by Hugh M. Lewis

Human systems may be clearly stratified at two levels, and though this has been the cause of some consternation for those seeking paradigmatic unification of the human & social sciences, it must be understood that these two levels interact in a fully complementary manner. We may observe human systems upon two levels primarily--the individual human organism within its variable adaptive contexts, and the social group also within its variable adaptive contexts. Both levels exhibit patterns & emergent properties that are unique to that level. In fact, the same characterization in general may be made for any biological system upon a species level, distinguishing between the individual organism on one level and the social group context upon another level. Human systems take on another set of emergent properties, that are said to be symbolic and cultural.

A great deal of controversy and somewhat misplaced theoretical development has been based upon the confusion of human biological and symbolic-cultural levels & properties, with the erroneous attribution of characteristics of human behavior or social organization to the former level without taking into account the causal or determinative factors of symbolic-cultural integration of human reality. Such conceptual systems that confuse levels and causes of properties in human system are frequently proffered and passed along in the name of science, though they largely represent pseudo-scientific and amateurish attempts at human systems theorization.

Human systems therefore cannot be completely or sufficiently described in terms that are primarily appropriate for the description of biological systems. It is apparent that human systems must be described on several levels simultaneously, and the interactions and patterning of relations between these various levels must also be described in a systematic and coherent way. It is not surprising that human systems remain extremely complex and intransigent of general description and it is not surprising therefore that no genuinely comprehensive theory of human systems has yet been developed or accepted paradigmatically as true and characteristic of all such systems.

What are some of the unique characteristics of human systems that are not found in the same form or to the same degree in any other species of living animal? 

The following sets of attributes are appropriate to the minimal definition of human systems:

1. All human systems are or become culturally patterned--there is no coherent corporate human grouping that cannot be characterized in terms of its cultural patterning. Cultural patterning is universal to all corporate human groupings.

2. The cultural patterning of human groupings depend primarily upon the horizontal social transmission of information within cultural constrained and constructed contexts. The horizontal transmission of cultural information from person to person, and group to group, is tied to the environmental conditioning, learning capacity and behavioral response patterning of the individual human being, and by extension, to the entire social grouping.

3. The transmission of cultural information is primarily mediated in terms of human language, and human language is unique in its symbolic structure and informational carrying capacity to the human species.

4. Human reality is linguistically & behaviorally mediated, and symbolically structured through the cognitive filters of human experience and understanding. Human behavior is by definition symbolic in structure and constructive/destructive or adaptive/maladaptive in its behavioral outcomes. We speak of the symbolic transformation of human experience and of human cultural reality in a shared sense, such that human beings are capable of behaving in ways not strictly dictated by biological constraints, and possibly in ways that deliberately violate such constraints. Human beings can be motivated to violent action or even systematic, deliberate self-destruction, through symbolic-behavioral manipulation, even if it is ultimately or in any larger rational sense contradictory to the primary dictates of adaptive survival.

5. Human social groupings upon a corporate level develop institutionalized structures of relation and behavior, symbolically & behaviorally reinforced, that transcend the capacity of the individual to control or determine, and hence can as a system acquire a life of their own, with their own state-path trajectory, irrespective of the variable interests or orientations of the individuals composing such a system.

6. In any such human social system, human role-players and actors will emerge who will carry through the structural relationship of the larger system to its logical and extreme symbolic conclusions, no matter what the contradictions to lived behavioral experience or the final destructiveness or mal-adaptiveness of the outcomes. These role-players can be considered "captives" of the cultural system of which they are a part.

7. Cultural systems become paradigmatic in the sense that they tend to describe a symbolic worldview that is as complete and comprehensive as possible and as satisfactory to the average culture bearer as necessarily to maintaining equilibrium and consonance of values upon an individual level. Such symbolic systems tend also to be "transparent" and therefore objectively invisible as such to the culture bearer because they are self-reinforcing of both received collective belief and behavior, and the symbolic facets of cultural reality, especially the everyday, habitual facets, become "naturalized" as if a necessary part of biological adaptation and survival.

8. Human beings organize their experience upon a symbolic level, and this provides them an arbitrary means of controlling and manipulating their behavior in relation to their environment in what can be described as self-fulfilling ways. Human beings have no choice really but to organize their experience in these ways, and this experience in general serves their interests in achieving basic adaptive and reproductive success, albeit in terms defined primarily by their socio-cultural milieu.

The organization of human experience upon symbolic levels of articulation are referable to as the anthropological construction of human reality, and it is the systematic structure of these processes, evident across individuals and across various cultural boundaries, that is amenable to empirical scientific investigation and theorization in terms of general human systems theory. Symbolic framing has been offered as the general and primary scientific methodology for such empirical, comparative examination of human systems upon both individual and collective levels of human behavioral response, with the operational definition of culture being in terms of the shared patterns of response by people of similar cultural configurations.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I