INTRODUCTION

Biospheric metasystems concerns the convergence of two sets of ideas and their critical interrelationships.[1] The first is the notion of the earth as a living system, as a complete, self-contained biosphere resting upon a dynamic geophysical substrate. The second is the notion of the biosphere and its cycles and geophysical interconnections providing the necessary metasystems context for the development and evolution of life on earth. These notions interconnect, depending on our definitions and distinctions between systems and metasystems, and the biosphere as an earth-based living system, and the biosphere as the one and only metasystem framework for living systems, in a sense provide us two sides to the same coin, as well as an opportunity to investigate how systems and metasystems interact and interrelate. Life on earth would not have been possible outside of a viable geophysical metasystems context that provided the necessary systems of exchange and dynamic flow of minerals and compounds through a semi-controlled and semi-open environment.

The boundary layers that isolate life on earth are defined by its gravitation that retains water and oxygen and nitrogen gases, and even an ionsophere, mesophere and ozone rich stratosphere and a magnetosphere that act as protective buffers around the earth. Vapor laden clouds condense in the cold temperatures at the top of the troposphere, and these bring rain that are carried by high level windcurrents around the globe. Temperature upon earth has been so far largely moderated by the hydrosphere itself, and it has served to regulate relative mild and temperate climates without wild fluctuations of temperature extremes between the day and the night. Direct solar radiation and its harmful effects are largely blocked through a thick, vapor laden atmosphere, and the residual heat absorbed by the incumbent radaition largely drives and circulates systems on earth, and redistributes and retards heat loss at night.

The biosphere is the earth's life-support system, the critical natural laboratory for the grand experiment of evolution. It constitutes a kind of metasystem, a context, itself system based, that provides a sufficient framework for the development of many different kinds of living systems.

The earth's biosphere, perhaps at any point no more than 20 miles in total thickness, constitutes a very thin envelope around the surface of the earth, to the depths of the oceans and to the top of the troposphere, within which living systems surive and thrive. Within this "green zone" most life and its greatest diversity can be found thriving in a much thinner film no more than a mile in thickness. This biosphere is almost completely contiguous with the earth's hydrosphere, and we carry the formula, where there is water, there may be life, in our quest of extraterrestrial life. All organisms on earth depend in some manner upon the availability of water, and water is critical in the central formulas of respiration and photosynthesis:

(endothermic, sunlight) 6CO₂ + 6H₂O « 1C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂(exothermic, heat)

Perhaps more than anything else, this basic formula, which in its simplicity disguises the complexity of the chemical reaction pathways involved in both alternative forms of photosynthesis and respiration, speaks to the fundamental interpendence of fundamentally different forms of living system upon earth, of the basic interpendence of producers, consumers and decomposers anywhere and everywhere that we find life. In other words, the earth as a biospheric system and metasystem is both a geophysical metasystem for the recycling of basic chemicals and forms of energy required for living systems growth, but it is also a biological metasystem, in which living systems depend upon the presence and adaptive functioning of other kinds of living systems.

In fact, life upon earth cannot exist in total isolation. No species is an island. Life can only exist and continue in the presence of other life forms, so that the biosphere is a vast system of interaction and interdependence between many different living systems upon many different levels of integration. It has probable been the case from the very first life forms, that such life forms either quickly differentiated into multiple interdependent forms, or formed orginally as a basic trophic system. In these interdependencies of living systems, we can speak of direct relations in trophic systems, and indirect relationships that occur as a consequence of the function and presence/absence of specific populations of organism.

Undoubtedly, the original prokaryotic lifeforms on earth depended upon exotic forms of chemosynthesis and fermentation reactions in a basically oxygen free environment. But with the rise of multi-cellular organisms and the Cambrian we have the beginning of a biosphere that is more or less familiar to us today.

Contiguous with the hydrosphere is the biosphere--where we find water on earth, we find life. The hydrological cycle that recycles water around the earth in its many various forms is a central driving mechanism of weather, erosion, and most of the nutrient and mineral cycles that are critical to maintaining the geophysical substrate for life on earth. We have two vast realms of living systems on earth--the water realm, and the terrestrial or land realm. Upon the land, the soil cycle becomes important to living systems and the important processes of decomposition and nutrient recycling. In the water, we have important cycles of sedimentation occurring, that connects living systems to the underlying rock cycle, plate-techtonics and the related geophysical processes and events that tend to make the earth itself a living, dynamic metasystem.

The earth's biosphere constitutes a supreme kind of biological metasystem, providing the conditions necessary for living systems to develop and evolve, and simultaneously being influenced by these living systems. It is the only natural biospheric context we yet know of. We have tried to make artificial biospheres, with some remote idea of taking these eventually into space, but with very limited success. The number of convergent systems that must be replicated--the water cycle, the nutrient cycles, the atmospheric cycles, the soil and rock cycles, even the astronomical cycle of the earth's passage around the sun and the lunar cycles of the month, create an extremely complex and dynamic extended heterogeneous system that is contained by the earth's gravity.

The other side of the problem is the concept of the metasystem, as a kind of natural context and general frame of reference within which natural systems, like life, develop, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, we can seek to study such systems in their natural settings. In general, a metasystem is a description of the structure of a particular system. The idea of a metasystem as a "system of systems" is not unambiguous in the literature.

Biospherics therefore deals with both the earth as a large and self-contained system of living systems, and also as a natural kind of metasystems context for the development and sustenance of many different forms of life. Certainly, it can be argued that the earth itself is a living system, in terms of its thin biosphere, and that this living system is biologically unified as a single tree of life upon a genetic level. It can also be argued that the earth provides a unique convergence of geophysical systems and factors that make possible everywhere within its green zones, the conditions ripe and necessary for the evolutionary development of new life forms.

The biosphere, as both its own set of systems and as its own metasystem, creates its own green zones, and these green zones that are optimal for living systems have been evolving along with the evolution of the life forms these zones contain. The amazing feedback between systems and metasystem, both self-contained, has permitted the dynamic evolution not just of life upon earth, but of the entire biosphere and of the surface layers of the earth itself. It is quite evident that living systems have shaped the geophysical substrate as much as they have been shaped by this substrate, and that the atmosphere, the oceans and the continents have been fundamentally altered by the fact of long and continued interaction of widespread living systems.

It is significant to distinguish biospheric metasystems and systems upon different levels and analysis and articulation, hence we can speak of global, intermediate regional, and local frameworks and systems that are biospheric or that are part of the larger biosphere. Examination of these alternative levels of analysis shows us the wide range of variation of conditions possible on earth, as we trace through alternative ecological patterns of zonation, as well as the common, global variables that are part of every possible living system. While water in some form is probably necessary for all life, there are many local and regional contexts in which water is relatively scarce or even mostly absent, and yet within which areas life not just occurs by happenstance, but thrives.

Basic patterns of ecological lattitudinal zonation are fundamentally defined by the rotation of the earth and its orbit around the sun, and the resulting coriolus forces that tend to create large atmospheric bands that interact as large weather cells. Currents and wind patterns on the oceans circulate water and biotic and abiotic resources, as well as heat, around the entire globe. Large techtonic plates lead to the gradual recycling of the ocean floors, with their sedimentation, and a gradual build up and uplift of continental crust, and the drift of these continents in all directions of the continent. Within broader regions there occur numerous areal and local patterns of zonation that are, on one hand, complex, and yet distinct in their distributions of living systems and types that occur there.

The truth is that no natural systems, as systems, are completely closed or free of their own metasystems context. The trouble with the examination of the biosphere is that it is simultaneously both its own set of systems and its own metasystem, and as both it appears in the larger framework of the Solar System more or less to be completely isolated. Of course, we understand that solar energy radiates the entire planet on a daily basis, and this has been critical to the development of the biosphere on many levels. We are also aware of the fact that there are occasional meteors, asteroids and comets that impact the surface of the earth, and these occassional but random inputs may have had at times cataclysmic impact upon the biosphere. Also, several times a day, the earth's hydrosphere expands and contracts due to lunar and solar tides and their alignment and so forth, which, especially in rich intertidal zones where land meets sea, there is a continuous shifting of water levels. These zones may have been the original nurseries of early protobiotic systems on earth. It is possible that some of earth's gases in the atmosphere leak away or are lost into the vastness of space, but if this loss is occurring, it has been a phenomena that has gone largely unnoticed and unrecorded so far.

In spite of these inputs into the earth's biosphere, and in spite of whatever minor outputs there may be, constant but variable heat loss, loss of atmosphere, possible gradual loss of nutrients, it appears that otherwise the earth is a totally self-contained and isolated biosystem that has been complete and extremely stable over the long run, having supported living systems for at least four billion years of its natural history on a global scale, in spite of its many geological transformations in the interim. We might refer therefore to the earth's biosphere as an almost closed system that is its own metasystem, in which living systems provide biotic environment that permit the support of other living systems, and there is no where upon the surface of the earth where this process does not hold true in some way.

It is not without reason that the major geological ages of the earth's natural history are defined by key types of living organisms, and the earth's broadest and deepest levels and strata of deposition and development are intrinsically interconnected to the natural history of life on earth, such that we can speak of Proterozoic as the time of early life, and the Meso-zoic as the period of middle life, and the Cenozoic as the period of new life, and so forth. Its major periods and ages are largely defined by the key fossil types used to characterize these vast periods of time--the age of giant insects and plants, the age of fish, the age of amphibians, the age of Dinosaurs, the age of mammals, and so on. The earth, almost from its beginning, when it first began to cool off significantly, a process probably not unrelated to the formation of its first seas and hydrological cycle, which further contributed to its cooling and crustal formation, is closely associated with the periods of succession of major life forms known, by fossil evidence, to have existed during these periods.

The original protobiotic earth was probably largely a water world, with seas of a different salinity and composition than today, perhaps slowly growing from shallow seas to broad oceans. We can imagine a tremendous amount of vulcanism during this period, and by the time a water-world formed, a vast global ocean expanse, there were no "continents" of any sizeable extent, but only many islands, some fairly large, spread around the globe. It was in these early island contexts, many active with volcanism, that we perhaps find the first shorelines and tidepools in which early living systems evolved, periodically releasing into the large ocean currents.We can imagine an atmosphere thick with toxic chemicals and increasing amounts of water-vapor, and lightening and heavy inundations. Sunlight might have been obscured on a perennial basis, keeping the temperatures on earth within some kind of hot, but not too hot range.

With increasing vulcanism, and cooling of the crust, lighter granitic and igneous intrusive formations eventually rose to the surface, many light enough to accumulate and to be pushed above sea level. These eventually aggregated into larger and larger formations forming early continents, that would have been the beginnings of cratons of the continental land masses we find today. As the earth's crust slowly cooled and crystallized and increased in its average thickness, vulcanism would have given way at some point to continental uplift and drift, which is what we find today, as well as continental growth of land.

In the most general sense, a metasystem can be referred to as a grand design strategy that views all of natural reality as being ordered complexly but systematically, and all knowledge relative to understanding this order as being potentially integratable. The expectation becomes to articulate such a metasystem, like a model or demonstration biosphere, in real terms, even if in reduced and rudimentary contexts in an embryonic manner, and to eventually develop and refine its framework to the point that it approaches its ideal of being an effective comprehensive system.[2]

There are several other alternative meanings for the term metasystem as I have used this in my various writings on the general topic, all of which have validity in special frames of reference. It is important to highlight these alternative uses and meanings of the term as well, within the overarching framework of the general definition just given above. In another comprehensive sense, all of reality can be considered to be hypothetically a grand metasystem--the universe as an open and possible multi-state system can be referred to as a metasystem and this meaning can be extended to embrace a wider definition of what is reality. Implicit to the term metasystem in the grandest sense is an implied underlying sense of order, even in spite of lack of direct or obvious relationship and the obvious presence of a great deal of disorder or random chaos in patterning, or the inherent under-determination of systems in the first place.

For the most part, metasystems refers to the more applied and practical problems on several levels that concern bringing to reality and articulation behaviorally and materially of the possibilities that are otherwise only implicit within the framework and general conceptioning of metasystems. Therefore, metasystems refers as well in a special scientific sense to the methodological and operational design to experimental applications derivable from natural systems theory. Metasystems refers as well in a slightly different framework to a special class of theoretical and or applied problem that is exemplified most characteristically by being heterogenous and stratified systems, or "mixed" systems that arise as the consequence of the interaction of several subsystems from different levels of natural stratification.

I define a metasystem as a logical model of a delimited system that is based upon a philosophical and scientific understanding of the primary concepts and variables underlying the structural patterning of the system. It is therefore the study of the logic, the pattern, the structure, the philosophy and knowledge relating to our understanding of what we define as a system. How we define and delimit a system is critical to our final understanding of that system and how we choose to relate to it in the larger scheme of things. Definition and delimitation are normal parts of analysis that is preparatory to learning about and understanding a system. It is clear that we may begin with different presuppositions and primes that are implicit to our definitions of things in reality, and these will predetermine the outcomes of our knowledge and relationship to these things. Part of the purpose therefore of a metasystems approach is to explore the conceptual foundations and implications of the models that we employ to understand our world, and to not only question these foundations, but to test them for their validity and accuracy in relation to the real world. This is by no means the only purpose or definition of a metasystems approach.

Metasystems science is the methodological and operational outcome of natural systems theory. All real things are parts of systems. These systems can be analytically classified according to natural problem and pattern sets based upon the stratification of these systems in nature. Thus we can identify physical, biological and human systems, and these three types are the generally occurring systems that we know of at this time. We can further analyze these three general types of systems into wider classes of subsystems that these labels incorporate. Such sub-classifications can be made in a number of different dimensions, depending upon which dimension of such systems we construe as being important in our analysis and synthesis.

Natural systems theory was based upon the identification of these three natural types of systems and their explanation and elaboration within a larger systems framework. This tripartite model of natural systems is bound to change especially as we discover extraterrestrial life forms and forms of alien intelligence that is comparable to our own. We should expect and anticipate this kinds of changes and their reverberation for our world view and how we relate to the world in the future, at least so that we will not be caught completely off guard with the unexpected when it does finally occur. I believe a metasystems approach provides a fruitful and constructive methodology to systematically extend our knowledge and understanding of systems to heuristically embrace what can be called possibilistic systems.

We may extend the three classes of systems along another basic dimension to include what can be called real systems as well as abstract, ideal or "non-real" systems. These are larger encompassing sets and subsets of natural systems. Human-made applied and artificial systems, especially those that achieved some degree of autonomous function, can be referred to as real systems of a special form. A rocket ship and a toaster oven are examples of real applied systems that would not be naturally occurring if they were not invented and designed through human knowledge and work. At the same time, certain forms of knowledge system that underlie the sciences and our understanding, can be referred to as abstract and non-real systems. At this time we cannot clearly say if these systems are strictly the product of our own human knowledge and thinking, and hence subject to the constraints of anthropological relativity, or whether these systems might be appropriate to non-human intelligent systems, and hence part of a broader framework than we can prove at this time. Clearly, if we achieve contact with alien intelligence, then they will have acquired a form of technology, or real systems, that were based upon a creative intelligence that required both real and non-real forms of knowledge and understanding. We would expect at least a common ground of agreement in terms of mathematical language and possible in terms of sensory-awareness systems.

We may say that all systems are in the first place physical systems. We may reduce the human brain to cells, thence to molecules and atoms, and thence to even more minute physical structures and processes. But in the process of analytical boiling we remove and lose permanently what it is about human brains in functional contexts that make them special and central to human systems. Thus all biological systems are seen as a subset of physical systems, and consequently all human systems are seen as a subset of biological systems. As mentioned, the composition and boundaries of these sets are liable to change as we discover new naturally occurring systems in the universe. Systems of these types cohere together because they are bound within special contexts or frameworks of their articulation. We construe such systems therefore from the standpoint of the organismic principle--that systems and their components achieve their identity within natural contexts as parts of a whole, and that therefore exhibit what are called emergent or synergistic properties. Composite and derivative patterns that occur as a function of the whole, and cannot be explained through analytical reduction to the parts.[3]

Metasystems has been a spin-off and direct consequence of this involvement in natural systems theory. In fact, a metasystems framework and approach is implied throughout natural systems theory, especially in terms of the application of this theory to real world problem sets. It has concerned in particular those hybrid and inbetween classes of systems, or mixed systems, as well as the problem of the inter-level integration and organization of complex systems. Furthermore, it has involved the understanding of the class of heterogeneous systems that occur in the natural world, systems that incorporate all or some of the different levels and types of natural systems. It has offered a systematic methodology, through extension of set and number theory to cover a diverse range of real sets and phenomena. It has also lead to a concern with applied and what can be called the development of artificial metasystems, which are humanly-constructed systems that extend the compass of reality as well as our knowledge of reality.

A metasystems framework constitutes the basis for what I would call a paradigmatically informed or reformed general field of the sciences that transcends the problems of analytical specialization and limitation of worldview. I would make the claim that all forms of science, as applied knowledge systems, represent not only the articulation of natural systems theory, but are essentially a form of metasystems science, or meta-science, in their own articulation and in their relation with the larger world.

The metasystems concept is also employed in the sense of the alternative development off an applied metasystem, which is a grand strategy that coordinates the application of knowledge to real systems in a comprehensive framework. The object of an applied metasystems framework therefore is the encouragement of constructive crossover and feedback between areas of knowledge specialization and expertise, without the loss of fidelity or reliability of knowledge systems, and hence it becomes the intentional, planned integration of real systems, and the knowledge systems upon which they are based. The design of an applied metasystems framework has therefore been guided by the requirements of promoting and facilitating such integration in real systems. It has led to the focus upon redesign of systems in areas where knowledge is naturally integrated, or achieves a degree of integration as a consequence of the problem solving involved in such a field.

It becomes important within such a framework of applied metasystems to focus upon the dilemmas, trade-offs and challenges between the problems of the integration and adaptive articulation of systems in the real world. The development of such an applied metasystems provides a framework and context for the development of integrated subsystems and for their effective articulation. At the same time such articulation depends upon the articulation of such subsystems in a number of areas. This is an inherent problem set that can only be resolved through devising and improvising successful solutions that accomplish both integration and effective articulation at the same time. If articulation proceeds at the expense of integration, or integration is promoted with defective articulation of subsystems, then the feedback processes involved become destructive rather than constructive and complementary. This is in part a challenge of creativity and intellect, but also one of experience and exploration. To promote these processes in a creative manner allows a higher rate and degree of central problem resolution than can be otherwise achieved.

These two sets of challenges are met simultaneously by pursuing several strategies at the same time. Because the overall problem of the applied metasystem is so large and complicated, it must be divided into its component subsystems, each of which poses its own problem set requiring similar but smaller scale, more specialized and focused resolution. At the same time, the problem of how to divide the overall system, and then how to construct such a system from components, becomes a question that provides a common frame of reference for the coordinate and complementary development of the subsystems. Conventional science has largely proceeded by means of the former method to the neglect of the complementary approach which has proceeded naturally by self-organization, and has combined a heavy handed empiricism with a entrenched and conservative academic but enlightened scholasticism. The result of this I believe has been a deemphasis of the kinds of holistic approaches that systems development requires, and an overemphasis upon specialized and analytical approaches.

As mentioned previously, some areas of knowledge lend themselves more readily to a metasystems approach than other areas. But it remains true that any field of knowledge can be oriented, and possibly redefined in terms of its basic operating parameters, to be more sufficiently compatible to a metasystems framework. The problem in defining a metasystems framework in an applied sense has been the identification and redefinition of these basic areas and their configuration into a workable pilot framework.

The challenges of integrating expertise, and development of multiple expertise or means of cross-over of knowledge and skills, between different metasystems areas in such a manner as to preserve the quality and detail of knowledge and its application, becomes critical to the success of the application of such a system in the real world. This challenge is offset to some extent by the contextualization and constructive complex of reinforcement that the metasystems framework itself provides in social and organizational institutions. The ability to effectively institutionalize a metasystems framework in a corporate sense becomes therefore strategically critical to the success of the system. This in turn requires working out a metasystems framework conceptually and on paper, and its improvised implementation in the real world in an experimental manner.

The entire sphere of reality, or total universe, may be said to be one grand metasystem, of which all other systems are subsystems. Any general problem set we encounter may be looked at from a metasystems point of view, and the nature of the solutions we offer to such problem sets are meta-systemic from the standpoint of both the understanding they bring to the problem and in terms of the application of the solution itself. From this perspective, the solution becomes part of a larger metasystem that we are seeking to construct or develop in fulfillment of this grand design.

Ecology in the field of biology, and to a lesser extent conventional evolutionary theory, constitute synthetic metasystems approaches in a field that has been largely and at times almost exclusively analytical in orientation. To date both ecology and evolution as general problem sets lack a comprehensive unifying theory or synthetic point of view that sufficiently accounts for all aspects of these rather broad and eclectic areas of biological systems. Similarly, in the physical sciences, cosmology represents an area that is particularly meta-systemic in character. It is perhaps for this reason, and for the lack of training of physical scientists in meta-systemic approaches, that cosmological knowledge remains so uncertain and controversial and paradigmatically prone to ideological influence. Similarly, most of the human sciences remain fundamentally meta-systemic in orientation and hence naturally prone to multi-paradigmatic interpretation and failed attempts at paradigmatic closure of general problem sets around certain "schools" of inquiry.

It is clear that the symptoms of the failure to address metasystems frameworks for what they are, in a methodological and operational manner sufficient to their problem sets, include paradigmatic closure or the lack of paradigmatic unification, the plethora of alternative and often conflicting points of view that point to a fundamental lack of certainty over basic knowledge areas and a lack of agreement over common terms and terminology, reflecting incomplete systems of classification, categorization and propositional organization of reality. In a sense, all the sciences and any particular scientific field may be characterized in this manner, what has been termed by some as epistemo-pathology, but it is evident that there are certain areas of scientific inquiry and certain natural problem sets or dimensions occurring in reality that are particularly prone to these kinds of relativistic issues, while other areas of science have made remarkable progress, largely through theoretical development, that have transcended these limitations.

There is a sense that knowledge that is articulated primarily at a physical level is more readily expressible in a purer mathematical form, and the principles and laws that govern physical phenomena are therefore more amenable to logical and mathematical formulation and proof, than derivative and higher order systems that are more difficult to express in clear or elegant or meaningful mathematical formula. Mathematical systems applied to any biological system, upon any level, rapidly breaks down in its applicability and generalizability. There are some basic mathematical formula that are quite useful in a fundamental sense in the biological sciences, but they generally cannot be extended in an unexceptional manner to cover all cases. This difficulty to some extent guides and constrains research and research methodologies in the biological sciences. Even more so is the case of the human sciences, where very few if any mathematical formulas carry any great theoretical significance beyond narrow contextual boundaries.

We may say in general that the more derivative and higher order the emergent properties of a system, in terms of its integration and articulation in reality, the more difficult and problematic it is to simplify its structural rules of operation in purely mathematical formula. We must recognize though that even such simplicity upon a fundamental level or cosmic scale may be more apparent than real, when we discover for instance quantum and other relativistic phenomena that tend to complicate our equations and indicate the presence of underlying systems characterized by derivative, rather than basic, properties. It is clear though that the higher up the great chain of order we go in the natural world, the greater the interpretive parallax and hence paradigmatic uncertainty that we encounter in our knowledge about such systems.

Meta-systems science attempts therefore to pick up the theoretical and methodological ball where the conventional sciences have tended to leave off. The main characteristics of meta-systems science and natural systems theory are the following:

1. The holistic emphasis of the contextuality of constructed frames of reference, complemented by analytical reductionism and resolution of particular or specific instances or events.

2. The cross-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary "hybridization" of knowledge systems that follow lines of least resistance in the natural ordering of phenomena in the world, paying respect to the emerging social and historical stratigraphy, landscape and boundaries of knowledge systems.

3. An emphasis upon the theoretical construction of alternative frames of reference derived both deductively from natural and rational reason, and inductively from empirical observation and experimentation.

4. The use of both a "systems" modeling or heuristic approach to learning, design and problem solving, in a framework that is itself meta-logically contextualized by a meta-systems framework that serves to contextualize such approaches within a comprehensive knowledge framework.

5. An emphasis upon the comprehensiveness of objectified knowledge systems, or of a "scientific worldview," that nonetheless does not exclude or preclude or occlude an interest in the particular or the specialized frame of reference and that does not factor out necessarily or methodologically other possible ways or forms of knowing reality.

Whether or not our "total reality" is ultimately disheveled, a cosmological hodge-podge and a fateful crap shoot, or it is quintessential clockwork that Einstein and others dedicated their lives to discovering, becomes from the meta-logically perspective of meta-systems science and natural systems theory a "hen or egg" kind of dilemma. It is a form of paradox that we cannot answer, like Goedel's Theorem or like the Cretan liar, in the terms of its own intrinsic logic, but can only resolve if we are able to step outside of its conundrum and contextualize the complementariness of its relationship. Niels Bohr wrote especially the importance of the recognition of complementariness of structure in reality and its consequence for our scientific worldview and he applied this to the biological and anthropological sciences as well as to his own fields in physics. In this sense, meta-systems science and natural systems theory therefore follows directly in the footsteps of Niels Bohr's observations about the changing ontological and epistemological status of science in human reality.[4]

Thus we arrive at a final definition of meta-systems science, and that is of a knowledge systems theory and methodology that has the fundamental problem of the integration of reality and the description and explanation of all real phenomena, whether this is natural or humanly constructed.

I have formally organized the metasystems framework to encompass five main levels of stratification/articulation. Arbitrarily, these five levels I have called the general or global, the inter-regional, the intermediate or regional level, the areal and the local:

1. Global (or universal or general) encompasses the total metasystem, the total universe, all of reality, or any generally delimited super-systems framework relative to any given system under consideration.

2. The interregional level encompasses basic partitions of the global and focuses upon the problems of the interaction, integration and differentiation of larger regions or mega-systems that tend in their patterning to exhibit structurally stable characteristics. This level generally comprises what can be called "mixed" or heterogeneous metasystems. In terms of physical reality we would refer to the observational universe, non-abstracted systems of applied knowledge (operational methodologies), and larger scale conglomerations of human social organization that tend to be structurally less stable over time than smaller configurations.

3. The regional or intermediate level encompasses in physical terms the main natural divisions of reality--the galaxies and clusters that can be found in the universe, the basic divisions of science between biology, physical phenomena and human phenomena. In organizational terms we can speak generally of departmental organizations. Regional structures tend to be more stable over the long run that larger inter-regional systems. This comprises the main prototypical "systems" level in the classic sense.

4. The areal level politically would include state or provincial kinds of divisions, and socially natural or culturally based distributions of people in space and time. They are the first level of subsystems formation. The areal level in the universe would for instance encompass this galaxy, or this region of the galaxy, or this particular solar system, depending upon one's larger frame of reference.

5. The local area would be politically at the district or county level, and can encompass as well the township or city as a integral entity. It is socially and politically speaking the zone of immediate consequence and articulation of working systems--the everyday, concrete, practical level of people engaged in their daily routines and business affairs.

It is to be seen at once that these levels are ultimately relative, and it is my belief that we cannot define a non-relative system of classification for the stratification of systems in reality. I am of the opinion that the larger metasystem of the total universe is probably infinite and open in certain ways, and that its fundamental structure is probably also infinitesimally reducible. Therefore we can set no absolute upper or lower limits to the kinds of cosmological or geographically based models or systems of classification that we may develop. Similarly, in human knowledge systems, I recognize no extensive or intensive boundaries to what is knowable or possible, and therefore I can observe no non-arbitrary or non-relative systems of classification of this knowledge, in a total sense.[5]

These levels are given in geographical terms, though they apply equally to the geographic distribution of metasystems in the real world as much as they would to the abstract distribution of knowledge or to the organizational distribution of people in productive or reproductive working contexts. In a simplified framework it is possible to reduce these five levels to three levels, that would correlate with the super-system, system and subsystem framework. These are largely relative categories that depend upon the level and area of application. We could say that any metasystems perspective would in a rudimentary manner encompass at least these three areas. Moving in the other direction, we could state that a metasystems framework could be differentiated to as many as seven or even nine levels coordinate and symmetric with the intermediate level. These seven or nine or even eleven levels of differential stratification would reflect the increasing developmental growth of the metasystems framework that would require either a high degree of deterministic integration or alternatively chaotic self-organization of pattern.

Ultimately, we may articulate or at least stipulate an infinite number of levels for the metasystem that we develop. The proviso of doing so is at least two-fold--first is the consideration of the optimal utility value of increasing differentiation/stratification and the requirements of synthetic integration that such stratification depends upon to be successful. In other words, too much complexity as the result of stratification is not necessarily a good thing, and may in many instances represent an inoptimal kind of solution to any particular problem set. The second proviso follows from the first, and it is the recognition that as systems are stratified to new levels, either ascending or descending (and usually both simultaneously) then what occurs with our systems framework is an exponential "explosion" of complexity and information that must be handled. We reach what can be called a systems "bottleneck" of an information explosion that quickly outstrips our limited means for handling this information in a useful manner. In this sense a simplified, reduced, but workable system is preferable to a complex, heavy and unwieldy one that promises much but falls short in its performance.

In a relative way, when we stratify systems, we stratify in both directions towards increasing generality/scope and increasing differentiation and intensification at the same time. This is as true for our understanding of physical and biological systems as it is for our development of knowledge or organizational based human systems. In any system, we can posit a kind of differential symmetry of structure which states that for each level descending in the stratification of a system in terms of increasing complexity, there is also a corresponding ascending level of increasing generality that reflects the integrative characteristics of such systems.

order in stratified systems therefore leads to increasing degrees of complication of detail with increasing focus of structure. I call this the differential calculus of descending developmental elaboration of systems. The implicit ascending integrative configuration of such systems I refer to as the integral calculus of ascending developmental generalization of systems. For each level of differentiated elaboration in a system, there may be said to be a corresponding level of integrated generalization relating to that system. These are again relative to a central and intermediate level which can be seen as the main point of reference for any meta-systemic complex.[6]

Emergent properties are what characterize naturally ordered systems that achieve relative non-isotropic integration, and these properties create holistic systems within systems and lead to the stratification of reality upon multiple levels of design and function. Emergent properties permit the organization of entire sets of subsystems into a single system, which can then be treated as a member of another larger superset. Rules of order and relation underlying such systems may in fact be quite simple and underdetermined from the standpoint of the operating components and their behavior, and yet they are sufficient to give rise to a new order and level of integration over the system.

We may define a metasystem in terms of the emergent patterns and properties that characterize such a system. This implies that any metasystem, as a naturally occurring phenomenon, is complex and multiply determined by different components. It follows that the intentions of a metasystems science is to seek to explicate and understand the emergent properties and processes that are associated with complex event structures and patterns in reality upon different levels. There may be underlying structures or patterns of relation between different levels that would be similar or non-isotropic.

Emergent properties of systems arise as the result of the consistent interactions between the components of a system, and is generally defined by a complex set of equilibria that such systems are capable of maintaining over time. The key defining trait of emergent systems is their cardinality or determination that permits them to be characterized and to function, as a single coherent system.

We are left with a paradox, in that all definable systems are subsystems of the universe, within which everything is interconnected, and hence such systems are finite, but they exist within a total, overall system that is itself infinite in scope and extent. It is difficult to define the total universe in a systemic way that takes into account its infinitudes, except as a metasystem or a metastate universe that comprises an infinite series of alternative state universes that are distributed in both time and space.

To the extent that systems are interconnected to other systems, they can be said to be multiply determined or underdetermined by such connections. Any system has some minimal measure of independent determination of function that allows it to be distinguished on some level as unique and separate from all other systems. Any system must therefore have some sense of a boundary mediating mechanism that creates a sense of segregation of function of the system. Feedback mechanisms in semi-closed loops generally define such mechanisms. To the extent that a system develops feedback between its various components, can that system be said to be relatively independent and partially self-determined as a separate system.

Each delimited state in nature may be characterized by the properties that it exhibits. Properties can be defined as those energy based patterns that are made predictable as a result of the systemic integration of components of a system. A series of states that are integrated both in time and in place can be said to constitute a system.

Metasystems in nature would not exist were it not for the emergent properties associated with underlying structural patterns of relation and determination. It follows that there is a tendency in nature for metasystems to develop into what can be called super-complex states of development, and we may understand a super-complex metasystem as being one in which emergent properties are derived from other emergent properties that may be derived from even other emergent properties, such that systems are built on top of other systems, at the base of which may in fact be yet other complex systems. For a superimposed system to be effective at a higher level, it must be capable of keeping in check and controlling the functioning and state-path behavior in a more deterministic manner than these systems might otherwise exhibit if they were not bound in nature to a larger sense of order.

Super-complexity denotes also what are known as supercritical states, or what can be called overdeveloped conditions that lead to saturation of systems and hence their potential crises or the rise of unpredictable supercritical events that hasten the breakdown of the system or its reduction to a lower level of stability.

We see most metasystems as occupying and existing in a kind of steady-state equilibrium, and equilibrium better characterized perhaps as dynamic state. It is furthermore a complex equilibrium that defines the metasystem in terms of its super-complexity. I will define super-complexity as an information function, as the number of possible alternative transition states that may occur at the same time, in succession. It can be seen that modeling such systems or creating solutions to the kinds of problems they pose quickly achieves a search solution space of astronomical complexity. To say astronomical is not inappropriate, because in spite of its underlying order, the universe itself constitutes the ultimate super-complex metasystem, and we can see how super-complexity is articulated within the physical reality of the universe itself.

We find super-complexity at any order of natural reality we examine, and the solutions we are able to derive for many problems represent really only rough and ready estimates and approximations in lieu of the ideal standards based upon parsimony and exactness of fit. It stands to reason that our methods for studying metasystems must be capable of effectively handling the super-complexity that such systems incorporate. This is not always possible, but it strikes me that this is a goal to strive for in the construction of complex alternative systems. Most often, we subsume complexity beneath labels and terms that mere gloss the problem in terms of its most salient (at least to ourselves) dimensions. This leads to considerable observational and interpretive parallax towards events and the problem sets that are implicit to them. Beyond the relativity that super-complexity confronts us with, the limitations of our own knowledge systems, we must seek to get at this sense of complexity in a manner that will permit their accurate and faithful modeling without necessary oversimplification or over elaboration of detail.

Anything may be considered a metasystem, if it is looked at from a complementary standpoint that considers the behavior, holistic integration and functional composition of the thing in a systematic manner. Metasystemic studies therefore consitutes a specific kind of perspective, both critical and hermeneutic, toward an understanding of naturally occurring phenomena in reality. Science is inherently metasystemic if it is not ideologically bound to a certain preconceived framework or paradigm. Since all science is to some extent paradigmatically biased, it can be said that science achieves a metasystemic perspective to the extent that it is able to overcome and control such bias.

If anything is a possible metasystem, it is to be considered a particular instance of a broader class, or a complex intersection of a range of different classes, of phenomena. These hypothetical classes of phenomena are expressed temporally as well as spatially, and in this sense we may refer to the life-cycle or trajectory of things, and the possible patterning of alternative trajectories expressed by a class of things. In this sense, we may say for instance that a culture is a metasystemic class, a complex set of things, of which any one individual member is but an example of this class. It can be seen that classes define the range of variation possible, and that they tend to be complex polythetic systems that share certain affinities at some percentage or proportion.

No two things are exactly alike, nor can such things occur at exactly the same place and the same time. This entails that each instance of a metasystem, of a thing so described, will be unique and particular to a given set of circumstances shared in an exact way by no other system.

Classes are lumped into other classes, and we develop taxonomic hierarchies of relationship and membership of things in larger and larger systems. By this means we trace the relationship and relativity of things in the context of other things, and determine the degree of distance between things. This is true of the taxonomic classification of life on earth, that implies an evolutionary tree of development--the exact disposition of things within this large tree may be open to question, but the general shape and distribution of the main branches are known and accepted by consensus of agreement. Everything alive has an exact historical and natural provenience that relates it, however remotely or indirectly, to every other living thing on the earth.

1. All of physical reality, which includes the total universe, constitutes a single grand meetasystem that is in some complex manner minimally integrated.

2. All naturally occurring metasystems in reality are interrelated, however remotely, to one another, at least on some minimal basis.

3. All metasystems are incompletely determined, and to the extent that they are underdetermined, they are subject to change.

4. Change can occur systematically and stochastically, and the study of systematic change, or the dynamics of metasystems, is the basis for scientific inquiry into such systems.

5. To the extent that systems are determined in some basic way, it can be expected that they will not change in that basic way and they will exhibit no pattern variation.

6. In the final analysis, only nothing does not change absolutely, therefore all things change in a relative way.

In this last regard, we can say that both order and disorder become structured in complex ways and interact dialectically with one another at multiple levels of pattern integration. Much of this patterning is referred to as chaotic and it leads to the automatic formation of structures that exhibit emergent properties. We can say that physical reality, in total and in all its parts, is inherently dynamic as a universal structure--in both its sum total and in all its many parts. Change seems to be the only truly universal characteristic of metasystems science.

Metasystems concerns first the analysis of the processes of stratification of natural systems, and secondly, the total or holistic systems that emerge upon each level of natural stratification. The sense of metasystemic holism applies not only to systems in a total or universal way, but to the description of entire subsystems as these occur separately in space and time, in relation to a larger metasystemic context. Thus the geophysical study of the earth constitutes a metasystemic study of a complete subsystem within the framework of the solar system of which it is a part, and also of the larger universe. The earth is made up of many components and dynamic processes in variegated structures, and in a sense is a complex heterogeneous mixture of these components with a patterning that defies any neat or parsimonious formulation.

Metasystems necessarily concerns chaotic and undetermined systems as these occur naturally in reality. The effort of metasystems is to seek to understand the structural and functional aspects of entire systems, their life-cycles and alternative pathways of development, as well as the kinds of chance influences that affect the development and state-path trajectories of such systems. It is furthermore to excoriate the deeper structural levels of such systems to understand out its various components might cohere and be accounted for in the first place.

Within a metasystemic framework, we can refer to the entire or total universe as a comprehensive metasystem. Thus, we can also refer to the biospherical system of the earth, the only known place in the Universe where life exists, as constituting also a total comprehensive metasystem. Also, as well, we can say that the human species, somewhat remarkably, have also come to constitute on earth a comprehensive metasystem.

The analysis of stratification between levels implied in metasystems research entails in a sense both cross-disciplinary perspectives between many fields of study, as well as a metaphysical and metalogical comprehension of the basic patterns of relation that occur between all levels from a systems point of view. From the standpoint of naturally occurring metasystems, problem sets are created that cross-cut many disciplinary boundaries of expertise and scholarly interest.

It can be said that in general, most metasystems are mixed and heterogenous, and most of them exhibit a complexity of phenomenal patterning that resists simple or straight-forward descriptive explanation, regardless of their size or scale of organization. Metasystems in general tend to be historically unique though they share fundamental properties with all other possible systems.

Symbolically, a metasystem may be many things at the same time depending upon its use and context. I use the term to mean several things, and this symbolic and metaphoric flexibility of the term does not diminish its value as a critical concept in understanding the integration of knowledge in general.

First, a metasystem may mean a "system of a system" or what might be seen as a general model of which many real systems are approximations or variants. We see in science that we construct general theoretical models of natural systems, and then test out our models for goodness of fit either observationally or experimentally, revising our models when there appear to be systematic discrepancies with the evidence of natural phenomena. A theoretical model of a natural system, say an ecosystem, therefore represents a kind of "metasystem" of that natural system.

Secondly, a metasystem may be said to be "the total system" of a system within a system, either of a particular system or kind of system, or of any kind of system upon a particular level of analysis, or even of the "supersystem" by which were refer to the collection of all possibly occurring systems in reality. In this use, the metasystem is not so much a model or a representation of a real system, but the total reality of such a system in all its possible alternate states. We may see this difference phenomenologically if we understand that each particular instance of a system represents only one possible approximation of the total metasystem, which comprises all possible states, and would encompass as well the entire state-path trajectory of the system through time.

In between the first and the second meanings of the term metasystem, we may place the actual human knowledge of and experience with the on-going and instantaneous natural system, and between our theory, reality and the total compass of all things possible we have an on-going dialectic of question and answer, testing and observation, construction and revision.

This dialectic has been critical to the progressive development of scientific knowledge and awareness of reality. We use our metasystems models to continuously test and reevaluate our knowledge in the world. We do not in this endeavor seek to discover what the system is, as it presents itself to us in our observations, so much as what the system can be under a range of alternative possibilities. Metasystems science thus leads to a broader range of understanding about natural systems as our scientific knowledge grows, develops and differentiates with ever increasing degrees of refinement.

This dialectic must be construed as the basis for all scientific method in the sciences, and therefore constitutes the foundation for construing science within a systems framework.

We may say that by this means we are led to a third meaning of metasystem, and that consists of the comprehensive knowledge and models of the principles and properties that govern real and natural phenomena. This metasystem is the successful result of the dialectic that leads to the discovery of new information and insight about reality, and to the refinement and development of our models about reality as to render these models simultaneously both more useful and more accurately representative of reality.

Behind all of this rests certain presumptions that reality is organized by a basic set of principles that manifest themselves in terms of properties that we associate with reality in different ways. Reality in this sense is "self-governing" and "self-controlling" and "self-organizing" as systems, and though we must assume that the sense of order that is embedded in reality is ultimately random and stochastically based (i.e., it is an underdetermined metasystem), nevertheless its sense of order and organization can be said to be rule based and these rules are explicable and derivable in linguistic or mathematical terms suitable for scientific understanding and knowledge. We might call these rules of inference or of implicature concerning the self-organization of natural systems.

Rule based understanding, or formal theory, of natural systems is seldom if ever arrived at by a literal translation of systems theory to a particular field of inquiry. Rather, the systems models serve as general benchmarks and constraints to the development of such theory. We understand readily that all things in reality cohere into systems at multiple levels, but we understand as well that these things are not all the same nor do they form systems that are all describable or understandable in the same terms. Systems that are developed tend to be relativistically unique to the instantaneous configuration that is occurring, and because systems stratify at multiple levels simultaneously, it is understandable that the rules that are found to be applicable for understanding and explaining phenomena in one system or at one level, are not the same rules that are necessary for the theoretical description of other systems at other levels of integration.

Metasystems science centrally concerns the problem of the physical integration of reality. This problem is considered to be a larger set that contains the solipsistic problem of the symbolic integration of worldview. We may understand the relationship of the problem of physical integration to symbolic integration as the relationship between the physical relativity of knowledge and the anthropological relativity of this same knowledge. Integration stands as a key term in understanding the patterning of natural systems, and its problem evokes for us questions and mysteries that form the basis for scientific inquiry. The problem of integration can be seen as a consequence of the notion that all things in reality are related to everything else, however indirectly and remotely, and that reality is stratified upon multiple levels of relationship. How reality coheres to constitute at least a partially integrated metasystem remains therefore a fundamental problem of scientific inquiry.

qI have come to focus on an adaptational model of macro-evolution that is largely rendered from the study of ecology, particularly evolutionary ecology. Ecology involves mostly functional models with an implication of synchronic stability that can be referred to as dynamic equilibrium. Ecological models focus on issues of how organisms maintain equilibrium and "homeostatic" balance within relatively stable systems of interbiotic and environmental relations. Generally, ecology offers many coherent models describing various aspects of adaptation, but it lacks an overall theoretical synthesis that allows it to dovetail neatly with evolutionary theories based on natural selection. The explanation of change in such systems, especially of changes that affect the long-term structures of patterning, are less well understood and described.

In evolutionary theory, change is explained on several levels. First it is described in gross terms of mechanisms of selection that are assumed to somehow affect speciation, usually applied in the form of population genetics. Then it is also described in micro-evolutionary terms of the actual genetic mechanisms that are involved in genotypical modification of the individual that underlies evolutionary process. Also, in terms of the natural history record, change is described with a broader brush in terms of taxonomic trees and phylogenetic speciation. Selection models used in the former cases are usually explained in terms of the observable consequences upon the population, which are differential pathways of speciation, rather than in terms of the causal mechanisms that result in these alternative pathways. Linkages at the macro-evolutionary level that invite eco-systems concepts, and at the intermediate level between micro-evolutionary processes and populational dynamics, are not as well defined, nor are the concepts of selection and fitness as these apply on these various levels.

I attempt in these pages to address what I believe to be basic issues in the biological sciences that relate these problem sets to systems theory and to some general synthetic aspects of evolutionary theory. In particular, I've come to focus on what I believe to be basic theoretical implications about our understanding of the related concepts of "fitness" and "selection" that are held to drive the somewhat blind processes of evolutionary development.

I propose these as basically "heterodynamic" second-order feedback mechanisms that serve to maintain long-term adaptive stability of Mendelian populations, especially in the context of dynamic equilibrium of coevolving ecosystems within a global evolutionary framework.

In this theoretical construction, I propose that many basic models that are applicable to the general descriptive understanding of eco-systems can be applied in an analogical way to co-evolutionary systems. I also propose that, as an essentially historical system with a central theoretical motor, the theory of evolution is fundamentally different from synchronic and functionalistic models found in ecology. The net result is that the outcomes of adaptation in any given eco-system are not necessarily the same long-term outcomes for such a system that is evolving. Since, by definition all natural eco-systems are evolving, it follows that models adapted directly and in unrevised form from eco-systems theory do not fit evolutionary constructions in the same way. In general, they undergo evolutionary "transformations" that are important to comprehend.

In general, I will make the following basic observations from a natural systems standpoint:

Evolutionary systems are defined by basic geophysical parameters from which they arise.

Evolutionary systems tend towards increasing growth, differentiation and complexity.

Patterns of differentiation and complexity tend to be historically irreversible. (i.e., once one species divides sufficiently into two, the two cannot become one again, in general)

Patterns of growth, increasing differentiation and complexity result in cyclical patterns of periodic alteration and replacement once the basic limits of growth of the overall system have been exceeded.

I propose that there are some basic concepts found in ecology theory that has direct relevance to understanding evolutionary development. Thus we can posit a general equivalence between some concepts in ecological theory and their transformed constructions in evolutinary theory. Underlying this general equivalence is the presumption that the ecological principles that are found applicable in current eco-systems are in general relevant during most if not all periods of natural evolution, though in modified form especially for the earliest stages of the origin of proto-typical life forms.

Evolutionary succession: Evolving biotic communities undergo phases of succession in time that are comparable to what is understood in ecosystems. Thus we can postulate pioneer communities, and primary and secondary stages of succession, with possibly intermediate transitions, and the result of a climax stage. We can speculate that this process, which is cyclical, will repeat itself over and over again in different taxon cycles.

Evolutionary climax: Under stable conditions of optimal adaptational equilibrium, communities will achieve a biotic climax that represents the greatest degree of heterogeneity, differentiation, specialization, complexity and saturation of populations that are possible within the constraints of that system. Such climax communities may be extremely stable systems and relatively long lived.

Evolutionary Regimes: An evolutionary regime describes a stable climactic system in a biotic realm that is dominated by a distinct range of life forms that have a monopoly at the apex of the life pyramid. In such systems, biological constraints tend to outweigh geo-physical constraints, hence the structural patterning of such systems tends to be stable and difficult to alter, though saturation in the long term leads to environmental degradation.

Co-evolutionary systems: Co-evolutionary systems can be described as two or more biotic communities that are overlapping in their adaptational patterns or else contiguous with one another, but are evolving upon separate but interrelated pathways. They evolve interdependently, such that changes affecting one will lead to alterations in the other. Coevolution is a selectional concept of evolutionary ecology that describes the mutual evolution of two interdpendent species. Individuals and individual groups may pass between such systems, and occupy places in both, but the directional pathways each system achieves are basically separate. Two systems that are not directly connected may in fact be coevolving systems if resources they share come from a common pool or if some intermediary life-form influences both.

Evolutionary bio-schismogenesis: Borrowing Bateson's famous concept, I will speculate that co-evolutionary systems (and subsystems, i.e., species and groups) will tend towards a pattern of "bio-schismogenesis" under certain conditions.

I will state this model in simple terms that will be reiterated throughout this theoretical construction. For any hypothetical coevolutionary system, there are at least two subsystems "A" and "B" such that changes affecting subsystem "A" will result in changes affecting subsystem "B" which in turn affect changes in subsystem "A", such that we get a formula of the following general form:

where "X" is some composite value that can be expressed as (zB) and where (z) is some other independent composite value.

Evolutionary Inertia, Acceleration & Momentum: Biotic communities that cohere to constitute stable evolutionary conditions tend in the long run to acquire integrative structural properties that confers "resistance" to change to the overall system. Such systems gain acceleration along an evolutionary pathway and achieve directive selectional momentum along that pathway. This often leads in the long run to extinction.

Evolutionary Equilibrium: Evolutionary equilibrium can be defined as a condition of relative dynamic balance achieved within an evolving eco-system and between co-evolving ecosystems such that there is a temporary and extended condition of relative structural stability of relations within the system. Evolutionary systems and subsystems seek this condition of relative homeostatic equilibrium naturally, because as organized energy systems they are working systems.

Evolutionary Entropy: No evolving system or sub-system is perfectly adapted or achieves a state of perfect equilibrium. All systems, because they are changing, and because they are part of a larger system, must deal with a certain amount of evolutionary "noise" or entropy that can be equated with dysfunctional relations, disequilibrium, and instability in the system. Though evolutionary systems always work toward equilibrium, in the larger structure they always tend to decay toward entropy.

Entropy connects any ecosystem with a larger world, and defines that system as one that is fundamentally thermodynamic. In general, noise or entropy will be represented in the system as a measure of "uncertainty" (U) that affects every equation, such that (z) in the equation above is always constituted by some uncertainty factor (U) related to some other set of values (V), such that:

It can be seen that if the value of U increases, the net effect will be to decrease the value of z.

Evolutionary Collapse: All coevolutionary systems eventually collapse because of changing conditions in other systems beyond their control that result in undermining the bio-geo-physical platform upon which the stability of the system was based.

Because large co-evolutionary systems may come to incorporate multiple coevolving systems on a lower level, there is the possibility that evolutionary collapse can occur spontaneously within the system, from endogenous conditions rather than exogenously.

In such conditions, endogenous systems can act as a trigger mechanism for exogenous changes, and exogenous changes can serve as a trigger mechanism, or catalyst, for endogenous changes that might lead to evolutionary collapse.

I argue furthermore that evolutionary developments of the long run cannot be accounted for outside of a global evolutionary framework, as the presupposition of a global framework sets certain constraints and conditions upon all co-evolutionary communities.

1. At any one time the total biosphere is represented by a number of eco-systems that are composed of one or more biotic communities.

2. All biotic communities occupy one or more eco-systems and are evolving as systems. Biotic communities cohere into evolutionary eco-systems with distinct but relative and transitional boundaries.

3. All evolutionary communities are evolving at differential rates and along different adaptational pathways.

4. All biotic communities undergo evolutionary succession in several stages that result eventually in relatively stable regimes of evolutionary climax.

5. In terms of basic biological and physical constraints, all biotic communities are at least partially open communities. There can be no completely closed eco-system.

6. Because all biotic communities are partially open and evolving, all biotic communities are at least indirectly connected with all other biotic communities, and therefore all are coevolutionary at least in some minimal way.

6. Coevolutionary relationships can lead both to adaptational and counteradaptational selection patterns between different members of coevolving systems that is a function of both entropy and equilibrium.

7. Coevolutionary relationships tend in the long run to set up patterns of evolutionary development within all communities that result eventually in the anti-climactic destabilization of climax communities and in evolutionary collapse and mass extinction of certain communities, especially at the apex.

8. Evolutionary collapse is rarely complete, and may follow a cyclical pattern of endogenous/exogenous change mechanisms.

9. With evolutionary collapse, room is made within the "evolutionary pyramid" for replacement of many forms of life from peripheral biotic communities, which leads to a new cycle of evolutionary development.

It is my conclusion that this kind of cycle tends to repeat itself over and over again at multiple levels of analysis, from areas, to larger regions, to inter-regional biomes and continents, and to the entire planet earth.

This bespeaks a basic form of evolutionary relativity of all coevolving systems. This relativity can be interpreted in the following ways.

1. Species all have their own reproductive boundaries. Each species is by definition evolutionarily unique.

2. Species cohere in biotic communities to create distinctive eco-systems that represent co-evolutionary communities that are unique.

3. Each co-evolutionary community has its own structural integrity from the standpoint of its evolutionary pattern as an adaptational system.

4. Communities overlap and cohere into larger systems that develop their own coevolutionary integrity at multiple levels.

5. The relational complexes that apply to any one species, community or larger system at any one level, do not necessarily apply to other species, communities or systems in a different time or place.

Speciation cannot only be understood in the context of molecular biology or alternatively in the framework of population genetics. To focus exclusively on the aspects of genetic transmission is to mostly ignore the epiphenomenal and synergistic patterning that life-forms exhibit at all levels of the taxonomic tree of life, as well as how these patterns interact and influence the outcomes of evolutionary development.

To put this issue another way, we can look reductionistically at any individual organism in nature as a bundle of cells carrying a unique genetic template of design. We can look at a species as a bundle of such templates, attempting to beat the odds in the game of life to achieve some form of adaptive evolutionary success.

But to see the evolutionary game played in only this way is to miss the most important point. Each individual organism is more than the mere sum of its parts, and is certainly something more than just a vehicle of genetic transmission. Each organism represents a unique "solution" that evolutionary development has arrived at through a convoluted natural history of trial and error to the general problem of survival of life in complex environments.

Thus, it is clear to me as I pet my dog that a year and a half ago this dog was nothing but a fertilized egg cell undergoing rapid cellular differentiation in the womb of its mother. From that miraculous process developed legs, floppy ears, a white-tipped tail, and a somewhat gregarious, if annoying, personality. These things all combined together to form a total entity with its own functional needs for survival, and these needs are quite complex. Evolution arrived at that synergistic pattern in a fundamentally "blind" game of chance mutation, and it represents much more than just the epiphenomenal unfolding of ontogenetic cellular differentiation derived from the gamete.

In its feral state, that progenitor of my dog had a unique answer to the challenge of survival that life would have presented to it. That proto-dog did not itself construe this challenge in a genetic way, but the genetic outcome was this dog in my lap. It met the challenge by means of behavioral adaptation to changing circumstances, by means of instincts and complex response patterns that were part of its repertory for survival. Now how can the gene "know" all of that and transmit it?

The solution that evolutionary history has worked out for any organism is as a living system that has adaptive fitness in a larger biotic context that is circumscribed by the boundaries of the kin-group. Furthermore, it has worked out an even grander solution for the behavioral system of the species as a whole.

It must be recognized that when life begets itself anew with each successive generation, the primary challenge of the organism is not reproduction, but survival. If any organism cannot meet the basic challenge of survival, then the issue of reproduction becomes a moot point. The same holds true for the species as a whole.

A. Life, for all organisms and all species, is about surviving first, and reproducing secondly.

Thus, it is critical to separate the two imperatives in a kind of basic formula for all life that represents the challenge of survival. The first imperative for survival would be represented as an independent variable (I will arbitrarily call it the Biological Imperative "Bi"). The second imperative is the challenge of successful reproduction and is a dependent variable (what I will refer to as the "Evolutionary Imperative, or Ei") such that for any life form there is a hypothetical linear regression relationship:

"Bi" would represent any individual or number of related individuals, Variables (xy) would be the genetic totipotency of any individual (and by extension, the entire group) as represented by some cumulative value of "fitness".

"Z" would represent all those factors (uncertainty and selection) that would impinge upon the individual and the group to determine the net outcome

"Ei" would be the variable of the net outcome of relative reproductive success, which can be interpreted in this model, as successful intergenerational transmission of (xy).

While this formula is oversimplistic and would require a great deal of refinement if it were to work in any serious way, it does illustrate in a fundamental manner both the complexity and the challenge to understanding the basic processes underlying evolutionary history. It demonstrates clearly that the basic challenge of biological survival of life comes before and underlies the challenge of reproduction.

If we were to elaborate this basic formula, then we would see that (Z) is a complex set of possible formulas that are primarily the subject of this digression. "Bi" itself would represent also a set of factors that would comprise the minimal requirements that an organism would have in order to accomplish survival. Variables (xy) would itself be some composite value that we would have to derive for the genetic fitness of the individual or the group, and would involve the Hardy-Weinberg equations at the group level.

To proceed with our theory, I will state that there is an inherent paradox of this formula on several levels, that leads to a basic conundrum of inherent biological complexity in its self-organizational information patterns.

First, Ei above, if it leads to success, is manifest in the form of a replacement organism (or group) that must have values comparable to Bi(xy) in the formula that created it. In other words, there must be a measure of high positive correlational value between the two successive sets of values. Thus, a basic feedback loop is described, such that

Where the sign in the second case refers to an equivalence value of sufficiently high positive correlation.

If Ei leads to failure, then we get another set of values, such that there is either a low correlational value between the result and the initial values, or there is a negative correlational value, and thus:

There are basically two alternative outcomes that would be possible, and this would entail a kind of arbitrary decision having to be made on some level as to where the cut-off in alternative values should lie. To a great extent, statistical decision making of the null hypothesis would have to be employed. We get something like the following conditional syllogism:

There is another inherent paradox as well in this kind of formula, for it is clear that from an evolutionary standpoint, both the individual and the group of which that individual is a member, and ultimately, the entire species that individual represents, must be somehow taken into account.

Thus the formula must be modifed in three sets of related formulas that represent a kind of system such that modification of values in the first primary formula will result in modifications of the subseqent derivative formulas, such that:

2. Ei^{(subgroup x)} = Sum (Ei ^{(n of x)})/N, where "n" is each and every member of subgroup (x) and N is the total number of members of subgroup (x).

3. Ei^{(species w)} = Sum (Ei ^{(xn of w)})/N^x, where xⁿ is each and every subgroup of species (w) and N^x is the total number of subgroups of species (w).

We can thus imagine a three-step process that must be reiterated each time we calculate the evolutionary imperative for a species, and if we were to put this into a computer language, we can recommend a kind of recursion formula that is something like the following:

Then 3(recursion) = 3 N^w where N^wequals a given number of generations of species (w)

Now this kind of formulaic thinking is deceitful in two ways, and this is the third paradox.

First, it is deceitful because in its oversimplification of variables it disguises a great deal of complexity inherent to the fundamental variables of the formula, much of which must be unknown and probably essentially unknowable. Hence, there is much that would be arbitrary in its systematic application to real examples.

Secondly, it is deceitful because in its formulaic complexity it disguises a great deal of simplicity inherent to the fundamental relationships embodied by the formula, much of which must be unknown and probably essentially unknowable. Hence, there is much that would be overly reductionistic in its systematic application to real examples.

In other words, there is much that can be said to be mathematically spurious about this style of thinking about evolution. The purpose of this chapter is to work out a larger theoretical framework in which to frame these formulas and the paradoxes they represent. Hopefully, in the course of explication of the larger theoretical framework I will be able to offer basic formulas for some of the variables embodied in these formulas, as well as a means to simplify an understanding of some of the implicit relationships in the work. We need to get back on track therefore to our main line of discussion, and where we left off was the statement that in a general sense, the biologial imperative of survival of an organism, kin-group or species, underlies and comes before the evolutionary imperative of reproductive success.

But in the larger scheme, if we look at the formulas, it is obvious as well that the issues of survival and reproductive success are interdependent in the structural patterning of the long run, such that if survival does not lead to reproductive success, or else results in reproductive failure, then there will not be transgenerational transmission, and hence survival of the species will cease at the terminus of the life-cycle of the individual--i.e., the natural death that all organisms are prone to.

B. Basic issues of biological survival and reproductive success are irreducibly interdependent such that they constitute a natural system that circumscribes a critical and inherently complex range of relationships between the individual and the group of which it is a natural member.

The end game of this negative feedback cycle would be of course extinction, and extinction is well represented in the natural history record of evolution as one of the most frequent pathways taken by most species. The several million species estimated to exist today, are the product of evolution that has witnessed the extinction of many billions of other species. In fact, it is true that all species eventually become extinct, just as all organisms eventually die, and there is more than just analogy to this understanding of death and the inevitable extinction of species. In many respects a species is like a '"superorganic organism" or form of life that is represented by a system of adaptive patterning maintained by multiple related organisms. The extinction of species holds vital clues as to the fundamental mechanisms underlying speciation.

Just as there are some very long lived organisms, like Koi fish and turtles, and the rare case of a human being that lives to 120-odd years, there are some examples of long-lived species that appear to be remarkably unchanged for many millions of years. Why many species appear and disappear in the blink of an evolutionary epochal eye, and why a few appear to resist extinction time immemorial, is another set of phenomena the explanation of which is vital to the understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms governing speciation.

Another grand paradox embodied in this second digression about death and extinction, is that all extant species surviving today are by fact of their survival evolutionary success-stories. They are all ultimately descended from a very long line that goes indirectly back to the first proto-life forms 3 to 4 billion years ago, or at least to the Cambrian explosion. None of these lines have yet experienced extinction, though undoubtedly most of their cousins have, and though many will undoubtedly experience it in the next few decades. Life extant today represents evolutionary solutions that have been worked out by trial and error over countless generations over many millions of years of blind evolutionary exploration. These solutions were not arrived at over night, and could not have been forged in a day, or even in a week, or even in a single lifetime.

The upshot of this is that we are all, all of life, fundamentally related. We are all "cousins" however many generations removed. Thus on the most basic level we all have a fundamental sense of connection to life in its myriad forms, and we all have a fundamental sense of total relatedness in the game of life. The entire biosphere exists as an adaptational niche for all forms of life occuring within its fold. We share the same water in our bodies, and exchange the same energy sources and transpirate the same gases. No matter what extinctions and speciations may come and go, life as a whole must continue its imperative of survival. Otherwise, the absolutely final end-game will be the total extinction of all Life. I will call this the "doomsday prospect" and will refer to such a critical terminus event as the possibility of "Global Extinction."

C. Life forms a superorganic living system as a whole that has as its imperative long-term survival, and of which all species are representative members and play a part.

I will refer to the challenge of survival of all life, as a coherent and extremely integrated total system comprising all living forms, as the Life imperative. I will suggest that in the final analysis, the Life imperative underlies and informs the biological and evolutionary imperatives of all organisms and species in important and fundamental ways. It also informs our thinking about such systems. Life can afford to sacrifice many of its species and individuals in some grand game of Russian Roulette, but it cannot afford to sacrifice all of it.

The calculus of biological survival and evolutionary reproduction and speciation must be framed in the larger context of the challenge of life, as a total, global system, to continue to survive as such, to evolve and develop.

D. Life, as a global superorganic system, comprising all biological and evolutionary relationships of all species and organisms occuring within its global system, creates the total synergistic environmental context for understanding the dynamics of evolutionary process and the mechanics of speciation.

All events of speciation and processes of evolution must be understood in this global context. If we look at the complete biosphere, we can understand certain things immediately. The basic cycles upon which life depends are inscribed in the geo-physical patterning of the earth's surface, including the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, the hydrologic cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the various nutrient and mineral cycles found in the earth and seas. To a great extinct, the processes of life evolution over the past three or four billion years have fundamentally shaped the surface of the earth itself, such that it has implicated itself even in the gradualistic transformationalism of erosion and geological stratigraphy. It is possible that the geology of earth could have evolved in a complete different way if biological life as we know it had not implicated itself in the process early on. Examples of Venus and Mars bear this out.

E. Life as a global evolutionary system is intrinsic to the geo-physical system of the whole earth, and is part and parcel of this larger natural system such that alterations of this larger geo-physical system of the earth are primary exogenous factors of basic change in the biological evolutionary system of the biosphere.

To apply these last sets of general rules to our original formula, I will suggest that the global evolutionary system defines a holistic set of factors that are constantly operating in the background of an organism's and group's environment, and that serve critically to influence the outcomes for both the organism's (and groups) survival and reproduction. These are in essence complex "limiting" factors that provide feedback to the basic system. Thus, I will substitute for the variable (Z) in the basic formula given above for a variable I call "the set of limiting factors of the Life-imperative" and I will define this variable as such:

where "Li" can be described as the total system of the Life-imperative and (Lf) can be described as any limiting factor relevant to a given situation of an organisms, "n" is any number of such factors, and "U" is the residual average "uncertainty" factor arbitrarily associated to each of the basic limiting factors based on a set of decision rules, such that:

Where "u" is the uncertainty factor assigned to each limiting factor and "n" is the same as the number of such factors. Substituting, we get:

Before going back down to the basic issues of fitness and selection governing organismic survival, reproduction and speciation, I must emphasize one final point about understanding the dynamics of evolution and the mechanics of speciation. However mockingly formulaic we may want to render our scientific theories of these issues, it must be understood at the outset that evolution displays a natural record that is fundamentally historical in its patterning of complexity. Anyone who has examined and studied and researched historical subjects will understand immediately what is implied by this sense of history.

Historical information patterning demonstrates a tremendous inherent complexity of an epi-phenomenal landscape. Numerous instantiations in countless and countlessly complex contexts defy simple causal determinations and straight-forward cause-effect relationships. As the father of American anthropology would have said, the natural history of the evolutionary records is cosmographic in its descriptive empiricism. A boulder rolling down the side of a hill, perchance dislodged by lizard crawling within a crevice where the boulder attaches to the hill, rolls down the hill in an underdetermined manner. All that we know is that gravity demands its descent in willy-nilly fashion. Perhaps it will hit a smaller rock below, and its trajectory of descent shift ever so slightly that it impacts against a tree, tipping the tree and dislodging even more rocks. An avalanche insues that destroys an entire village at the base of a hill, where another instance of a dislodged rock of similar proportions might of found a state of stable rest upon a ledge below.

In terms of the natural history record of evolutionary process, and understanding the mechanical and dynamic aspects of evolutionary speciation, it must be said at the outset that any "rules" or principles derived from an analysis of its patterning must be at best "general" and descriptively paradigmatic in their application. They are like the Indirect approach in military strategy derived from an analysis of military history. They appear to be robust, to apply to most cases in a general sort of way, and yet they lack the "predictive" outcomes kind of validity we expect especially from our physical theories. In systems theory, the most we can come to expect are general ratios or formulas of "expectability" of different kinds of outcomes. The classic example in nature is the prediction of earthquakes. Scientists may expect with a very reasonable chance of success that an earthquake of major magnitude will strike in a given region, but they cannot predict exactly when or where such an event will actually take place. Thus, historical sciences lack the precision and degree of accuracy we come to expect of "pure science."

Historical sciences, like evolutionary theory, are therefore fundamentally "epiphenomenal" as systems theory. They exhibit patterns that cannot be reductionistically described in terms of physical causal relations alone.

As precise as we have become in our molecular analysis of organic life-forms, we are still no closer to a kind of theoretical understanding of Evolution that has the kind of predictive/descriptive precision found in the physical sciences. To rely upon such organic analysis alone is to miss the basic point of biological systems theory, and to be over-reductionistic in our explanatory models. We must yield certainty, precision, accuracy and prediction, for greater explanatory power in our general models.

In this way, going back to the formulas of evolution above, I will state that in general, it is appropriate to substitute some kinds of analytical processes found in the physical sciences for others. The result is that a sense of systematicity is retained in our ability to simplify our understanding of extremely complex phenomena, but at the sacrifice of the kind of "certainty" and hence "control" we would like our sciences to otherwise have.

In this regard, based on previous research in the human sciences, I will suggest the following kinds of substitutions that I will seek to apply to my models of biological and human systems theory. These are the following:

1. Where possible, ordinal values of measurement are substituted by "cardinal values" of "relative measurement" and if this is not possible then by "nonparametric" values of "comparative measurement" or "concrete description" (i.e., one rabbit, two rabbit, three rabbit, four...)

In such descriptive measurement, a direct "one-to-one" correspondence between the descriptive term and the thing(s) it describes can no longer be deduced, without disguising a great deal of instantive variability and non-categorical values.

In other words, one biological organism is not just like another similar biological organism, in the same way that we might say that one hydrogen proton is just like the next, and both have the same discrete values.

2. Where possible, inferred causal relationships are substituted by "causal correlations" as implied by the first regression formula above, and if this is not possible then by "correlational" values that assume some kind of indirect or hidden set of relationships.

3. Where possible, basic principles and laws found in the physical sciences, leading to mathematically precise and predictive theoretical formulas, that are judged essentially "correct" as finite puzzle-solutions to specific problems, are substituted by general descriptive rules and paradigmatic statements that are held to govern similar situations and hold true for most sets of circumstances. These general rules and paradigmatic statements do not lack uncertainty and are not unexceptionally applied to all similar situations in the exact same way.

4. The kind of rigorous and faultless logic that can be ascribed to cosmological and physical theories and statements, for instance in the statement of Equivalence, Symmetry and Conservation, does not apply in the same way in the historical sciences and is instead substituted by a kind of alternative and historical logic that is related closely to what is called practical logic and rhetoric. Underlying this logic is a looser kind of three-value non-dichotomization, and of necessity a kind of modus tollens rationalization of deriving an antecedent from a consequent. There is also implicit a form of deriving an "is" (or at least a "was" ) from an "ought." Informing this kind of logical rationalization is also a form of universal common sense that is based on a theory of natural sets, compared to classical exclusive categories. Thus, theoretical descriptions lack exactly the same kind of parsimony of explanation expected in the physical sciences. Instead, simplification of explanation rests on working and heuristic values of achieved realism in succinct descriptive (nonmathematical) explanation.

5. Finally, going back to the language of description, replacing implied one-to-one correspondences inferable from solid physical descriptions with a kind of one-to-one correlation expected and common place in historical descriptions, with all the implications of analogy and homology, metaphor and interpretivism, we are left with a basic challenge of comparing apples and oranges. This kind of challenge is obvious in evolutionary history, especially when it comes to alternative taxonomic reconstructions.

Where possible, I have sought to replace direct physical comparison and "identity" with a form of statistically based system of assumable "similarity," based on arbitrary but explicit decision rules, and if not possible, with a kind of metaphorical similitude or "likeness" that includes the possibility of statistically estimated "likelihood."

This leads into a form of statistical description and decision making that I call possibilistic statistics, and is beyond the purview of this text to explicate fully. I only broach the issue here with the point of emphasizing the ways that we can approach the problem of description and explanation in the historical sciences with at least one eye to being systematically self-explanatory, reliable and consistent.

What implications does this have for our formulations above? However refined I may make them, they are just that, generalistic formulations, and not "mathematical formulas" as are found in the physical sciences. If systematicity is introduced to the elaboration and applications of their variables and relationships, this systematicity comes from the five caveats about historical science listed above, and not from a hidden presumption of these being physical science-type equations.

The central objective of this work is to get at a working model, derived from basic general rules, that sufficiently describes evolutionary process as a form of natural biological information system governing biological and derivative relationships occuring in life.

From this standpoint, the model comes to rest on the explication of values of limiting factors that are held to bear critically upon any particular situation of an organism, determining that organism's outcome for both survival and reproduction. Before proceeding with this analysis, I want to further refine our understanding of a systemic model of the biosphere.

We need to approach such a model from a global perspective first, before narrowing down its principal variables.

3. "Biocosnic" matter, all the minerals and chemicals formed through the interaction of life with the inorganic, geo-physical earth.

In any given, delimited region of the earth, there is represented a total "biomass" of that region that is constituted by these three sets of factors. These biotic factors all feedback in some manner to the total geo-physical system of the earth. This biomass connects to all other regions of the earth at least through the principle geo-physical life cycles described earlier (oxygen, water, nitrogen, carbon, and other minerals). The principal energy base of most life (with a few very rare and unusual exceptions) is solar radiation. Biospheric (or Gross) Primary Production are values that determine the total biomass for a given region, based on the continuous rate of conversion of basic cyclic geo-phycial nutrients through solar energy by primary producers through either photosynthesis or chemosynthesis.

In an absolute sense, except for solar energy, which is relatively constant over the long term (variable only by weather and seasonal factors like time of year, cloud-cover, etc.) all the elements of this basic system are by definition limited and finite, though in actuality for any given area, most of the basic geo-physical elements are effectively unlimited. These elements can become limiting factors under special conditions--for instance, in long periods of draught the lack of water can critically affect the life-cycles of large regions. In general such limiting factors can play extremely important roles in determining the outcomes of evolution.

Thus, for any given ecosystem in the biosphere, there is a minimal set of basic limiting factors that are always operating in the background. These factors can be expressed as Fg (geophysical factors) and include the following:

It is evident that any one of these variables can be further analyzed into subvarieties, especially in the case of T. Many complex formulas and systems can be derived from these different systems, and each describe imortant cycles in the bio-geophysical matrix upon which all life depends. It is not within the scope of this present work to present a full account of all these factors.

For any given biomass within a delimited region, we can determine the total amount of each basic geophysical element constituted by the heterogeneous composition of that mass. All biomass of large scale is by definition heterogeneous in composition. The relative heterogeneity of any biomass can be determined by the percentage values of each species and their net by-products within the ecosystem constituted by the region, over a given period, including the total amounts of leftover biogenic material from earlier life-forms contributed to the region.

We can also determine the total energy amount represented by that biomass. We can determine as well the amount of geo-physical material required to maintain the total Life system of that region, a subset of this total biomass, for any given period of time. Similarly, we can derive estimates for its total potential and actual productivity over a given period of time.

It was an observation at least since Darwin that nature has tended to naturally divide itself up into more or less coherent regional communities. These are referred to as "biogeographical realms." The distributional patterning found between these units, and within these units, has constituted the foundation for evolutionary explanation from the beginning.

Another set of finite geo-physical limiting factors are the actual biotic "zones" that the region comprises. The earth has been divided into a number of basic biotic zones that define the extensive and intensive limits of biotic productivity of the earth. Many of these zones are variegated and overlapping, and have a great deal to do with elevation and relative longitude/lattitude as well as relationships to major geophysical structures such as mountain chains, bodies of water, valleys, river systems, deserts, islands, continents, etc. Rainfall and average annual or seasonal humidity are also very important limiting factors. These limiting factors can be described as mostly "set" or fixed factors, and cannot be easily altered. They are in the large mostly "density independent" factors.

The limits of these zones are represented vertically from about 10,000 feet in altitude to about 10,000 feet below sea level, and include the following from high to low where the underscore line represents sea level:

This list shows the greatest and most basic division of zones of Life, between terrestrial and aquatic regions. In general, the biomass of the terrestrial zones is mostly constituted by plants and animals. The biomass of the aquatic zones is constituted mainly by protoctista and animals.

Most of the biomass of the earth is concentrated in the intermediate zones (1 to -1) and this is the region where the greatest amount of primary production occurs. These intermediate zones are really only represented by about a total of 6 thousand feet of vertical elevation, and the very middle zone that has the greatest productivity is in fact constituted only by about 1-2 thousand feet of elevation. This means that a good proportion of the earth's surface is essentially unavailable to most forms of life, and most forms of life must be confined to the most intermediate and thinest regions of the biosphere of less than one thousand feet vertical elevation.

Zones are also represented horizontally in terms of geographical distributions across the earth's surface, and are known as biomes.

A principal underlying this distribution of geographically defined biotic zones is that an increase of latitude is proportionate (1˚ latitude (100 miles)/100 feet altitude) to an increase in altitude, such that for each 10 degrees increase in latitude, there is an equivalent rise in 1000 feet of elevation. With each increase in 1000 feet elevation, or in 10˚ latitude, there is a corresponding drop in 3.5˚ Fahrenheit in average mean temperature. Latitudinal zones are divided into the following:

To reiterate, in this distribution most terrestrial biomass of the biosphere, including the greatest biodiversity and heterogeneity of biomass, is confined to the region between 1 and 0. This biomass in total represents only less than 1/4 the earth's surface. More than 3/4's of the earth's surface is represented by marine and lacustrian biomass, and the main biomass of this sub-sea level "euphotic zone" extends generally less than a hundred feet below sea level, with the regions of greatest primary production occuring only in the upper 10 meters of this zone.

If the terrestrial zones presented above were plotted against two other axis represented mean annual biotemperature and mean annual humidity, then there is a clear breakdown of naturally occuring biomes on the terrestrial surface of the earth:

In consideration of the basic bio-geographical arrangement of the earth, it is important to speculate that there is a basic division between terrestrial and acquatic zones, and the dynamics of evolutionary process and ecosystems are somewhat different between these two zones. It is also worthwhile to consider that at any one particular epoch of evolutionary history, the earth naturally divides itself into broad bio-geophysical realms that are defined by land masses and intervening bodies of water. Within such realms, there are distinctive varieties of taxons that define unique systems.

I will put forward what I consider to be a third zone that is of great importance in evolutionary terms and that is unique from either the fully terrestrial or fully acquatic zones, and this is the "intermediary" zones that comprise mostly the coastal and littoral zones of the earth. This zone constitutes for the most part the intermediate regions of the earth between -100 feet below and 100 feet above sea level along the edges of most waterways. This region would incorporate most river systems as well as the coastal areas around most great lakes.

It is my contention that this zone is distinct from either terretrial or aquatic systems, because within its zone it includes many patterns and process that share both acquatic and terrestrial features.

Besides this intermediary zone, there are two other kinds of geophysical features that are important as distinct from an evolutionary standpoint. These are islands that are located within aquatic regions, and mountain chains that are in terretrial regions. Islands represent unique systems evolutionarily speaking, both because of their relative isolation, and because of the dominance of an oceanic climate over the island.

Mountain systems are unique also because they frequently have their own zonation patterns with distinctive vegetation levels, in part due to the atiabatic winds and weather conditions. They also often represent important geophysical barriers to migration that serve as mechanisms of relative isolation. In general, mountain systems can be distinguished between tropical mountains and temperate-zone mountains in terms of their vegetative zonation.

Based on this model, I will divide the total biosphere into three basic biozones: the terretrial, the intermediary, and the acquatic, with the notion that the intermediary zone is a transition zone of overlap between the other two. This is represented in the following diagram:

All life forms extant today have in a sense been "winners" in the grand lottery of life. They are all equally direct (and indirect) descendants of the very first forms of life that emerged from whatever primordial soup may have existed 3-4 billion years ago. For as many winners as we can count today (and no one knows the total), there have been many, many more losers lost in the embedded layers of earth's natural history. All these losers represent in a sense failed experiments at life. The game continues to be played, day in, day out. With each passing year new losers are being added to the lists of the dead and gone.

There is also a sense that it is highly unlikely, even impossible in fact, that there will ever be such a set of conditions that there will be a resurgence of an "age of the Dinosaurs." The adaptation of the dinosaurs was specific to an era, an epoch, of evolutionary development that was unlike any other in its patterning. In this grander sense, there is a form of biological relativity such that even if one could travel in time to earlier epochs one would not do well, and it would probably be unwise to plant life forms from one epoch into another.

Life of any one evolutionary epoch is totally interconnected and bound within the biological framework of that epoch, and can exist in no other framework in an unrevised way. All forms of life arrive together in the same epoch and in the same global system through long and convoluted pathways of evolutionary development.

Life in general is a semi-determined and underdetermined system, but it is not an entirely undeterministic system. Deterministic variables in any life system are complex and multiple, and often form long inscrutable chains, but they are critical nonetheless in the final outcomes.

To begin this digression, I will speculate on the following considerations. In any one regional area, or any one ecosystem of whatever dimensions, we can expect to find one or more forms of life from each of the major divisions of life. Thus we are likely to find operating in any regional biome of the biosphere, and in any ecosystem of such a biome, representatives of the following type of system as depicted in the functional discrimination table and the diagram below:

In this discrimination table, it can be seen that the primary consumer is Animalia, and the primary producer is Plantae, both of which are followed by Protoctista that exist in an intermediate category between the two. It can also be seen clearly that functionally Prokaryotes and Fungi are inclusive decomposers. We can outline the possible pathways between the five categories in the diagram below:

It is obvious that arrows connect the five major Kingdoms of life in both directions and create 16 different possible pathways of direct relationship between these categories. There are even more indirect pathways, if we consider all the possible chains of relationship that are possible within such a system. And if we see reiterative cycles, the pathways become virtually infinite.

Possible relationships embraced within this system are many. Plants frequently rely on different animals for the pollination and dispersal of their seeds. Many kinds of bacteria can only exist in the gut of some kinds of animals, and most animals rely on the presence of these bacteria to aid in processes of digestion. Plants indirectly rely on decomposition of both plant and animal detritus by fungi and bacteria to produce nutrients and minerals in the soil for their own nutrition. Some form of scavenging animals rely on bacteria in the decomposition process, and in turn help to facilitate this decomposition for bacteria. Animals rely either directly or indirectly on plants for their principle sources of food.

Now it can be said that some animals eat plants. We know that by functional classification systems, plants, some forms of bacteria and algae are all primary producers. Their production cycles tend to be based on photosynthesis.

Animals and protozoa are consumers, feeding either on primary producers or on other animals or protozoa or both.

We also know that some bacteria and fungi are decomposers, in that they absorb organic molecules reduced from dead organic tissue. Decomposers are important for returning the entire biomass of the system back to its original eutropic state, returning the basic components and nutrients back to the environmental cycles from which they were drawn.

We get the following kind of reorganization of the diagram above based upon functional relationships.

We get a complex eco-system at a very basic level that can be said to hold true for almost any subzone of any biome we designate. In other words, this kind of basic model of an eco-system must be accounted for in any natural life-context we can designate. Granted, isolated, relatively species-specific systems do occur, but these are the rare exceptions to the rule, whether we are talking about forests, deserts, plains, tundras, oceans or even human urban environments.

We can replace each of the very general categories with a very specific example from any biotic context, and we can get a clear idea of the basic system involved.

Most systems include multiple species in subsystems within each main category, and these subsystems also play an important and sometimes critical role to the successful articulation of the entire system.

If any one of these components is removed from the overall system, it is likely that the entire system will be fundamentally weakened to the point of collapse.

Any such system must exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium, such that if the biomass of any one category were altered, it would result in the alteration of the biomass of the other categories as well, reflecting something like the preceding chain.

In such a system, the total biomass capabilities are primarily determined by the primary producers. On land, the main bio-mass determinant is the Plantae Category, mostly from vascular plants. In Aquatic environments, the main bio-mass determinant is the Protoctista Category, including Algae and Protozoa.

These constitute the main biomass determinants of the basic system. All biomass of the other systems would be proportional to the total biomass available from the primary determinant. This means that the biomass limitations of the other systems are inherent.

Inter-category relations can be described as complementary and as at least indirectly eufunctional. Relations between different species occuring within each category tend to be defined in a competitive framework, as each species would represent a proportion of the total but ultimately limited biomass that would be available in that category. This entails that no single species or group of species can outgrow its own categorical biomass limits, without upsetting the equilibrium of the entire system. This is especially true for the middle consumer category, as the decomposers in general are naturally self-limiting systems. They tend to increase rapidly to the total available biomass, and then subsequently to die off as they decompose the available sources. The biomass limits the decomposers is always the total biomass of the entire system.

In the explication of this model, I propose the preceding paradigm of what I call the evolutionary pyramid and the evolutionary matrix. For any bounded biotic community in any area of place and period, we can state that there exists a hypothetical framework of relationships that can be depicted in the following ways. The first framework to consider from above involves the Kingdom Animalia primarily, and includes a ranking based on internal biomass of the individual, or its overall size.

Within any biotic community, there exists an evolutionary pyramid of a range of possible body sizes for animals, such that there can occur within the same community a number of different kinds of animals of different sizes that occupy separate niches within the eco-system. I will call these the distinct "morpho-trophic" levels of the system.

Such a pyramid is based on the total biomass and productivity of the eco-system, such that the larger the biomass, the broader the base of the pyramid and the higher the apex of the pyramid. Such conditions lead to greater differentiation of the pyramid, especially at the bottom levels.

In general, there is a competitive relationship between primary consumers and secondary consumers, such that the body size of the secondary consumer will be a dependent variable upon the body size of the primary consumer. This will lead to a feedback relationship, not unlike what was described above, such that there is bio-schismogenesis between primary and secondary consumers, resulting in the pyramid increasing in its apex to its limits.

The growth of the pyramid will result in increasing differentiation of all levels below the apex, such that there will tend to be multiple eco-niches at each level that are evolutionarily "open."

This basic model is fit within a larger model that I will call the evolutionary matrix of an ecosystem that describes relationships between primary producers, consumers and decomposers.

The number of possible morpho-trophic niches represented in this matrix are much greater than depicted, especially at the lower levels. It can be suggested that most life forms occur in the intermediate ranges and the largest biomass would be represented in these ranges.

We can speculate that for any one ecosystem, there will be a comparable type of matrix that is possible within the limits of evolutionary development, such that the different niches described within this system may be occupied by different species.

This type of matrix applies mostly to terrestrial ecosystems, and including, I believe, terrestrial based aquatic systems like swamps, lotic and lentic systems, as well as most coastal systems incorporating the littoral zones and even coral reefs. I make this assertion because I believe that there is a basic overlap between aquatic and terrestrial systems that is represented in the littoral zones of such systems especially. In fact, I believe these littoral zones between land and water constitute their own separate and unique biomes that are the most intermediate and perhaps the most important as far as understanding the substrate of the evolutionary process.

A similar matrix can be constructed for what I will call the littoral/intertidal biome, which I take to be unique and separate from either true acquatic systems or completely terrestrial systems.

All in all I will speculate that in each and every matrix, we may stipulate the existence of a "pyramid of life" comprising all five Kingdoms that hypothetically may exist in such a system, that is represented topographically by the following "pie of life" model. In this "pie of life" model the total biosphere can be represented, or any ecosystem occuring within the biosphere at any level, with the positions and relations of all species within the delimited system.

There is in such a system some potentiality apex that will be represented primarily by the intersections between primary producers and consumers, that represents the greatest organismic biomass that can be supported within such a system. Decomposer systems do not intersect with this apex, but remain concentrated in the peripheries. The periphery of this system represents both the entire earth, with all its resources and constraints of the system, as well as the total biomass and the smallest size that living systems may acquire.

From this model, we may speculate that overlapping subsystems may arise in any number of areas, as the result of the rising complexity of the overall system. The following model would represent in very simplified form the overlapping biotic subsystems at multiple levels.

Each subsystem would have some basic configuration of the pie of life, and would have its own potentiality apex in the overall configuration. The minimal requirements for this type of co-evolutionary model to work is the hypothesis of minimal boundaries occuring between the subsystems at different levels, in order that each subsystem would accomplish its own evolutionary integrity.

Boundaries between subsystems are geo-physical and biological. Such systems would be seen as "emergent" in the total pie of life, such that there is a sense of inter-systemic competition between evolutionary subsystems for basic resources. If we turn this topographical pie of life on its side, we get a representation of the potential pyramid of life that would reflect the overlay of the morpho-trophic grid on top of the pie of life.

We may go one step further in this kind of modeling, and project the entire pie of life into a long continuum. The result would be a cylindrical representation where the internal sub-system cones would represent evolutionary climaxes. At any one time, we could draw a cross-section of this cylinder to reveal the profile of subsystems in their various stages of cyclical development. If we took core samples through the side of the cylinder, we would get examples that resemble our fossil record.

The total biomass of the surface of the cylinder may graudually undulate or expand or shrink under generally changing earth conditions. If we could look within the cylinder along its main axis, we would see even more wild oscillations of subsystems that expand and shrink and then disappear to be replaced by another system.

I have thus come to formulate a basic model of evolution that I believe generally and faithfully represents the processes on multiple levels of analysis, as biotic communities that cohere into evolving eco-systems that exhibit some minimal threshold of integrity and stability as biological systems. It can be readily seen that if if we want to move beyond proximate historical mechanisms describing selection events in evolution, we are bound to get lost in the long chains of life that stretch around the world and through its natural history. The complexity that life presents to us at every level is astounding and sublime in the old fashioned sense that Darwin probably understood it. Darwin did not need "systems theory" to frame his famous theory, and it has withstood the test of time unlike any other scientific theory. The remaining chapters are thus devoted to the explication of the basic mechanisms that underlie this model, "from the ground up."

[1] Metasystems has become in my use of the term a general concept with several different meanings. I have worked with the concept for a couple of years now, coining the term as the result of theoretical development in natural systems theory, though the spirit and gestalt of the metasystems framework existed in a rudimentary manner before this time. The concept has subsequently developed in several directions and has thus come to take on a wide multiplicity of meanings that reflects its wide range of adaptability and functionality as a conceptual tool and framework for the comprehension of reality at multiple levels. It has therefore become something of a metaphorical catchall and general purpose term that can cover a wide range of specific meanings that are not necessarily or at least directly connected. I offer the term dialectically to provide a systematic means for stepping outside of the hermeneutic and possibly ideological circle of our own systems thinking and thereby to gain a greater sense of objectivity and reality in relation to the definition and articulation of systems.

[2] In theory a metasystem becomes therefore a comprehensive system of knowledge relating to the scientific understanding of reality, and it offers the potential for the articulation of this knowledge relating to complex problem sets at different levels in reality in what can be considered a coordinate and consistent manner. Work in metasystems theory and design has approached this ideal in a very approximate manner and yielded more or less a single comprehensive knowledge system with teleological design extensions. But this work is far from complete and even further from a grand sense of refinement, much less perfection.

[3] Metasystems science therefore is primarily about synthesis of the parts into the whole, and the understanding the patterning of the parts in their formation of the whole. It involves an attempt to understand not only the real state-path trajectory a system takes, but the likely and alternative state-path trajectory such a system may make, under varying circumstances. This is the basis for systematic observation and controlled experimentation of systems.

[4] The theory embraced by this approach is not without its methodological madness. I have sought a combined systems approach that includes information theory and communication theory with nonlinear dynamics, alternative control theory, theory of automata and alternative intelligence. I have sought thereby to define a legitimate role to the understanding of knowledge systems and knowledge systems theory, the role, function, status and structure of knowledge in our reality, and the possibility and probability of non-human forms of knowledge. Such an approach allows us the opportunity to both grapple with the terms of our arguments, however paradoxical they may seem, with one arm, while keeping the other free to stand and work beyond the terms and terminologies implied by an particular argument or problem set. The objective of such an approach ultimately is to integrate any such knowledge into a larger working system of understanding--a system that is ultimately comprehensive in a total, but relative, sense. Knowledge systems science has many interests and many applications, and knowledge theory leads to both experimental methodologies as well as to knowledge engineering applications. There are many pressing issues in our humanly ordered world that are well addressed through these kinds of applications, and particularly when it comes to the problems of the translation and reconstruction of our knowledge systems, and the use of such systems in the inculcation, integration and adaptation of human reality.

[5] But being relative, the concept of metasystems is not thereby jeopardized or rendered useless either as a system of knowledge organization or working articulation or as a framework of generalization and theoretization about reality. In fact, from a theoretical point, at all levels, there appears to exist what can be considered non-arbitrary and relatively absolute limits or factors that serve to constrain and induce a sense of order to all systems whether these are naturally occurring or are the cultural artifacts of human contrivance and invention. The speed of light and absolute zero appear as two such limits that seem to order at least most observable physical processes.

[6] The elaboration of knowledge has tended towards the descending order, without the same degree of ascending generalization that would be implicit to such systems. To some extent this generally lop-sided situation in the articulation of our knowledge systems can be related to the fact that general ordering and organization of systems tend to have political and structural overtones and implications that are controlled human interests groups. As a result, generalized metasystems tend to be overall fragmented and to reflect the fragmentation and hyper-compartmentalization of knowledge systems across the board. The general direction of development of metasystems are therefore in the hands of powerful interest groups that arbitrarily constrain this development in preferred ways.

	Prokaryote	Protoctista	Fungi	Plantae	Animalia
Prokaryote	decomp	decomp	decomp	decomp	decomp
Protoctista	producer	Produ/consu	-----------	consumer	producer
Fungi	decomp	decomp	decomp	decomp	decomp
Plantae	producer	------------------	producer	----------------	producer
Animalia	-----------------	consumer	consumer	consumer	consumer