiry, as well as a scientifically oriented anthropologist. For the most part, I find these different kinds of endeavor mutually complementary and non-destructive, but I would not say that writing a poem is all that gets done in scientific anthropological research. Things are observed and noted as best as possible. Of course relativistic considerations enter into this form of activity at all levels, even more than it does into the physical sciences, but this is inherent to the nature of all human knowledge and does not therefore preclude scientific objectivity, generality or relative certainty.

Third, it has been my purpose to explore some other basic implications of natural systems theory from a philosophical and heuristic standpoint. I seek to explore the possibility of other kinds of alternate systems that are not normally found in nature or appear to occur "abnormally" in nature, such as artificial systems, as well as basic unifying concepts in the organization of information and knowledge.

This last purpose, I believe, comes to focus on the metalogical implications of mind and brain, especially as this has become influenced by the current Information revolution that has been occurring as we make a transition to digital information storage and organization systems. Especially important, I think, are implicit definitions and models of "intelligence" under which we operate, anthropomorphic or otherwise, and the cybernetic extension and elaboration of this sense of intelligence in both our models and constructs of the world and in the world itself.

Fourth, and finally, I cannot but help close this work with a sense of ideological juncture on basic issues. I propose the concept of alternative "world systems" theories that define our principle collective directions and the unfolding steps we take to the future. I suggest what I take to be basic aspects of this from a systems standpoint. I stake few ideological claims in this regard, but I do submit that we must take decisive stands in a number of different ways if we are to achieve the longevity and long-term stability necessary for survival of the biosphere and our self-selected niche within it.

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I define natural systems theory as a modern philosophical attempt to bring the full breadth and depth of scientific understanding under a common rational and theoretical umbrella, providing a unified framework for our understanding and articulation of a broad range of issues in the world.

To disclaim the relevance of a structured and ordered philosophical inquiry to an understanding of our science is to misconstrue the place that philosophy holds in the structuring of our worldview in general. It is also to over estimate the value of scientific knowledge that occurs in the absence of such general understanding.

To a large extent, Einstein's theories were brilliant thought experiments that were carried forward without the benefit of big-budget particle accelerators and other advanced technologies. This demonstrates clearly the power of the open and disciplined mind, unfettered by prejudices, to grasp the true and sublime nature of reality, unaided (and unhindered) by material contrivances and modern conveniences.

The scientific objective of phenomenologically understanding or comprehending the patterning of nature "in and of itself," can be said to exist before or "a priori" to our own sense of its recognition. This is separate from that sense of recognition or apperceptive awareness itself that constitutes what so far appears to be unique about human intelligence. This can be said to be our reflexive sentience, or self-based and reflexive awareness and apprehension of the patterning found in nature. We know that we know and we say to ourselves "Aha, I am being objective and true." It is in the latter sense that intelligence, and information, as intelligent, deliberate, problem-solving, self-conscious "organization" of pattern, is more conventionally construed as such.

Science has as its goal the excoriation of the natural patterning of our world in all its varying forms and at different levels. The bottom-line acid test for the accuracy and validity of any scientific model of this patterning comes to rest upon logically derived, and perceptually based conceptions of a concrete world in an objective or collective sense. The test of this is our ability to systematically measure what we observe empirically.

But as Thomas Kuhn has eloquently explained, even our perceptions can be misled by our collective sensibilities, or our worldview that symbolically pre-structures and channels what we see into interpretive frameworks that have a degree of preconceived and implicit arbitrariness about them.

This arbitrariness of our science becomes critical especially upon the boundaries and frontiers of our understanding, where clear and unequivocal evidence is lacking or controversial. Thus, in the final analysis, we cannot absolutely or completely isolate our objective, scientific apperception of the world, even at a perceptual level, from the cognitive pre-understandings and rational ordering of mind that always embraces and frames such apprehension. For this reason, our objective knowledge is ultimately relativized by such cognitive framing, and these frameworks always have a developmental history that is social and on-going in its process of recreation and articulation.

I accept Thomas Kuhn's history of science as a valid if somewhat limited notion of the social praxis of objective scientific knowledge in the world. It is not my purpose to elaborate, finely critique, or split metaphors about his now classic work. It is sufficient to say that even scientific knowledge as worldview pre-structures our manner of seeing and relating to the world in definite ways, and, in turn, is pre-structured itself by this same worldview as well as by other implicit attitudes that inform our understanding of the world.

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Certain general precepts about scientific worldview and methodology emerge from the working through of the ideas embodied in this text. They suggest some of the following aspects.

1. In general, natural systems stratify at different levels of informational patterning. This stratification of natural informational patterning is inherent and intrinsic to the epiphenomenal patterning of the phenomena itself. It is always implicit to this patterning. We can call natural information therefore "self-organizing" pattern that is minimally non-random.

Our intelligence is evident in our ability to intuitively grasp the suggestion of this patterning and then to try to make sense of it in ways that yields results. Our science comes into play when we derive conceptual models that simplify our understanding of this patterning. Such models should meet two sets of criteria:

a. They are ultimately derived from and refer to perception-based observations of phenomenal patterns discovered in nature that are somehow measurable.

b. They ultimately lead to logical arguments that allow us to predict experimental results or other phenomenal patterns with a good probability of success.

2. Ultimately, scientific explanation is about natural determinism, or about trying to explain why and how things happen in a way that is causal. Underlying this presupposition is the notion that all phenomenal patterning occurring in reality is ultimately the result of some set of causes that sufficiently account for what happens. Causal explanation in general addresses the problem of why things change in certain ways.

3. Causal relationships occurring at one order or level are not necessarily reducible to explanations or terms apparent at other levels at least not in any direct sense. Such reductionism and confusion of orders of explanation and analysis is common in our scientific explanation.

4. There are few, if any, real prime movers in natural systems at any level. Informational patterning tends to be complex at all levels, and the understanding of how such patterning is produced usually entails construal of causal relationships within a nonlinear control system that develops historically over time.

Frequently it is the case that in a complex environment, there is more than one set of solutions to a single problem. Nature explores multiple pathways that interconnect at numerous points, suggesting that our scientific solutions are likely to become increasingly sophisticated and complex.

5. Scientific answers derive from a kind of universal null hypothesis of the assumption of the essential randomness of the natural order and of the statistical-based or stochastic determinism of our causal explanations. In other words, we can say as strict scientists that God played dice with the universe, and we, as scientists, must accept this kind of answer at whatever level we are working on.

This leads to a kind of fundamental statistical based worldview of science that sees the occurrence of everything as a game of chance. Determinism is a probability or relative certainty theory that is derived from this cosmic lottery.

It has become common place in biological thinking that rather simple and classic experiments (like Miller's chemical-evolution experiment) demonstrate clearly that life can be accounted for fully by our hypothesizing random and chance occurrences. This is in spite of a rather sublime urge to view the "miracle" of life as something irreducible and beyond mere chance alone.

Similarly, the hypothization that all of life evolved on the basis of mechanisms that were controlled by chance alone has been another radical departure in our conceptual organization of collective worldview. I propose in this work a physical theory that suggests a similar kind of game of chance has occurred and probably continues to occur in the origins of physical matter and energy. It suggests that any model that looks for the giant hand of a cosmic being is misguided and ultimately unscientific.

6. Even in science, models are often proposed and developed that gain acceptance and legitimacy independent of their scientific value. In general, science becomes a-scientific inquiry when evidence is reinterpreted to fit old models, instead of new models being devised or old models being revised to fit new forms of evidence. Contradictory evidence can be ignored or even swept under the carpet of scientific method. In general such conditions suggest that the underlying theories and constructions are probably erroneous in an unmodified state.

This last precept relates science to a special class of understanding that is different from other forms of thinking and inquiry. Strict science is not philosophy or meta-physics. We cannot derive complete answers without some observations being made. It is not religion that is experienced in an ecstatic dream. It is not merely the vision of an artist on a canvas or the literary concoction of a writer on paper. Neither is it ideology that can be turned into a technocratic priesthood, bureaucratized, managed, funded, and otherwise "structurated" from above.

Clear and honest science stems from a collective worldview that is objectively rooted in perception based measurement. In general, it requires some form of systematic measurement being made upon observations of physical phenomena. It means that however overspecialized it may become in its practice, its central courtroom remains a public forum with an independent sense of history.

*****

Professional dialog has long gone on attempting to decide if Anthropology is non-paradigmatic, paradigmatic, poly-paradigmatic or semi-paradigmatic in its articulation within the academic department, contextualized as this has been by a larger political economy and academic culture. To me it is a moot point ultimately to try to decide such issues.

There are clearly paradigmatic aspects of science in general and anthropology as well, but I would say that I now construe such paradigmatic patterns as being multi-level and occurring simultaneously within multiple forums across society, in varying, more or less ways. Paradigmatic closure, with all its ideological ramifications, is inherent to all knowledge at all levels of its articulation, including that of scientific practice. It is the result of two basic features of human knowledge: it is shared, and it is based on pattern-recognition processes that define symbolic human consciousness. I will deal with this issue in a subsequent chapter. I only note it here to emphasize that even the paradigmatic patterning of scientific praxis itself has a more or less natural explanation.

Knowledge is distributed across an uneven landscape, and the relative openness or reception of new ideas or ways of thinking, especially upon old problems, is relatively variable across this terrain. If a new bit of knowledge or new idea is not immediately picked up and broadcast by the Six o'clock news, then at least someone in some critical position is probably getting wind of it and relating to someone else something about it.

I would say also that the terrain is rapidly evolving into a much more complicated noetic environment than hitherto imagined, due mostly to the natural outcomes of the digital information revolution that has been the hallmark of our age. It has become increasingly more difficult to distinguish the boundaries of "normal" science in the midst of an information revolution.

Knowledge has a history, and its articulation is always subject to the implicit rules that govern that history. Knowledge is thus embedded in the world in everything we think and do, embedded such that we see only a small surface portion of the total meaning and understanding implied by what we say and do. We are subjects of that history, like lost children in a forest without a clear sense of direction, or of an edge by which we can escape its entanglements and gain a clear view of the world around us.

Science provides us with a certain kind of road map through that forest. That is its purpose, for it provides us with clear-cut solutions that, in theory at least, anyone can follow. But it is an incomplete and imperfect map, and it can give us a false sense of certainty and security about what we know, disguising all that remains unknown about our entangled world. It often leads us into darker parts of the forest, in maze-ways and dead-ends that go nowhere beyond the trees.

The historical stratigraphy of knowledge has been a natural outcome of our progressive history. If you pick up the first encyclopedias of the late 18th Century, during the age of enlightenment, you can find most of what was then scientific knowledge condensed into three or four thick volumes. It is now clearly evident that within these pages, with the all our advantages of 20-20 hindsight, there is no clear sense of separation where science left off and superstition and folklore began. Granted, the technologies in these pages are extinct, rarely found now even in the most esoteric museums, but they provide clear documentary evidence of how far we've come in our knowledge in the short space of nine or ten generations.

And now, even conventional cloth bound Encyclopedias, in sets of twenty or more volumes, updated regularly to keep up with the rapid advances across the many new fields of inquiry, are really a thing of the past. Such knowledge can be found on one or two CD's, and traditional encyclopedia companies have largely given up the traditional publishing market for internet micro-publishing that requires far less over-head and reaches more immediately much greater audiences. The new information technologies only embed and entangle our knowledge deeper into our lives than before, though perhaps they render the excavation easier, at least on superficial levels.

*****

The explication of natural systems theory at its several levels proceeds with the caveat that such systems are founded on basic and consistent principles of design and relation that if ignored can spell disaster for our scientific models. The fact that such basic principles are so frequently ignored or violated, even in our most current scientific theories, points up the a-scientific character of many such paradigms still in command of the field.

A way of approaching this kind of issue in the conceptualization of our sciences is to ask ourselves what basic philosophical conundrums or contradictions might we encounter, if we accept certain primes as given in our thinking about the natural order? The answers we get can be sometimes surprising, if not downright shocking.

Thus, in these pages, I offer what I consider to be a systematic model of an objective, scientific view of the world, as uncluttered as possible by ideological commitments or paradigmatic prejudices or disciplinary prerogatives. At the same time, I want to suggest what I consider to be an appropriate and responsible model of the worldview problem for modern humanity, unhindered by prejudices, ethnocentrisms and false ideological commitments. In a meta-logical sense, a scientific view of the world, and a scientific view of our worldview, are one and the same.

In this work I am concerned centrally with scientific knowledge that is rooted in some sense of an objective, empirically derived world. I am not interested so much in the organization of an even broader plethora of ideas that can be said to be essentially non-scientific and ideological in nature.

In fact, the reason for being of this study in the first place, as primarily a thought piece, was to help us to clearly separate the two sorts or sets off ideas on a fundamental level. The former set of scientific attitudes and responses does not have to be so encumbered by other kinds of nonscientific framing, at least in a formal sense.

Important concepts have come to the foreground in our conceptualization of the World. The emphasis on these ideas now indicates the rise of a new way of thinking about basic issues. They inform our thinking in many ways, but especially in how we think about our sciences of the 21st Century.

These basic concepts represent important challenges to our scientific ways of thinking, bound as this has been in a classic, Aristotelian view of the natural world. A brief list of such concepts as they come to mind are as follows:

1. Comprehensiveness

2. Self-organizing Complexity & Chaos

3. Dynamic & Heterogeneous Models

4. Relativity

5. Synergism

1. Comprehensiveness

Ours has become an age of extreme specialization that has accompanied the dramatic differentiation of our scientific knowledge even down to nine or more levels of complexity. Generalism of a more comfortable academic era, that implied a kind of armchair eclecticism and the entitlement to pontificate in extended tracts and lecture series, has had to yield to the speed and emerging interests of Internet based communications. What has been lacking, and what we are in dire need of, is a new level of comprehension, and a new sense of studied, systematic comprehensiveness of approach, especially in our worldview, that affectively provides us with a working roadmap of our complex and ever emergent noetic landscape.

Comprehensiveness is what the term implies, a deliberate attempt at exhaustive holism without the appearances or consequences of dilettantism. Thus an effective comprehensive framework must embrace in full force and detail the entire range and spectrum, and coordinate this broad range of knowledge in a manner that makes some kind of grand, if not strategic, sense.

Comprehensive frameworks necessarily represent neither dilettante spuriousness nor mere generalist eclecticism. Comprehensiveness, especially within an effective systems framework, demands and provides a contextual theoretical framework driving the search for specific solutions to complex problems in a number of different areas of inquiry. These are frequently problems that demand answers that naturally do not fit the departmental delineations of different conventional areas of study and research. Comprehensiveness, to be effective, therefore does not require less expertise, but greater, as well as greater understanding of the fundamental issues involved in any natural problem set.

2. Complexity & Chaos

With the rise of chaos theory, we view the natural world in an entirely new way than we did in the age of the slide rule, Newtonian Laws and Euclidean Geometry. So much that we find in the natural phenomenal patterns of nature, whether it is in the spiral design of a sea snail shell, or in the growth and development of a deciduous tree, suggests to us at some level the working of complexity and chaos in critical systems. This chaotic complexity belies a supreme simplicity that is in control of the infinite variation of pattern.

Scientific models and worldviews must not only explain such complexity, in whatever way it might be encountered in the natural world, in the finite and elegant terms of simplicity, but it must also learn to see and construe the natural world in such terms also. I believe that no theory or model of science now can be framed without at least one hand on the issue of complexity and chaos.

Natural informational systems are largely self-organizing systems. The rule-properties they exhibit are always intrinsic and implicit to the patterning of epiphenomenal organization that is its manifestation. If they are "self-organizing" systems, they are not "self-knowing" systems in the way that we understanding this. Natural information appears to be largely nonreflexive, even at the anthropological level, and therefore we can assume that is it almost never "intentional" patterning in the way that we understand motivations from an anthropocentric worldview.

3. Dynamic Heterogeneity

With the rise to preeminence of chaos theory and new thinking about complexity, there has come as well a new understanding of the inherently dynamic structure our natural world. We find increasingly that everything changes, even things once considered immutable like atoms and protons, and we have a received picture of the universe now as something that ushered into being in less than a nanosecond, and that has been slowly, gradually unwinding ever since.

With dynamism implied in the complexity of nature, I believe heterogeneity is also an important part of the conceptual formula of the modern scientific worldview. Heterogeneity stems from the idea that reality is composed of multiple kinds of things at all levels. We have a vision of this if we explore the sub-atomic levels of particle physics to discover a range of exotic things unknown in a bygone era. Heterogeneous systems are complex informational entities, and tend to defy prime mover theories that like to invest ultimate causes in single, clear to understand mechanisms. Often, like the hen or the egg dilemma, in such systems it is difficult or impossible to isolate original causes or sources.

4. Relativity

As we push back the edge of reality, we discover on ever finer levels of analysis the place of a basic sense of relativity, even in our physical existence. In such complex systems, relative states, or rather, relatively understood states, become more important in the final accounting than abstract or static or absolutistic models that entail some "noumenal" sense of perfect order. In our accounting, we must say conditionally that "such and such is true....under certain conditions a, b, c, but not under other conditions e, f, g."

From a classical perspective this attitude and approach to a scientific worldview, one that undermines a sense of absolute certainty in either the world or our knowledge about the world, seems antithetical to a rational worldview, if not downright heresy. But it is increasingly the case that our realities have not been made more certain by scientific progress, but more uncertain. With each new fact and bit of knowledge we learn about the world, we open up an entire Pandora's box of unanswered questions and suggestion of things we have not yet figured out.

In this world, even our sense of ourselves as "for all practical purposes" certain and, at least in human proportions, absolute, becomes itself relative to that anthropomorphic level of dimensionality about reality. Shift to another level or order of magnitude, and this sense of "things are as they are" quickly goes away, if we are to explain and have a firm sense of the real patterning of the world.

Relativity has intruded irreversibly upon our collective worldview in a wide variety of ways, but especially it was Einstein who offered a model of the universe, and a new way of thinking about reality, when even time and space itself no longer had an absolute sense. This and subsequent science has fundamentally and irretrievably rendered our worldview relativistic for all time.

5. Synergism

Synergism has acquired an implicit connotation of being something "holistic" and somehow a-scientific, like flower power and herbal remedies. But synergism, as a central systemic design principle, has a legitimate and very scientific place in the conceptual design of the natural world. Basically, it states that patterns at one level inaugurate processes that are more than the mere sum of the individual component parts that make up that system. The system as a whole does something that cannot be done by the parts separately.

Synergism thus has a superorganic function of systems. We cannot fully explain the operation of the system as a whole by a mere enumeration of the functioning of the various parts. Synergism is central in gestalt theory, which underlies the understanding of human cognition and symbolism from an anthropological perspective. Patterns are the result of complex part-whole relations and are apprehended as such, and are not merely the analytical reduction to the individual parts.

This sense of synergism is especially important when we apply it to the understanding of living versus non-living systems, and even truer when applied to sentient and self-conscious systems versus those that appear to lack such deliberate volition. But the sense of synergism can be found aplenty even in the vast and empty reaches of outer space. I doubt a solar system or a galaxy is merely the complex cosmological waltz of planets and stars around a common center of gravity. As systems they create forces and patterns that cannot be understood merely by a reduction to its individual entities and would not happen if they were not locked into such a system in the first place.

Concepts like these inform our thinking about our world on very basic levels, and it is important that our understanding of the basic concepts is sound and reasonable before we begin to seek solutions and answers about that world or our place within it.

There are, I believe, a set of primary questions and answers that inform our natural systems theory at its several basic levels. We must seek to ask and understand such questions fundamentally, and to derive in a clear sense whatever implications they may have, if we are to construct for ourselves a worldview that is less prejudiced and more objective than before.

Perhaps this is the real and practical purpose of our scientific philosophy to be able to make obvious those questions and answers otherwise not so obvious. And if, as primitive philosophers, we can do this half well, then maybe we earn for ourselves the reputation for being good at what we do.

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Before proceeding, it is worthwhile to speculate as to the fundamental design principles that may be involved in general systems theory, regardless of the level or kind of system we are involved in.

Some basic principles have already been suggested, such as the notion of a system as being a relatively closed and self-sustaining system of interrelationships, with a selective boundary mediating relationships in a larger context.

The notions of contextuality, boundary, mediation, feedback, and cyclical patterning, are all inherent to such systems design on some level.

The notions of complexity and chaos that results from the variations from a few simple variables are other kinds of design principles that are strongly suggestive of systems theory.

Close to the notions of complexity and chaos are related phenomena of basic informational "keys" or principles that serve as simplifying solutions and the developmental sequence and evolution derived from such fundamental informational bits.

The notion of part-whole relations and of synergism and organic differentiation of the parts in relation to the whole with increasing integration is also an important principle of general systems design.

The notion of stratification of informational levels, and establishing patterns of causal relation between parts are also important concepts.

The notion of transmission, reproduction and communication appear important to general systems. Informational systems usually embody a certain replicability that entails that they can be understood and anticipated. Transmission and communication has its own design features, but usually implies some minimal fidelity and integrity of the system, and coherence. Genetic transmission in life is wonderfully compacted and requires only a single instance of such transmission for a full-scale organism to emerge. In life, what are transmitted become the blueprints for an entire being, and these plans are encapsulated in the smallest possible units.

Some definition of work appears a part of most systems, though work must be construed here in a mechanical or functional sense but not necessarily as something that is deliberative or purposive. Thus systems are usually construed as a kind of machine that has a normal mode of operation and functioning.

Natural non-human systems at least appear mostly to be self-organizing such that the principle patterns of organization and the inferable rules underlying this patterning is implicit to the data only, and not a priori to the patterns.

This brings up the idea that self-organized systems are patterned systems such that they have relationships or results in change that are predictable, or that can be understood by inference derived from observation. In other words, they tend to be based on systems of rules that order the relations of the parts within the whole in a naturally coherent manner.

Self-organizing systems are also systems that tend to develop in directions of increasing complexity, and reach beyond a critical threshold when the patterns of relationship embodied in the patterning are too complex.

In general systems theory, the notion of expectability versus predictability, is applied to complex supercritical systems which suffer events. An earthquake in an area can be expected with a good chance of success, based on past events and recent seismic area, but it remains almost impossible to accurately predict such an event with any reasonable degree of certainty.

Such complex systems, in the total variegation of their informational patterning, are in essence only semi-determined systems, or under-determined systems. Epiphenomenal patterning in nature, at whatever level, tends to be in most instances only partially determined, leaving nature with a great room to fill in by chance and happenstance. Even basic physical systems, with their wonderful mathematical ordering, belie complex dynamics of pattern everywhere that is not fully the direct results of rules and principles.

Such patterning is in essence the indirect elaboration of basic rules in a wide variety of ways, and alterable epiphenomenal patterning due to the chance inputs of many different extraneous variables. Life is full of such examples of complexly organized, but relatively undetermined systems.

System therefore implies networks which implies connectivity and interactivity, as well as integration. It implies ordered relationships.

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Natural systems theory, as the name implies, is based on a principle that the patterning encountered in nature, at all orders, is inherently, naturally organized in systematic and predictable ways that lends itself in time to the understanding of our science. Because it is implicitly systematic, we can formulate rules that describe its processes, and we can even test these rules through their logical conclusions.

Natural systems are primarily informational systems. In this sense they are cybernetic systems. The analogy of natural informational systems to organic human intelligence and nervous system functioning has value at several levels. Human cybernetic systems are sub-cases of more basic natural informational systems, and thus share certain affinities with these more basic systems. But to over-emphasize this analogy in natural information systems is also to anthropomorphize the natural order of things in ways that were not intended. It leads ultimately to religious solutions to scientific questions.

At the outset, I will lay down a basic set of rules governing natural information systems. In their most basic form, at whatever level, they are subject to and constrained by the basic laws of Thermodynamics. In fact, a clear case is made at the level of physical systems theory that not all physical systems occurring in nature conform strictly to the laws of Thermodynamics, but this serves as a point of departure for our conventional understanding the world.

Thus it is worthy at the outset to put forward these rules:

Systems of the same temperature are in thermodynamic equilibrium. More precisely, if two systems are in equilibrium with a third, then they are in equilibrium with each other, and this equilibrium is expressed as their state of temperature. If a finite system is placed in relation to a theoretically infinite system (or a practically very large system) then that system will tend in the long run towards equilibrium within the larger system. The infinite system is the thermal reservoir.

Known as the law of energy conservation. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed (apart from the equivalence of mass to energy.) Therefore heat transferred into a system plus work within the system must result in an increase in temperature level of the system. No machine can exist if no energy is transformed or transferred by work in the system. Therefore, there can be no "perpetual motion machine of the first kind" in which no energy is required for doing work.

The law of entropy, or the measure of disorder of a system or its closeness to a state of perfect zero-equilibrium. Basically, the state of entropy of any system can never decrease. If a system reaches equilibrium, or a state of maximum order, it can never increase in entropy, and ceases to change. Natural systems tend toward entropy or equilibrium. As an outcome of this law of entropy, heat cannot be transferred from a lower temperature system to a higher temperature system without work being done. There can be no "perpetual motion machine of the second kind," in other words a machine cannot perpetually do work without the transfer of energy.

Absolute Zero, or the state of no heat, can never be reached, though it can be approached arbitrarily closely by a finite number of steps.

I would claim that, whatever else they may or may not be, all natural informational systems are in fact and in function working systems. They are machines. They do work of some kind. From the standpoint of thermodynamics, work has a special definition, for it involves the transfer of energy from a lower state to a higher state, or else the maintenance of energy in some kind of regular steady-state, or else the dynamic alternation or oscillation of energy states.

These fundamental parameters of all natural systems set certain other constraints that structurally characterize such systems. First, such systems are by definition bounded and finite. They are not infinite or unbounded systems. Therefore, at any particular moment, they can be said to be characterized by a total energy state, whether we can determine exactly what that state is or not. Furthermore, this energy state can always be presumed to be a ratio value of the achieved efficiency of the system over the potential or theoretical total value of that state in that moment.

Second, which is important to the understanding of the manifestation of natural systems, is that the work they do in terms of energy transference can become expressed in terms of the organization, spatial arrangement and movement of mass. This caveat concretizes a natural information system and gives it a sense of physical presence.

Until patterns can be found in nature that clearly describe a system that do not obey these basic rules of thermodynamics, it must be concluded that all natural systems are subject and obedient to them. This is true whether we are talking about a solar system, a rock on a mountainside, a tadpole in a pond, or a person writing a poem. If systems can be described that do not obey the rules of thermodynamics, then it follows that there is another system underlying thermodynamics that such systems probably obey.

It follows from this first set of constraints that all natural systems at least on a theoretical level are involved in a kind of boundary maintenance expressed in both time and space that demarcates this system off as unique or different from all other possible systems, or from nothing.

This boundary maintenance function constitutes the informational characteristic of such systems. They must maintain a boundary, and do work of some kind to do so, in some way that makes sense, or implies "information" that is, as Buckminster Fuller described, a form of order inducing "anti-entropy." It is this boundary-maintenance function that gives science a handle on the comprehension and description of natural systems, and allows us to predict conclusions about systems that we cannot directly or otherwise see for ourselves.

Several facets of all boundary maintenance systems apply:

a. They maintain a regular pattern of relations between components, no matter how dynamic or complex.

b. These patterns are rationally describable in terms of rules.

c. These patterns are implicit to the ordering of the relationships maintained within the system.

It is the function of science to ascertain the rules regulating the patterned relationships implicit to the ordering of a system, regardless of whether it is directly observable or not.

Boundary maintenance functions of all systems are by definition imperfect and limited. This is expressed as the finite channel capacity or limited informational carrying capacity of any system. Entropy of the system becomes expressed as noise within the informational framework of that system.

In general, we can describe self-organizing natural information systems in theoretical terms as nonlinear control systems. Natural systems are non-linear because they rarely obey the principle of superposition--that is rarely are outcomes the direct linear functions of inputs. This is in general due to the correlational structures that are developed in complex but underdetermined systems between inputs and outputs.

All physical systems naturally exhibit some measure of non-linearity even if they are frequently modeled in linear terms. Thus natural systems are very often describable as resonance oscillation mechanisms that sustain internal order without inputs. Initial conditions of such systems can lead to entirely different patterns of response, such that the "state trajectory" describing such a system may have "jump" discontinuities and exhibit multiple alternate and equivalent states.

Nonlinear systems are said to be in stable equilibrium if they remain within a state described by first-order differential equations:

x˙ = ƒ(x,u)

And

ƒ(x_e,0) = 0

x_e = 0

Where:

x is the n-dimensional state vector

u is the m-dimensional input vector

If no input is applied to such a system, the state trajectory (path followed by a state vector over a period of time) will remain indefinitely at equilibrium. Such a state is stable if state trajectories remain in the vicinity of x_e, and if time approaches infinity, such a system is said to be asymptotically stable and if it holds for any initial state, it is said to be stable in the large.

We may characterize system pattern about equilibrium by linearizing the preceding state equations about x_e, such that the first order equation,

e˙= Ae

becomes satisfied if:

e(t) = x(t) - x_e

Where the eigenvalues of A (n x n matrix) are given by:

A_ij = (∂ƒ_i/∂x_j)I_{x = xe}

The eigenvalues of A therefore determine the stability of the equilibrium point. A second order system (n = 2) describes alternative equilibrium points that are classified as a stable center, an unstable saddle point, and a node and a spiral that can be either asymptotically stable or unstable. These are patterns that are recurrent in natural phenomena, suggesting that at many levels natural systems constitute stable second-order systems over time.

Pendulum systems describe oscillating patterns with phase trajectories of alternating centers and saddle points are also common patterns described in nature, and can be expressed in the form of differential equations as:

x˙₁ = x₂

x˙₂ = -g/l (sin x₁ + u)

Where x˙₁ equals the angle of the limit of the trajectory of the pendulum from the perpendicular axis and g equals the mass gravity of the pendulum and l equals the radius of the circle described by swinging of the pendulum about its origin.

All natural systems maintain their boundaries by means of basic "feedback" mechanisms, the first two of which have been previously described. In addition to these first and second order feedback mechanisms, which can be found commonly in the world, even in relatively simple systems, I refer as well to subsequent orders of feedback mechanism that I believe are necessary to describe the full range of patterning in nature. To go back one step further, I will posit as well nth-order feedback mechanism possible in alternative information systems. Feedback mechanisms are, systemically speaking, internal mechanisms that have the function of maintaining the system in some kind of "dynamically-stable" state.

All such systems are by definition complex systems, in that they are regulated by multiple sets of variables that describe the unfolding relationships within the system. As such, natural systems tend towards critical or supercritical states of internal order of relationship.

We can say that such systems follow complex patterns of repetition and variation in time and space. In general, such systems can be modeled in their complexity by means of recursion and reiteration functions, depending on whether such patterns are continuous or relatively discontinuous or periodic.

A second set of constraints governing our natural information systems is to posit a universal hypothesis.

This hypothesis goes thus:

All natural systems are finite, and are therefore subsystems of a larger natural system. The total natural system of which all other systems are a subset is the system of the physical universe.

But positing a universal system leads us into certain basic philosophical paradoxes that are difficult to resolve. These paradoxes have to do with the notions of infinity and eternity, and of our human ability, or rather inability, to fully comprehend them. These are important considerations even from the standpoint of a physical description of the universe or the anthropological description of the human place within it.

One important consequence of this paradox is that we may not ever be able to prove, in a manner that is acceptable to conventional science, whether or not we exist within a finite or infinite universe and whether time is essentially eternal. A further paradox that I believe to be a result of these two follows:

Because we are something, we cannot comprehend nothingness in an absolute, non-relativistic sense.

 

A related paradox seems to be this:

Because we are ourselves finite systems, we cannot comprehend infinity in an absolute, non-relativistic sense except by means of mathematics.

I would speculate further that:

Mathematics is the appropriate form of description for our understanding of systems science, especially for the total system of the universe.

Anthropologically speaking, this also has a great deal to do with our sense of the ultimately marginal experience, death. This affects our sense of insecurity about what we do not know, and drives us in a quest for certainty about what we do know. From the standpoint of our physical universe, if we are to posit a total universe that is ultimately bounded, then we must accept the reality of nothingness, as the absence of all physical presence absolutely.

I do not believe that the closest we get to nothingness is a near perfect vacuum or the immense void of intergalactic space. I believe that empty space as we believe it to be is bound within a Machian scheme of a physical universe, defined by this universal physical presence in a number of ways. Furthermore, if we look close enough, we will probably find that what we understand to be empty space on one level, is not so empty or space on another. In this regard, the imagination of natural death is probably a more apt approximation of nothingness, and most in the world would even argue this.

I do not know if the universal paradox concerning the questions of boundlessness and nothingness are satisfactorily resolvable. I believe they are types of fundamental questions that have critical influence in shaping our models of natural systems. Ultimately, physics and the other sciences must asks the unanswerable, and attempt to answer the unaskable. Questions like "What is the end? Or What is the beginning?" and "What caused everything in the first place?" are questions that must eventually be answered in some way by our basic models, even if only implicitly and even if we cannot know if the answer is the correct one or not.

I will start out by making a fundamental statement. God has played dice with our universe. At the heart of scientific method is a belief in pure random possibility. The most fundamental causes and sources of patterning in the natural world are purely random in an absolute sense. Science cannot presuppose an ultimately non-random cause. This leaves us with a grand paradox, because ultimately we must assume an ultimately non-random cause.

The second assumption has to do with our understanding of fundamental causality. Physical science in particular is fundamentally concerned with the questions of causality. Indeed, causal explanations form the foundation of theoretical explanation in science. We must assume some kind of cyclical feedback process involved in the most basic patterns of nature, if we are to be able to scientifically step outside of the causal-conundrums of positing non-random ultimate causes. Thus we end up with hen and egg type dilemmas in our causal explanations of naturally occurring phenomena.

At the heart of all systems theory is a fundamental statement of scientific methodology regarding universal randomness or universally equal improbability. At the heart of natural systems theory is also a fundamental statement regarding scientific theory and generality. If we are to avoid the logical impasse of ultimate causes in any and every system, then we must search for "feedback" processes that account for the patterning, and then we must search for "evolutionary" mechanisms that alter or affect that cyclical patterning of the feedback process itself.

I will temporarily resolve the issue by the following statements. I believe it to be a first and only existential leap of faith to posit that:

1. The physical universe is probably without finite boundary or temporal limit. From the standpoint of Thermodynamics, we can talk about the physical universe as constituting the infinite thermal reservoir in which absolute equilibrium is attained. At this stage only, can we speak of "non-existence" and give it a physical definition as the state of absolute zero.

2. Nothing cannot exist absolutely, independently of something. Thus, non-existence is in the final analysis relative to what exists. We can approach non-existence on a vanishing horizon, but it is, perhaps like the speed of light, a theoretical threshold value that cannot be obtained within the known physical universe.

3. Therefore, the universe is relative both to itself and to the human knower who seeks to scientifically comprehend its sense of order and pattern.

The bases for these claims are two-fold.

First, I accept the conclusion that the physical universe is infinite and eternal because so far the universe appears to be mathematically describable, and, because mathematics allows us to both imagine and express infinity. This renders the possibility of an infinite universe possible. In a universal sense, what is possible becomes probable.

Secondly, I accept this conclusion about both the basic infinitude of the universe and the absolute relativity of nothingness, because, for me at least, it is impossible to imagine the universe otherwise, and it is impossible to think of nothing without reference to something. This conclusion comes from the first. If we could imagine a finite universe, then we must imagine absolute nothingness beyond it, but even this nothingness is only in reference to the finite universe.

Whenever a sense of boundary is reached or described, whether in theory or in material evidence, the natural tendency is to then ask: "What lies beyond or before that boundary?" My conclusion then would be to posit some larger unknown universal system of which the known or observable system is but yet a subset.

But this does not resolve completely the sense of existential uncertainty about our world. Because, in the grand sense, it is almost as difficult for us to imagine an infinite universe without asking how it got there, what came before, etc., etc. It makes one want to believe in the hand of a God, however deistic or abstract.

The universal hypothesis, that the physical universe is infinite, affords us at least a margin of temporary complacency about our modeling of it. Though we are left with the conundrum of modeling an unbounded system with finite models, we have the language of mathematics to come to our rescue. We therefore do not need, at least for the time being and in the framework of our natural systems theory, to ask perhaps unanswerable questions about ultimate origins.

The fourth set of constraints in our understanding of natural systems has to do with the natural "division of labor" that occurs within the different levels or orders of the natural scheme of things. Subsystems are arranged in delimited orders and work on different levels of articulation and relationship.

Natural systems must be understood as being composed of myriad complex patterns that overlap on multiple levels. Both the patterning of nature and our scientific understanding of this patterning have come to occupy certain distinctive categorical and theoretical spaces that appear mostly exclusive to one another.

Scientific knowledge can be said to constitute natural sets that are ordered at different levels of understanding. In general, I recognize three such sets of exclusive regions of natural patterning, and these are found be organized on three levels in a kind of pyramidal hierarchy:

This is normally construed as the "hierarchy of determinations" occurring in the natural world. Lower order levels underlie and inform higher order systems. Thus physical systems underlie biological and human systems, and both physical and biological systems underlie human systems, in a way that cannot be reversed. We cannot say that human systems underlie the biological order or the physical world. But it is important to note as well that higher order systems entail levels of complexity that cannot be explained or completely reducible to lower levels of systems analysis. This is a common fallacy that is frequently encountered especially in anthropological thinking about human systems.

These distinctive systems follow the lines of natural sets of patterning as these have been discovered in nature. To be sure, we can explain biological systems completely in terms of biochemical processes, but in doing so we would be missing many of the most interesting aspects of life and selection on a macro-evolutionary scale. Similarly, we can perform now sophisticated brain imaging scans of living people, and believe we are getting at the heart of what it means to be human, but to do only this would again be missing something valuable about people's behavior, especially in society in everyday life.

Overemphasis of lower order function and analytical reductionism are common fallacies encountered in our models and thinking, particularly in the anthropological sciences, but even sometimes in biology itself. There is a very strong tendency in anthropology to reduce cultural explanations to genetic level arguments, or to employ evolutionary theory in the explanation of cultural and social patterning. For these people, the mind is constituted by "memes" which are not unlike "genes" in how they are finitely transmitted and find expression, and, implicit to such an analogy, is in fact an argument for a real causal connection between memes and genes.

Natural divisions of pattern in the world appear to rarely follow classical noumenal models or even neo-classical mechanical models. They are constituted by different sets of design principles at their respective levels that in essence have little to do with conceptual elegance or rational parsimony from a classical perspective of philosophy or science.

Beyond these three basic natural systems, I would include at least two other possible types of systems that probably should be taken into account. These include:

1. Alternative systems, or possible systems, that are other than what are normally or conventionally construed within the basic framework,

2. Intermediate systems, including proto-typical or emergent systems that come before or between the basic divisions of the hierarchy of determination.

It is impossible to place these kinds of systems in any definite place within the overall scheme of things. We can imagine alternative systems occurring at all levels, and we do find suggestions and real instances of intermediate systems that clearly fit between levels or come clearly before or after a level but are not a part of another level.

I believe Chimpanzees and Primates are an example of a kind of biological system that, for reasons of their sentience and anthropoid character, clearly fall between that of systems more conventionally construed as biological and ones that we usually refer to as anthropological. And such primates take us back to a very early time in our own natural history when Australopithecine hominids walked the earth much as humans did and behaved in many ways like Chimpanzee's.

To go to another level, the categorization of viruses between that of a living, replicating system and that of a purely physical system pushes the limit of what we understand a complete biological system to be. It blurs the boundaries about what is possible with purely physical "non-biological" types of systems, and possibly these take us back again to some sense of a primordial soup when the first organic molecules began behaving in unusual ways, growing and replicating themselves and then evolving into something more.

The imagination of alternative systems abounds, though in fact so far we have encountered few such alternative systems. The most direct and dramatic such system is to encounter an intelligent extra-terrestrial life form, but any non-earth form of life would probably be enough to upset some very deep-seated ideas we have about what constitutes biology. Physicists typically speculate about alternative or parallel universes, but the challenges of experientially "proving" the existence of such universes remains beyond our means.

A special class of an alternative system that I believe has become important in our scientific worldview is that that is conventionally construed now by artificial intelligence. I consider this to be representative of a broader range of possibly "intelligent" information systems that are the product of human engineering and creativity. From a cybernetic standpoint I believe this class has special importance, and this subject will be taken up in the conclusion of this work.

*****

The third set of limiting factors in understanding natural systems theory has to do with the inherent limits of human knowledge systems.

Pattern exists inherent in nature at all levels of its epiphenomenal manifestation. This patterning is informatively intelligent, from the standpoint of constituting what can be called self-organizing systems that sustain and even replicate themselves and evolve through time. This patterning is wonderfully complex and yet coherent at all levels of its natural manifestation. It is increasingly clear that at all levels this epiphenomenal patterning of nature is developmental in character. It appears, even in the most universal senses imaginable, to be fundamentally dynamic in character.

Thus our scientific understanding, as a reflection of our natural order, is forever advancing and progressive in nature. We can refer to the increasingly objective differentiation of the phenomenal field as the fundamental process of the unfolding of our science and as the basis of our scientific enlightenment in the modern era.

Change appears to be the most enduring feature of natural systems at all levels and in all instances, but change can only be comprehended by contrast to stability. This is an inherent dilemma that is a consequence of the relativistic limits of our scientific understanding.

If natural systems appear to be stratified between three or more alternative levels of patterning, then our knowledge of such systems is also similarly stratified. But if there is inter-disciplinary stratification of knowledge on these basic levels, it can also be said that there is stratification of such knowledge as well in terms of the detail and experience that is organically represented by such knowledge within each of the levels.

Levels of expertise, informational complexity, and specialization follows another pattern of natural stratification of knowledge that has much to do with the inherent limits of the human knower within the context of the society that produces the knower and defines the boundaries of its common stock of knowledge.

This second sense of stratification is important in terms of worldview, because, anthropologically speaking, it demonstrates how the world and our worldview gets carved up upon a living landscape that is to some extent epigenetic in its unfolding and stratification between regions. In normal, everyday life, most people carry on basically upon two or three levels of knowledge taxonomy. If it is a tree they are talking about, they probably have some implicit model of a prototypical tree. It has a trunk, branches, roots, and leaves. Such a tree is even defined in terms that are considered quite basic and tend to be linguistically conservative and monosyllabic.

From that basic, everyday level, the average person may go up one category, if they think about trees as constituting a kind of plant. Or they might drop down to a more detailed level to think about a particular kind of tree, for instance, a palm, or a pine tree, or an elm or a ficus. Or they might think of a particular instance of tree, like the one they climbed as a kid or the one in the front yard of their house that needs trimming.

If hard pressed, they might go one step further in either direction, or even amend their categories somewhat as to what constitutes a tree such that the affinities of palms are somewhat different from the affinities of pines, which are evergreens, and which are different from deciduous trees. If they are tree lovers or tree huggers they may even begin telling you the different varieties of tree species by their common names, or better yet, by their scientific names, and the unique characteristics of some of these trees. In such a manner, we can recognize the normal range of operation of knowledge between three and five levels of taxonomic specificity/generality, and the structure of the taxonomic system changes from being the classical model of exclusive sets to a fuzzier one of poly-typical traits.

In terms of our sciences we have come to expect a little bit more mileage from our knowledge systems. Scientists, as experts and specialists in a particular field, are generally expected and frequently do have ranges of specificity of detail, expert knowledge that reach down to seven or even nine levels. At the same time, the structural model they are employing to make sense of all this esoteric knowledge is probably far more sophisticated than the conventional types of models commonly employed in everyday common knowledge.

Such models generally go from being relatively static frameworks of understanding to incorporating a dynamic range of alternative variables that is related to a more explicit rule-based system of determination derived from experience, expertise and a set of working "heuristics" that are commonly employed in effective research. We expect not only detailed knowledge, but accurate knowledge as well. And in general, the greater the detail, the greater the reliability and competency levels. If it is a medical diagnosis, we expect that without too much intrusion a competent physician can render both a diagnoses as to the condition and a strategy for favorably resolving the condition.

In terms of generality, we find perhaps most people, even experts, a little more lacking. We do not expect the average medical physician to expound the basic theoretical principles of the theory of evolution. In fact, we might not be very surprised if the physician was in fact a Christian who accepted the doctrine of creationism.

There is a sense that in the social articulation of knowledge, the entire stratification of the common stock of knowledge is incredibly complex, especially as this can be found organized in libraries or articulated in University contexts. Knowledge organization is typically carried to ten or twelve levels of generality/specificity and becomes of necessity organized in multiple complexly overlapping systems. While we might expect experts to know a limited range of knowledge to the 7th or even 9th level, we rarely find people who can go deeper and further than this. Indeed, scholars often spend their entire lives in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding in such contexts, but rarely come away with more than a small part of the entire spectrum.

An average middle-aged male may be able to tell the difference between a Chevy truck and a Ford car, and may be able to change the oil and provide a basic tune-up for their particular kind of car. We recognize a good mechanic if he has the experience to take any kind of car, to quickly render the diagnoses, and to be capable of doing the repair work within a reasonable frame of time. But even the most experienced and talented of mechanics probably has not worked on every kind of car in existence, nor can such an auto mechanic necessarily do work on Diesel trucks or upon airplane engines. In such a way, the stratification of our knowledge in the world tends to reflect the occupational stratification and patterns of specialization of people in the world.

The relevance of this digression to the understanding of the stratification of natural systems theory is manifold. First, our knowledge in the various sciences at each of the levels now typically reaches fairly complex and highly specialized orders. Human beings appear to be much better specialists and analysts than they are generalists and systemic holists, especially when this entails crossing boundaries of expertise and knowledge that are outside of one's own calling. It is a moot point whether or not this is primarily due to the structural organization of society or to some inherent facet of human intelligence.

I believe that this means that most people in the modern world probably have what can be considered to be a fractured model of the world in a more general sense, and often the state, especially totalitarian and closed societies, encourage and even deliberately cultivate such fracturing of worldview. An average specialists view of a narrow range of the world within their own areas of expertise and understanding may be hyper-developed beyond the normal, but in all or any other areas they may approach the more normal or even below normal range.

Probably few physicists are very concerned with the anthropological implications of nuclear energy, though perhaps they should be. A naturalist deeply involved with the analysis of early whale fossils seemed remarkable disinterested when I queried him about his understanding of social issues surrounding his world.

Within each of the basic divisions of natural systems theory, there occurs increasing sub-stratification and differentiation at ever increasing levels. Thus, there are astrophysicists concerned primarily with the spectrographs of light emitted by distant stars, and these are not the same as the radio astronomers who sweep the skies looking for some signals indicating the presence of intelligent life.

Other physicists spend their days in connection to some particle laboratory and probably have rarely looked through a telescope. There are naturalists and environmentalists who like to spend their days and nights observing animals in their natural habitats, and there are biochemists that spend their lives in laboratories dissecting the human genome, and nary the twain shall meet. Of course, the same is very true in the human sciences. There are cultural anthropologists like myself who have never really been on a "dig" and there are archaeologists who have not even the slightest interest in understanding a foreign society first-hand. We can also talk about the clinical psychologist as a different creature from a cognitive and experimental psychologist, etc.

Thus, an effective scientific worldview of natural systems theory must accomplish several things simultaneously. Not only must it account for the different levels of natural patterning on a basic level of knowledge stratification, but it must also account for the stratification of knowledge within such levels, as well as the complex of possible relation occurring between different levels within and between systems. Furthermore, I believe it should account for the stratification and range of human knowledge organization in relation to these different levels, if it is to be socially successful, at least.

Natural systems are holistic entities that effect a kind of solution to the fundamental problems of time and space and to the problem of entropy and natural random decay. In this regard we can refer to Buckminster Fuller's formula of information as being basically a form of anti-entropy.

On another level, we can speak of an informational feedback system that allows energy to be returned to the system. Thus, all systems as informational solutions are to some degree efficient systems and can be measured in terms of their efficiency. They are efficient not only in regard to this problem of energy loss or gain within the system, but also in regard to how well they resolve the basic problem of overcoming the informational bottleneck implied by the search for alternative solutions. Some solutions may be more efficient that others. The kind of solution is reached as the product of a vast search of possible hyperspace.

Natural Systems

2001