by Hugh M. Lewis

Scientific knowledge is really systems based knowledge. The object of scientific research is the understanding of the principles underlying the manifest patterning of natural systems in all the multifaceted forms of their occurrence and the many different levels of their articulation. Science assumes a certain universal validity of its basic physical laws and principles that are considered inviolable under all conditions. The laws of Thermodynamics are a case in point, and the first to come to mind when we consider non-relative formulations in science. The systematic and quite predictable interactions of subatomic particles are another kind of phenomena that can be said to be universally applicable--we can assume that wherever we get to in the universe we will find the same kinds of basic interactions occurring between the same kinds of particles on the same levels of analysis.

The principle of change is one of the most fundamental, enduring and perplexing problems of our shared reality. We do not really have a comprehensive or universal theory of physical change. For instance, are the laws that we ascribe to the physical universe as we know it now, really immutable and universally applicable according to the cosmological principle, or is it possible that the universe may have evolved from one stage to another during which periods the laws that pertained and governed physical events were varied and relative to the frame in which they applied? We cannot at this stage of development of our knowledge answer these kinds of questions with any final authority or, especially, in any kind of manner that would be completely satisfactory for all areas of application of our knowledge in the world.

The principle of change itself begs us an implicit question of the very structure of reality. We know for instance, that all things change--all things are really events subject to change, whether these changes are partly predictable or completely random. We can legitimately ask the paradox: does change change, or does all change somehow remain the same?

If science is about systems, and systems are really about change, then we can conclude that science is primarily concerned with the principles and patterns of change in systems, and indeed, in all fields of science, this is the case. Static, non-dynamic systems that do not change are of no real scientific interest, because they cannot be studied in any valid methodological manner.

Before proceeding, I will attempt to briefly define a nosological framework for classifying systems in a general manner. Real systems are those which can be said to exist in some form in objective reality (i.e., they have some form of physical manifestation). Natural systems may be said to be a subset of real systems that includes those systems that are partly determined by structural relations between variables that are intrinsic to and emergent from the system. Artificial systems are those human-made systems that are partially the result of human arbitration and construction, and hence may be said to be partly determined by human defined relations between variables. We may distinguish real systems from ideal systems, or abstract systems in the pure sense, that may be said to exist in principle but do not necessarily take any real or corporeal form or manifestation, except in terms of symbolic representation that is humanly mediated. We may go on to distinguish other kinds of systems, i.e.: possible systems; alternative systems; applied systems; etc. 

General Systems Proposition 1: All science is primarily concerned with the understanding of the pattern of change in dynamic systems.

• Corollary 1a: All real systems are complex in terms of their part-whole relations.

• Corollary 1b: All real systems are dynamic in a non-linear and partly determined manner.

I will now make a statement that I cannot really prove or qualify, but which I feel may be intuitively and probably true.

General Systems Proposition 2: There exist a set of basic principles of systems design, applicable universally to all naturally occurring systems, relatively to the context of their occurrence, that may be said to be universal (i.e., immutable) for all possible occurrences of real systems.

We may not fully or explicitly comprehend these principles of systems design, but may theoretically hypothesize their universal applicability to all real systems.

General Systems Proposition 3: All real systems are working systems--whatever their level of articulation or configuration or state-path trajectory, they obey the principles of thermodynamics (and, in the larger meta-systemic context, gravitational dynamics) in some basic manner.

Finally, I will conclude this brief with one more proposition that derives proposition 4 above and from the consideration that all real systems that we know of or imagine are found embedded in a larger context of physical reality, and hence, in exogenous relationship with other systems. We may explain this physically in terms of both thermodynamics and gravitational dynamics in stating that we can imagine no physically real system that exists in a total or complete vacuum in perfect isolation from a larger system in which it is embedded. Therefore:

General Systems Proposition 4: All real systems are bound by and delimited by a meta-systems context in relation to other systems that encompass and compose any particular system in time and space.

• Corollary 4a: All real systems are finite in space and time and are relative to the meta-systems context in which they immediate occur in a phenomenological sense.

• Corollary 4b: All real systems demonstrate some form of dynamic boundary maintaining mechanism in relation to the larger meta-systemic context.

• Corollary 4c: All real systems demonstrate a sense of holism in terms of emergent or synergistic properties that are the consequence of the boundary maintaining mechanism relative.

• Corollary 4d: All real systems are subject to a unique state-path trajectory or life-cycle as a consequence of exogenous change patterns arising from its meta-systemic context (i.e., external meta-systemic factors are primary determinants or causal of dynamics in the change patterning of real systems, while internal intra-systemic factors are secondary determinants or consequents of dynamics of change in this patterning)

Finally, we may speculate that the total meta-systemic context, i.e., in a physical objective sense, the total universe, is infinite and unbounded in some basic sense, as we cannot imagine the total universe as a finite system within a vacuum, or that may not be a part of some larger meta-systemic context.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I