by Hugh M. Lewis

The worldview of general systems, of considering the whole as more than the sum of its parts, stands as an alternative symbolic frame of reference, or "paradigm," when contrasted to the worldview of conventional sciences based primarily upon the method of analytical reductionism, or of breaking the whole down into its parts. The latter view of the world is the received worldview of the conventional sciences, while the former worldview based upon the holism of systems is largely a naturalistic worldview that has been otherwise unelaborated in any methodological manner except from the standpoint of naturalistic observation and description of phenomenal event patterning.

To extend the general systems worldview to reality and to all of nature is to see the entire universe as a single integrated system or "meta-system" that contains simultaneously many subsystems at many levels of articulation. It is as well to apprehend the role of the human perceiver and thinker in this worldview, as observer and as an intrinsic subsystem of the larger scheme of things. It leaves us something of a paradox to try to unravel for how can we presume as scientists to be able to stand apart from something of which we are part, and which engulfs us like small fish in a vast sea. Any kind of panoptic perspective we may adopt must ultimately be a pretend point of view, an imagination or at best a speculation, unless we can adopt means of triangulating viewpoints in such a way as to better objectify our apprehension of reality. If perchance we could create telescopes on very distant planets in our galaxy and have instantaneous communications between them, we might be able to generate a map of the universe that depends upon more than the one point perspective of the earth traveling around the sun. It is apparent that multiple points of view, that can take into account the error of parallax, provides us with a means for resolving the paradox of being engulfed in the system of which we are a part, though not in any final or complete way.

The worldview of general systems is inherent I believe to a perceptual construction of the world--a naturalistic flow of phenomenal imagery that we associate with things in our range of experience. This flow of phenomenological experience is epiphenomenal to the actual structure and emergence of systems. Our conceptual understanding of reality was largely constrained by presuppositions about systems that we attribute to our experience of reality, and based upon the connections we make between events in the world. Lacking the deductive inferences forthcoming from a scientific worldview, this apprehension of the natural world and of reality was given largely to speculation and to analogical relationships.

The first view of the whole refers to a method of examining a living organism in terms of its life-processes and behaviors--the second view refers to the attempt to dissect and analyze a dead organism by means of its component tissues. This example is apropos because the process of life that was once thought the product of divine miracle, or the possession of supernatural spirit, or the "ghost in the machine" is very different from the processes of death which is most associated with decay. The vital process of life still cannot be easily explained except in gross terms of the natural integrative functioning of the many parts--in the biological sense the cells and tissues that constitute an organism. The phenomenon of life is an example of systems par excellence, and the properties of life that we attribute to living systems is the best and easiest example we can find of the emergence of organismic properties as the result of the integration of component subsystems (cells, tissues, organs & organic systems). 

An animal, for instance, a dog, functions as a whole unit--only when we find disease or distress to a part of a dog do we find the whole organism affected. We find a system in normal equilibrium when its parts are functioning in an expected manner. If we go to dissect the dog, we discover an amazing order of tissues arranged in distinct and vital subsystems-skeletal tissue, muscle tissues, veins, nerves, digestive organs, respiratory organs, sensory organs, etc. All collective organized together create the dog--the dog could not exist in a whole or completely effective manner if it were lacking or deficient in any one of its vital subsystems. But neither could any of the tissues found within the dog long exist outside of the protective environment and supportive context of the internal organs of the dog as a whole. We see therefore a deep structural and functional interdependence between the parts and the whole.

General Systems can be summarized simply as a theory of everything. This is especially the case when we realize that all natural or possible phenomena are organized in terms that are amenable to systems-type explanation. As such, superficially, its conceptual belt is so loose and open it becomes quickly a theory about nothing in particular. This is soon apparent when dealing with very large or very complex kinds of problem sets, where even mathematical formulations breakdown in the explosion of near-infinite possibilities of outcome that would all require resolution before the problem can be considered solved in some optimal manner. 

Our conventional scientific worldview approaches the problem of complexity, or rather complex problems, by a standard analytical method of attempting to break things down into as many parts as possible, and trying then to understand the role and behavior of each part as constitutive of the whole. This was Galileo's "resolutive" method. Indeed, as a general methodology, it is a necessary approach to especially large and complex problem solving and has lead to great success in many fields of science.

If the aim of systems modeling is accurate and reliable representation of the minutiae of phenomenal detail in the unfolding epigenetic patterning of reality, then its effectiveness quickly breaks down under the weight of the information explosion of the search-solution space made possible by any given problem set. Computer simulation in modeling, with the rise of faster and larger super-computers, has to some extent permitted us much greater resolution of pattern and detail than previously ever thought possible, especially to certain kinds of problem sets such as turbulence or wave development on planar surfaces, weather patterning or the simulation of the behavior of subatomic structures.  

But what has been lost sight of in the attention to detail is the picture of the larger whole, and the role that the part plays, not only in relation to the whole, but as a consequence of being a part of the whole. Aristotle's famous dictum that the "whole is more than the sum of its parts" was as a potential theoretical framework never developed in light of the analytical progress of our sciences. What has never been paid attention to is the possibility that the parts are largely defined in terms their behavior, their range of instantaneous states, and their outcomes of trajectory, as a consequence of the integrative and directive relation of the whole, or the larger sense of order or structure by all the parts working together as if a single coherent whole. We may thus assert that the whole is not just more than the sum of its parts, but the part is the product of the whole. Another way of saying this is to assert that the part serves the whole.

This concept carries systems theory to a new level of phenomenal experience because it deals directly with the notion of emergence in nature, or of the realization of emergent properties that we associate with the integration of systems as "wholes" rather than as parts, and that is often referred to as synergy or superorganic effects. Furthermore, the principle of natural emergence is also associated with the stratification of natural reality, that is so like "Russian nesting dolls" or rather like the layers of the skin of an onion. This is the basis of the relativity of general systems, because the properties evident upon each distinctively emergent level of stratification of reality are generally unique to that particular level of occurrence, and that level alone, and in a particular sense are unique to that particular instance or context of occurrence at that given level, and to no other.

A worldview of general systems, I believe, is part and parcel of the electronic information revolution that the world has been undergoing in the late 20th Century. We have for the first time a global view of the order of the world as a single system, less or more, with many parts and subcomponents.

We recognize that in all real systems, whether natural or artificial, integration is never complete nor completely determined in the sense of being completely predictable, without some degree of randomness and uncertainty involved in the outcomes of interactions and relationships between parts. The global system of life, of humankind, of the world, is included in this dictum of inherent indeterminancy of all systems. Thus a worldview of general systems is based upon an understanding that all working systems are inherently underdetermined and ultimately unpredictable in outcomes. We see this in our chronic inability to accurately forecast future events, no matter how good our understanding of past or present event structures. The inherent uncertainty of future outcomes puts a limit to the efforts of our conventional sciences that seek perfect predictability of deterministic systems, and thus sets a general systems worldview at fundamental odds with a conventional scientific worldview where the goals of prediction and control are the main framework of all methodologies.

Another discrepancy between a systems based perspective of the world and a conventional scientific worldview that is based upon analytical reductionism is that while the latter tends to seek directive, causal relationships in rules of order governing event structures in the world, the former tends to construe complementary relationships between alternative frames of reference governing event structures, with alternative outcomes being possible based upon the point of view adopted. The latter viewpoint is known as deterministic, the former, relativistic and by and large these are mutually incompatible points of view in a comprehensive sense except in as much as the former tends to be broader and encompassing of the latter perspective. Within complementary event structures we can find instances of causal relationships, though these causal relationships become construed in a cyclical rather than in a strictly linear manner.

Relativistic frames of reference therefore are inherent to an alternative general systems worldview, and in fact are part and parcel of such a worldview. There has been a general reluctance and even rejection of relativistic viewpoints by the sciences, even though the physical sciences have largely embraced such perspectives in a fundamental and general way very successfully. Relativistic points of view are seen as being antagonistic to deterministic models that have as their basis the isolation of linear cause-effect relationships even if such models tend to grossly oversimplify the complexities of physical realities involved.

There is a difference as well in terms of the valuation and prioritization of forms of knowledge and especially of quantifiable measures which tend to be the manifest expression of physical realities, but less and less central to the theoretical or methodological articulation of the biological or human sciences. Within a conventional scientific worldview based upon the discovery of deterministic order in the world, there has been a prioritization and valuation of mathematical forms of knowledge over almost any other form of verbal expression. Because only physical quantities are truly amenable to such forms of mathematical description and explanation, those fields of sciences dealing with natural phenomena that tended to defy sufficient mathematical description and explanation tended to be underrated and devalued as truly "scientific" and thus within these areas there has been an emphasis upon the use of mathematical formulas and models even if such use may have been in fact only superficial or even inappropriate to the problem under consideration. This has led to a distinguishing between "hard" and "soft" approaches in science, with the connotation that only the former approaches were truly scientific while the latter could only approximate a "scientistic" or "science-like" approach.

Thus, a general systems worldview entails a broadened view of science that is capable of encompassing in a sufficient and non-exclusive manner a broad range of knowledge that falls within the purview of natural systems description and explanation, but that are notably lacking in the kind of systematic mathematical formulations that so characterize work at the physical level. This is especially so at the level of human systems, but applies in a general way as well to all biological systems as well. We find forms of applied mathematics in the biological sciences that permit usually partial modeling of relationships or processes that are known to occur, but which usually admit of only approximate and inexact solutions with rather wide margins for error. Attempts to apply mathematical formula to the description of such system at any level representative of the true complexity of such systems quickly breaks down in an information explosion. Only supercomputer simulations have the hope of partially resolving this state of affairs in the analysis and description of biological systems in favor of applied mathematical models.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I