by Hugh M. Lewis

General Systems theory is a "theory of everything" and hence, more often than not, a theory about nothing in particular at all. The basis for the presupposition of "systems" is that there is an inherent structural patterning, or sense of order, that underlies all phenomenal events in reality. This patterning arises largely through recurrence and reiteration of event structures and the association of contexts together with such events. 

To ask what exactly this sense of order is, beyond our own imaginations of reality, is for some to seek the "ghost in the machine" and it is this "ghost in the machine" that has resulted in the strong dichotomization of formal Western worldview into the mind/body dilemma. The claim I put forth herein is simply that this ghost of the machine, this set of emergent properties, this synergy, is merely the result of the organization of the parts of a system into a functioning, operational whole. 

There really is no need for a mind/body dichotomization of reality--the emergent phenomena of "ghost in the machine" is simply the natural consequence of the organization and operation of the machine itself. Reality is organized, and it is because of this organization that we are able to infer "Systems" at work. Natural reality may be said to be ultimately self-organized, and this sense of self-organization has largely arisen as the result of stochastic process, as the result of the play of chance factors. But we are not thereby claiming that reality is unorganized, or undetermined--that variables do not arise in the course of development of systems at multiple levels that play a greater than chance influence in the conditioning and consequence of systems. 

It can clearly be said that this organization of reality is not a-priori to the phenomenal development and epiphenomenal action of reality itself. There was no master plan at work, no grand design, no sense of fate or predetermination, no fundamental creation, no universal miracle. It does stand as a paradox that there are abstract systems, namely in pure mathematics, that stand formally as the result of logic and basic forms and their relationship and which can be claimed to be completely independent of any demonstration in reality.

We have a preconceived bias about Systems and about organization that it is somehow synchronic and unchanging through time, that time does not really apply to perfect models of systems. The fact remains though that observation of periodic phenomena and the recurrence of similar events under similar circumstances, and the observation as well of the natural growth cycles and of change in the world, are the basis in the first place of our systems models of reality, and that all organizational relationships pertaining to systems occur as relations through time more than as instantaneous connections across synchronic space. About the only place I have hypothesized the existence of instantaneous synchronicity is upon a level so fundamental to physical reality that we have no hope of ever perceiving it directly.

Time is the measure of change that we apply to systems, and time and change are the way we really come to know systems as organized structures that recur or persist over time. The problem with including the variable of time to our models of systems is that it renders these models no longer simple in a linear sense, but very complex in a non-linear manner, and it has been the requirement and the paucity of accounting for systems in this diachronic and dynamic modality that has been the greatest stumbling block to the development of systems based approaches. Of course, our formulations become infinitely complicated when we attempt to take the temporal dimensions of change into account. Hypothetically we hold the variable of time in check in our models, so that we can imagine thereby a simplified "abstract" system in which time only recurs, but is without unpredictable change. Things happen in such static models in a cyclical manner, over and over again. Lower the heat in the system, the thermostat kicks on the heater, until the temperature is restored to the level at which the thermostat is set, and then the heater is turned off again. Heat slowly escapes again from the system, starting the cycle all over again.

To recap the main theme of this brief essay, we may claim that "systems" exist logically as the result of observation and interaction with phenomena in the world that give rise to a sense of order that is patterned and to some extent predictable due to the organization of the components into a coherent, interacting, functional whole. One of the primary conditions of such "systems" are that the component parts making up the organizational whole are constrained in their behavior by their proximal and functional interrelationships with other parts, and the parts work together, in serial coordination, to achieve organizational integration of the whole. Often this condition of internal constraint is effected by the functional specialization of components of systems, which specialization may be marked by the presence of special functional organs or subcomponents not shared by other parts of the system serving other functions.

It is obvious that equilibrium is achieved as a consequence of the operational and developmental integration of the components of the system into an organized whole--it cannot be done otherwise. Equilibrium in developmental systems may be said to be inherently dynamic and complex. Such integrative equilibrium can only be achieved by the mutual adaptation of the parts and the subordination of the function of the part to the interests of maintaining relationships to the whole (i.e., the collectivity of parts.)

The disturbance of equilibrium or its eventual eclipse in the degradative phase of systemic demise, represents a break down of the internal operational coherence of the parts, a relative "disintegration" and loss of internal functional integrity of the system as a whole. Often, exogenous factors initiate or play a part in the disturbance of equilibrium, or disequilibrium, of a system, due to the adverse effects these factors may have upon the component parts and their functional roles in the system. Clearly, a wildly contagious and mortal disease causes great disequilibrium in normal social systems because it invariably results in destruction or disrepair of people, the component parts of society.

We see organization therefore as being a relative thing that is primarily measured internally in terms of the component parts of a whole, and in terms of the relational interactions maintained between these parts, the complexity of which can become astronomical in number in even comparative simple system composed of only a few parts. We know for instance that organization of systems is never complete nor perfect, and that all systems function below their theoretical level of optimum or maximum performance. We also know that both external and internal conditions tend to fluctuate both periodically and non-periodically, within a normal range of thresholds that are themselves complexly defined by multiple interacting variables.

"Information" therefore that we get about systems, about the predictive patterning of systems, is a measure of the relative integration achieved by the organization of a system. All systems therefore always have both: 1 operational efficiencies measurable ultimately in terms of the thermodynamic transfer of heat energy within the system, by whatever transport vehicles and boundary maintenance mechanisms; 2. informational efficiencies measurable ultimately in terms of the signal coherence of the periodic patterning of transmission, which are the consequence and primary expression of the fundamental sense of order and functional/structural organization of the system as a whole.

Informational and operational (working) efficiencies are complementary and intrinsic to any real system, of whatever design and upon whatever level of analysis we are talking about. These complementary factors in a sense become the basis for the "mind/body" dichotomy of Western metaphysics, but because they are two sides of one coin, the question of their relationships and difference really boils down to the false question of the Hen or the Egg. Informational and operational efficiencies are relative measures of the achieved integration of a system that occurs in equilibrium, and these measures are ultimately of the same set of phenomena, namely the organized periodic event processes that recur within a bounded frame of time and space. The first informational efficiency is a measure of the pattern or coherence of the achieved integration of an organized system, while the operational efficiency is a measure of the achieved relational consistency of such a system in terms of the actual work and energy budget required to maintain such a system at its current state of operation.

Such measures at any single point are in fact still photographs of a moving scene, discontinuous and ultimately arbitrary points upon a moving continuous surface. They may be good for the immediate and for the short term, but they become soon useless for determination of the dynamic patterns of the longer term. 

We refer to the modal configuration or normal organizational pattern of a system in the course of its developmental trajectory as the normal, stable modality of its achieved state of equilibrium during its intermediate and longest period of development. This usually provides us the comparative standard by which all similar kinds of systems become contrasted and fit into a larger frame of reference. It is this modal configuration of systems that we use in order to simplify our understanding of such systems. For instance, an infant version of an animal is obviously not the same as a normal adult version--we use the later when we wish to typologize and compare the kind of animal to other kinds or individuals of a kind to one another. 

When we view systems in the larger frame, we view them always as developmental entities with a beginning, a middle of some length, and an eventual ending. We call real systems "temporary" because we know they will not last forever, but will eventually come to an end. The remarkable thing about reality, which should be a fundamental clue about the basic structure of the universe, is that though all the real systems we may see or know of that compose this reality are temporary, and eventually come to an end, the fundamental elements or components that constitute these systems do not end, but are merely broken down, disintegrated, and merged into the background context, to be reorganized later into some other systemic configuration. Whether we agree with a big bang or not, we may assert correctly that the energy used in composition of the earth's elements was energy that existed in some form long before the elements of the earth first originated, and, by my understanding of how elements are formed in the furnaces of stars, the earth's elements must originally have been a part of some star long before they became the earth.

The form of organization of the energy may have changed dramatically from the earliest times to the present, even the form of energy itself may have been altered somehow, in some way, but the energy itself must have existed from the beginning, in equal measure to what it is now. In all transactions, regardless of the efficiency of the system, there is always a complete equality of sign in energy budgets between total inputs and total outputs. Another way of saying this is that energy cannot be made or destroyed, only transformed from one pattern into another. This is the only known form of real transaction we know of that, from an abstract point of view, is totally, completely, undeniably equal in sign. And this aspect of our shared reality, of the physical universe appears to be permanent, unchanging, eternal, and possibly infinite.

Energy is always organized in one form or another, and it is the deterministic (non-chaotic) organization of energy that begets, epiphenomenally, informational patterning. If it isn't organized, it is simply random and therefore informationless. Informational patterning is always imperfect (noisy) because the energy transactions upon which it is based are always thermodynamically constrained--limited systems always leak or lose energy to the larger environment in which they occur. In fact this loss is a measure and demonstration of their connection and relationship to a larger meta-state system that is defined by their environmental context. Just as we cannot imagine a completely energiless state (Absolute Zero) we can also not complete step beyond the purview of an environmental context in which such states are defined energetically. Chaos may be defined as the tendency of all systems to elaborate themselves towards increasing complex entropy (entropy in the small, rather than entropy at large) We may call it constrained entropy that becomes expressed through the long-term parallax of determination. 

We may conclude therefore on the basis of the application of General System principles, that the original state of the universe was one of maximum disorder or a state of total undifferentiated chaos of energy without pattern in an open system. Pattern arose gradually in the discontinuous and differentiated transformations of energy in an open system. This patterning was stochastically self-organizing, but eventually achieved relatively stable and permanent configurations (i.e. gravitational/electro-dynamic radiation, proton-nucleonic matter) that "stock piled" over time in exponentially increasing amounts. We may conclude therefore that the universe is probably a totally open system, and therefore infinite, and that the energy budget of the total universe, as an open meta-state system, is unlimited. It is interesting to ask if energy, in its most basic form, whatever its present or contemporary states of transformation, remains essentially unchanged, and in a sense, beyond change in spite of its transformations.

All transformations of energy are organized (contain information) as systems based upon the emergent properties associated with such transformations leading to relatively stable states or configurations of pattern. A model of general systems, as a theory of everything, is therefore a model of the transformation of basic energy states in open systems, through the action of some kind of operating constraint (non-linear control), into a temporary state of patterned, recurrent organization that takes on some relatively stable form. Information is inherently suggested by its patterning, and this information is the basis of our perceptual awareness, our world knowledge and ultimately our scientific understanding, of such systems. This is true of all real systems, regardless of their kind or level of analysis. 

Abstract systems, by the same standard, are simply non-real systems that contain information, but lack any real energy transformations that are associated only with real systems. We depend upon abstract systems, formulated through restrictive symbological relationships, to take into account real systems. We sometimes confuse abstract systems with real systems, reifying them in the process (noumenal realities) and then construing them as ideologically more real than real systems, because, lacking any energy-based, entropic constraints, they are informationally "perfect."

To summarize, therefore, a real system (a system of physical reality) is any delimited, organized state of energy that takes on characteristic, predictable forms over time and that carries information intrinsic to its patterned form, within a larger meta-systemic context of environmental relationship that is ultimately open and that interacts with the specific system via certain boundary-mediating mechanisms that are part of the system. All real systems are subject to the constraints of space-time and change, and have an expectable growth trajectory with a definable beginning, a middle and an end. All real systems are measureable in terms of their relative entropy and the relative noise associated with their instantaneous operation--i.e., all real systems are mechanically subject to the laws of thermodynamics.

We may conclude, as a spin-off, that physical reality is ultimately open and infinite, and that information is the natural consequence of the organization and transformation of energy in recurrent forms. Any model of the universe, for instance, which contradicts this basic conclusion may be said to be fundamentally in error and in need of basic theoretical revisioning and rethinking.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I