Yes, see Nikhlas Luhmann.

Systems are coherencies of (self-recreating in the case of autopoietic systems) differences between themselves and an environment. (I can't remember what Luhmann's formulation is, but that springs to mind).

Luhmann draws heavily on Humberto Maturana and George Spencer-Brown.

I am curious, does philosophy have a definition of a system, or even better, a general systems theory? The word is bandied about ad nauseam and I am not convinced that it is always correctly used! — Pieter R van Wyk

Yes. The modern notion of Systems*1 sometimes gets mired in details. And Bertalanffy's definition was too technical for the layman. 19th century Reductive Science was unable to see the forest for the trees. Which is what made 20th century Quantum Physics so woo-woo mysterious. The forest is not a physical thing (objective), but a metaphysical collective concept (subjective).

So, I prefer to substitute another unfamiliar term, "Holism"*2, which may be somewhat easier to grasp. The 21st century science of Complexity*3 is the study of systems that are typically too complicated for reductionist methods to deal with. A key concept is Emergence, which sounds like magic for reductionist thinkers. For example, the sub-atomic phenomenon, that physicists call "Entanglement", is simply a Holistic effect of two or more particles that act like a single unit.

If you prefer Social Systems applications, such as Luhmann, one example is when individual people "aggregate" into a holistic crowd or mob or gang, and a novel collective behavior emerges :
"The wisdom of crowds theory suggests that the collective opinion of a group of people is often more accurate than the opinion of any single individual, even an expert. This idea, popularized by James Surowiecki's book of the same name, relies on the idea that diverse perspectives and independent judgments can lead to better outcomes when aggregated". :smile:


*1. General Systems Theory (GST) is an interdisciplinary framework, pioneered by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, that views phenomena as interconnected whole systems rather than isolated components, aiming to identify fundamental principles applicable across natural and social sciences. Key concepts include open systems, which interact with their environment; emergent properties, characteristics unique to the whole system; and feedback loops, where output informs new input, leading to self-regulation or homeostasis. GST offers a holistic perspective, contrasting with traditional reductionist approaches, and has influenced fields from biology to management science.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=general+systems+theory%3F+

*2. Holism ; Holon :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part — A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems. In the Enformationism worldview, our space-time physical reality is a holon that is a component of the enfernal G*D-Mind.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
Note --- Oooops. That last line may sound too woo for you.

*3. "Santa Fe systems theory" refers to the field of complexity science and complex adaptive systems (CAS), which is heavily associated with the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico. SFI, founded in 1984, is a leading nonprofit research center dedicated to understanding how complex systems—such as biological, social, economic, and technological systems—evolve and adapt. These systems are characterized by interconnected elements, emergent behavior, and the capacity to learn from experience, rather than simple linear cause-and-effect.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=santa+fe+systems+theory

Without looking it up on Google, here’s my definition off the top of my head

A system is a group of elements or components that interact to behave in a characteristic way.

We say that we have a system when there are at least two irreducible entities, each entity has at least a set of properties.

Systems are coherencies of (self-recreating in the case of autopoietic systems) differences between themselves and an environment. — Baden

:up: Works for me.

Systems are coherencies of differences between themselves and an environment. — Baden

A rock is coherent and there is a difference between a rock and a hard place.

For what its worth I'll toss in a definition of a mathematical system:

"A mathematical system consists of:

A set or universe, U.

Definitions: sentences that explain the meaning of concepts that relate to the universe. Any term used in describing the universe itself is said to be undefined. All definitions are given in terms of these undefined concepts of objects.
Axioms: assertions about the properties of the universe and rules for creating and justifying more assertions. These rules always include the system of logic that we have developed to this point.
Theorems: the additional assertions mentioned above."

Al Doerr & Ken Levasseur
University of Massachusetts Lowell

A system is formed of its interactions rather than constructed from its components. So a general systems theory is successful to the degree it takes that idea to its metaphysical extreme.

Aristotle’s four causes were the first clear expression of this logic and so he is still the patron saint of systems scientists and hierarchy theorists. German philosophy was systems oriented through the 18th and 19th C and that tradition showed through in modern sciences like biology, ecology and sociology.

CS Peirce was the preeminent philosopher in modern times, framing the most abstracted and logical systems-based metaphysics, but the importance of that only started to be recognised quite recently.

Von Bertalanffy was of course a key figure in the 1920s. And then hierarchy theory followed on from his general systems theory in the 1980s, with Stanley Salthe publishing two key books.

So there is a long history of this approach to causal modelling. But it has always existed on the margins as its focus is on complexity rather than simplicity. A systems thinker would say that Nature is irreducibly complex and so nothing about it can be properly understood until this is understood. But reductionism thrives as folk get quick payback from treating Nature as a mechanical construction.

Reductionism believes there is only simplicity and its complication. Anglo philosophy holds to that belief with ontological fervour.

Holism makes the point that simplicity arises out of hierarchical order. To use the jargon, a system is a hierarchy of top-down constraints that shape the bottom-up degrees of freedom. And the purpose of the constraints is indeed to shape those dof - make then the simple atomistic components that they are.

If you want to build a sturdy shelter in the least effort way, you are guided to the idea of setting up a brick manufacturing business.

If you want to mobilise your empire against another, you want a structure of discipline that turns a tribal mob into hierarchy of fighting units that behave in simple and predictable fashion.

You can build more complex structures to the degree you can mass produce more simplified materials.

So simplicity and complexity go hand in hand as the causal feedback loop that is the basis of the systems view. Material simplicity and telic complexity co-arise in Nature.

Reductionism is then the attempt to cut that loop and just view Nature as a store of materials with varying degrees of complication. Mass-produced components sitting about waiting for someone with a plan and a reason to use them.

So you can see that this divergence of metaphysics ain’t value neutral. Ecologists can’t help but be systems thinkers. The rest of society earns its coin by becoming skilled at feeding Nature into the maw of its excellently engineered machinery. :grin:

A rock is coherent and there is a difference between a rock and a hard place. — Banno

Yes, but I am not that difference unless I am the system. The system itself is the observer here.

The definition needs fleshing out for sure. There are also the ideas of open/closed, boundary and complexity. In one sense, a system represents a different category of reality from its environment.

Just to add to that: We can only establish a difference by being some form of coherence that is different from the difference. Coherency in this observationally displaced sense is self-reflexive and is inhered in systems that self establish themselves as distinct from an environment. This (self-reflexive) coherency is more than a difference that makes a difference (it's not just information), it's a difference that grounds the possibility of difference from its perspective, allowing for information There's a kind of semantic bootstrapping here. Significance arising from an originary signification---this vs that, which is grounded in something that is not this or that but that can establish the distinction, i.e. a coherence. Without a corresponding coherence (observer/observation) there is naught. All this is to say there's a sense of "coherence" that inheres self-reflexivity that a difference like the difference between a rock and a tree does not in itself establish, i.e. a coherence that implicates a system as observer.

So if you posit a difference, you must posit a system that establishes difference through a coherency. But a rock cannot itself establish difference in relation to itself. From that point of view, it's not a coherency. The coherency can only reside in that case in the observer who states that the rock is a coherency. Short version, if coherency is understood self reflexively as semantically grounding then the definition above suffices. Coherency inheres the idea of a process of observation. If it's understood just as coherency as difference (something that can coherently be distinguished from something else), it doesn't.

This is a great question. I really enjoy these kinds of questions because at first glance they seem self-evident, but for me, answering them is always a challenge. So, I'll try to formulate what I think about this without using any reference books, based on my own reflections.
I don't even know where to begin. The first thing that comes to mind is that a system is a construct of cognitive activity. Can we assert that something is a system on its own? For example, an organism is certainly a system, but is it truly independent, not being part of an even larger system? This leads to the conclusion that a system, in our everyday understanding, is a conscious construct. Outside of our cognition, there can't be a separate system apart from other systems.
Second, a system is a collection of elements that interact with each other dynamically, forming something new with properties that no single element possesses individually. For example, a broom is a system of twigs. Separately, they aren't a broom, but only together can they sweep. This characteristic has two conditions:
The combination of different things.
Mandatory dynamic interaction with each other.
A third characteristic I would name is a certain stability over time. If a collection of something instantly falls apart into separate parts, it's hard to call it a system.
The final definition I've arrived at is:
A system is a cognitive construct consisting of individual elements that interact dynamically, forming new properties in relation to the individual elements and maintaining stability over time.

A system is formed of its interactions rather than constructed from its components. — apokrisis

Well said!. That description implies that a System is not a material thing but an energetic process (individual change or group interaction). For example, the human Mind is not the physical brain (neural correlates of consciousness), but one of many command & control Functions of brain processes. The human brain is 2% of body weight, but 20% of energy usage. What is that energy doing besides processing information?

I just Googled the words "interaction" & "information"*1 and got the wiki definition below. That description sounds very similar to Holism*2*3. But I'm surprised that the scientific & philosophical concept of Holism (Systems, Complexity, Entanglement, etc) is not very familiar to posters on this forum. It provides a simple framework for understanding such conundrums as the "hard problem of consciousness", which is one of the most frequently posted topics on the forum.

For Physics, Interaction is an exchange of Energy (causation). And for Philosophy, Interaction is an exchange of Information (meaning). Yet, the relationship of Information & Energy*4 is not well known. { https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page30.html } Perhaps the best way to define a holistic System is to describe it in terms of Synergy*5 : energy + together. :smile:



*1. Interaction information expresses the amount of information (redundancy or synergy) bound up in a set of variables, beyond that which is present in any subset ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_information

*2. Holism is the interdisciplinary concept that systems possess emergent properties as wholes, which are greater than the sum of their individual parts, making them irreducible to their components. This approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of parts within a system and their collective function, contrasting with reductionism, which seeks to understand a whole by analyzing its smallest constituent elements. Holism is applied in various fields, including health, psychology, social sciences, and physics, to understand how bodies, minds, societies, or physical phenomena operate as integrated units
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=holism+information

*3. Holism :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

*4. Energy & Information :
Energy is the physical capacity to do work, while information is the description or organization of matter and energy. Although distinct, energy and information are deeply interconnected: information requires energy to be processed and organized, and changes in information are accompanied by changes in energy, such as the heat generated when bits are erased in a computer, following Landauer's principle. This relationship is evident in biological systems, where information controls energy flow, and in physics, where the manipulation of information can be converted into energy and vice versa.

*5. *4. Synergy :
the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
___ Oxford Dictionary

There's a kind of semantic bootstrapping here. — Baden

This is all very interesting, thanks.

There's an issue I don't think has been raised yet: "system" often carries a connotation of rigidity, though we can certainly point to systems that are flexible and adaptive. My point is, it's always a question with systems.

In your semantic terms, I was thinking about the use of the phrase "the System" (capital S) in the 60s and 70s counterculture. The imputation was of a particular kind of rigidity, a rigidity that extended to this semantic level. Thus the System was thought to see everything in terms of wealth and power and status, and to be blind to, say, art and feeling, on the one hand, or injustice and suffering, on the other. There were categories of no use to the System, and so it did not recognize them at all. You get the idea.

(( The classic Monty Python version of this is the banker who struggles to make sense of the concept of charity. ))

You'd find another popular usage in gambling: some guys go to the track and pick horses for dumb reasons, or whimsical reasons, or based on their "feeling" the horse will win; other guys are said to "have a system." The system guy may generally do better, but in trying to treat the problem of prediction rigidly, he will never get a big payout on a long shot.

And of course this is the thing about systems in interaction with their environments: they attempt to achieve predictability (and thus a kind of rigidity) not just by refusing to see what doesn't fit (as the counterculture would have it) but by making their environment more predictable, by eliminating what doesn't fit. Adaptation is required for the system to persist, but it can adapt itself to its environment or its environment to itself.

I guess I could also say, people do seem to nurse worries that the sort of rigidity some systems are prone to is perhaps even irrational, in addition to whatever other fault one might find.

does philosophy have a definition of a system — Pieter R van Wyk

Established, mainstream philosophy? Most assuredly. Such definitions can be found strewn about this discussion.

All philosophies in general? Some do, some don't.

A system, in general, is two or more entities or "points" that operate in recognition of one another with the intent to perform or otherwise reach an expected outcome or function. They can be simple, take "the buddy system" or "the honor system." They can be complex such as the human immune system or what is commonly referred to as "The System" (ruling power or influence in governed society).

What they all have in common is they either handle or process expected (and often unexpected) input, influence, material, or resource and attempt to output a certain desired outcome, result, or product.

There are also inherently or perhaps intentionally chaotic systems that are somewhat of the opposite affect. Say psychological warfare, for example. The goal of that system is disruption, chaos, confusion, and decrease in moral. It doesn't matter how it's done, yet it still demands or at least attempts to reach a single final outcome or product, that product being chaos and disarray. Not unlike a heckler at a political rally or entertainment venue.

We often don't even know we're part, or otherwise performing the functions perfectly, of many systems. A system can be physical, such as your bodily functions. A system can also be ideological, such as systems of belief, including karma or divine punishment. A great much can be said in further detail to expand the definition or idea of a system or systems, but what's important before attempting to do so is to establish what the "bare bones" definition or criteria for such are, which I believe I have done for you quite nicely.

This leads to the conclusion that a system, in our everyday understanding, is a conscious construct. Outside of our cognition, there can't be a separate system apart from other systems. — Astorre

Does this mean that Systems only exist for rational observers? Does a bear have a "conscious construct" of the forest he defecates in, or just the sensory observation of tree A, B, C, etc? Much of the disputation on this forum is about the reality & importance of individual things (Matter) versus our human tendency & ability to categorize real things into ideal aggregations & hierarchies & ecosystems (Mind). :smile:

This leads to the conclusion that a system, in our everyday understanding, is a conscious construct. — Astorre

That could be an implication. But the evidence is against it.

A system’s metaphysics is usually understood as being about closure under causality. A system in some fundamental way makes itself. It bootstraps into being.

Systems science is thus usually founded on thermodynamics. And more particularly, on dissipative structure theory or self-organising systems. So it is a physicalist story. But very different from reductionism in believing that a natural system is also telic in some basic sense. It is driven to structured order by the “need” to run down a gradient. It emerges as there is a Darwinian selection just to be optimised for entropy production.

Then within this strictly physical story we must account for life and mind. And that is easy enough to do if we see organisms as the further evolution of entropic structure. Life and mind are what come next in the hierarchy of nature when systems that can model their worlds - using codes: genes, neurons, words, numbers - arise and become “selfish” feeders on this world.

So life and mind are no longer blindly entropic. As systems, they represent a real shift. A causal novelty. And yet they are still completely part of this world with its over-riding and causally closed thermalising imperative. Life and mind are more of the same in the most general physical sense of being evolved dissipative structure. They just happen to spend energy on modelling their environments so as better exploit them.

For Physics, Interaction is an exchange of Energy (causation). And for Philosophy, Interaction is an exchange of Information (meaning). Yet, the relationship of Information & Energy*4 is not well known. { https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page30.html } Perhaps the best way to define a holistic System is to describe it in terms of Synergy*5 : energy + together. — Gnomon

My problem with this is it lapses into substance ontology which is reductionist. An ontology of stuffs rather than of processes or the holism of systems of self-stabilising interaction.

So I would point out that energy and information do indeed speak to the connection between the entropic world and the informational creatures who construct models of the world so as to entropify it more cleverly. There is something both essentially the same but also absolutely different when we apply a systems metaphysics lens to Nature. Our theories have to handle that.

But to approach this from the process philosophy point of view, it is important to capture the architectural holism of the causality. A system has a distinct causal structure which is the hierarchy. And a hierarchy is the self-balancing and emergent mix which is top-down constraints shaping bottom-up degrees of freedom.

If we are using physical jargon, then entropy-information is a good dichotomy but also locks us into an ontology of substance rather than process. Whereas constraints-degrees of freedom is how physics speaks about an ontology of hierarchically-organised causality. It speaks directly to the architectural principles that apply to thermalising systems of any kind - physical or biological.

I don't know how a bear understands a forest. Honestly.



Yes, it is a cognitive construct. I justify this by the fact that a system in the world itself can be both an ordered set of everything and a chaotic one. We have no evidence for either the first or the second approach. But inside our minds (or inside the systems we create, like AI), a system can be identified and exist in an organized manner. Thus, the word system itself acquires meaning exclusively in the context of epistemology

A third characteristic I would name is a certain stability over time. If a collection of something instantly falls apart into separate parts, it's hard to call it a system — Astorre

This is key. And it goes deeper as a system in fact exists on the edge of chaos, as they say. It feeds off instability. It is the stability that arises in organising instability into a predictable flow.

So water is an eroding source of instability. And a landscape shapes it into an efficient collection of drainage channels. A system is the global pattern of constraints that emerge to create an efficient collection of local actions. Nature is visibly hierarchical when you can see it organised into a fractal pattern of dissipation.

So a system is all about stabilising instability. And it indeed has to optimise this as a dynamical balance. It needs to exist in a persistent state of criticality, or at the hinge point between building itself up and falling apart.

Any organism is exactly this. A balance of its growth and decay. Every molecule of the body is being turned over. This is how the body as a system can stay optimised within its own ever changing environment.

There's an issue I don't think has been raised yet: "system" often carries a connotation of rigidity, though we can certainly point to systems that are flexible and adaptive. My point is, it's always a question with systems.

In your semantic terms, I was thinking about the use of the phrase "the System" (capital S) in the 60s and 70s counterculture. The imputation was of a particular kind of rigidity, a rigidity that extended to this semantic level. Thus the System was thought to see everything in terms of wealth and power and status, and to be blind to, say, art and feeling, on the one hand, or injustice and suffering, on the other. There were categories of no use to the System, and so it did not recognize them at all. You get the idea. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, in some ways a system might also be seen as a heuristic, a simplifying device that helps us navigate complexity, but it can just as readily function as a framework, or even as a symbolic stand-in for realities that remain intricate and puzzling.

Many systems seem designed to make complex things easier to organize and understand, to bring coherence to chaos, but in doing so they may leave out important elements or even distort the picture. As a general rule I avoid people who believe they have created system for understanding reality - it's usually the hallmark of a crank and monomaniac.

I too see room for improvement. What is a "thing", in the simplest most "thingly" sense. Something that is noticeably or observably distinct from its environment. Take a bucket of paint. The smallest subatomic molecule of paint is in fact a unique object from the next molecule right next to it. It has its own "system". per se. that, while exactly identical to the molecule next to it, is theoretically possible to either be or become different, whether or not by external influence. That said, no human person will be able to distinguish the two and see anything more than "some paint in a bucket."

Reminds me of a different topic of "what is art" which led to one opinion of "that which is distinct from its environment and has been made so intentionally." Ooh, that's good. I feel that to be of great relevance. Not to toot my own horn here but, this is great stuff. Hope y'all are paying attention.

Edit: For context, the quoted user made a (now strangely deleted) post commenting on his (hard to say) either disapproval or genuine sense that the definition can be improved as far as the 2nd post on this topic by @Baden

I justify this by the fact that a system in the world itself can be both an ordered set of everything and a chaotic one. We have no evidence for either the first or the second approach. — Astorre

A reductionist might say - on epistemic principle - that there is this either/or choice. But the holist would expect order and chaos to compose a … system. :smile:

They would be the co-arising limits on Nature. The complementary qualities that form the dynamical balance.

And physics has the evidence. Nature is ruled by criticality. It is neither completely ordered nor completely chaotic but the balance of the two - as is recognised when we talk about a Universe closed under thermodynamics.

There's an issue I don't think has been raised yet: "system" often carries a connotation of rigidity, though we can certainly point to systems that are flexible and adaptive. My point is, it's always a question with systems. — Srap Tasmaner

This is a misunderstanding that arises if you view Nature as a piece of reductionist machinery. But not if you view it as an organic whole. Systems science starts with the very idea of a universalised dynamical balance. Rigidity and plasticity are always relative as the balance that a system must seek to optimise if it is to persist, and thus even exist.

To be able to adapt is to be able to live in a changing world by also changing. And this is then achieved by becoming a hierarchy of rates of change. You need the global laws that change only slowly and the local degrees of freedom that can be spent very fast.

You need the banking system as your global context and the small change in your pocket to make quick and simple choices. Rigidity and plasticity are just the same thing - a dynamical balance - viewed over vastly different organisational scales.

The money flows through the economic system over all scales. All that changes in a well-plumbed system is scale of that flow.

It then becomes a separate debate whether a society has an optimised hierarchy of capital flow. Is it too rigid or too fluid on any particularly level, or even as a general whole.

I really like your approach to this issue. It is multifaceted and takes into account different views.

However, the thing is that if you imagine yourself as a dictionary compiler: you need to somehow accurately, briefly and meaningfully state the definition of the concept so that anyone who reads it can grasp the meaning, and the definition itself at least does not contradict itself. It is for these reasons that I gave my own definition.

In this case, if we take a chaotic world order as a starting point, then "system" = A, if we take an ordered world order as a starting point, then "system" = B

But what if the system is just our idea? Chaos or order - our idea? Maybe everything is somehow different? Science is built on the basic assumptions that the universe has some kind of order. But this is precisely an assumption, which is confirmed by the existence of paradoxes.

So in this case, all our judgments are nothing more than opinions.

a misunderstanding that arises if you view Nature as a piece of reductionist machinery — apokrisis

Which would itself be an example of rigidity, right? This style of thinking, I mean, not just the mechanical approach itself, but *sticking to it* when you ought not.

This is the sort of thing that starts to look irrational over the sort of time scales we deal with. "Drill, baby drill!" Sure, our global civilization will adapt eventually, but there's a lot of friction thrown up against adapting, which I would be inclined to describe as rigidity.

Rigidity is one of the hallmarks of neurosis, or what @180 Proof always calls "maladaptive" behavior. (Freud insisted that neurotic behavior has a purpose, it meets a need, just badly.) @Tom Storm, I would guess you have considerable experience with that sort of rigidity.

Yep. The difficulty is that it is all but impossible to recognise one's own rigidities - one needs others to point them out.

Burns's Theorem.

But if you zoom out and take a community as your system, instead of an individual, you would hope to see an increase in adaptability (and capacity for self-correction).

Except when you don't (because communities can be rigid and self-reinforcing too). So you need to zoom out more.

But at some point the zooming out needed exceeds the human perspective. The trick might be to avoid getting into situations like that. (Don't write a program so clever you can't debug it.)

It is for these reasons that I gave my own definition. — Astorre

Sure. That’s the game here. To the degree you state something clear, then there is something to expand upon or challenge. :up:

In this case, if we take a chaotic world order as a starting point, then "system" = A, if we take an ordered world order as a starting point, then "system" = B — Astorre

The interesting thing here is can you even have pure chaos or only a relative lack of order? If you look into chaos theory, it turns out to be the theory of fractal self-organisation in nature. The grand pattern that everything can’t help but fall into when everything is as unconstrained as it can be, but then also still constrained to be in globally closed interaction.

So if it is a “world” but also “chaotic”, then you have a system as I have described it. A global state of constraint with its local degrees of freedom. Chaos theory describes such world’s where fluctuations are so unruly that - unlike a Gaussian bell curve degree of randomness - there is now a randomness that is fractal or powerlaw and so doesn’t even have a mean. And yet that still leaves the world in a very definitely constrained state in that it is completely specified by its powerlaw fractal order. The degree of internal disorder is precisely measurable and predictable as a statistically emergent pattern.

But what if the system is just our idea? Chaos or order - our idea? Maybe everything is somehow different? Science is built on the basic assumptions that the universe has some kind of order. But this is precisely an assumption, which is confirmed by the existence of paradoxes.

So in this case, all our judgments are nothing more than opinions. — Astorre

Well no. Science is distinguished by the way it freely proposes its ideas and then backs them up. So it is more than just opinion. And if we are here talking metaphysics, then even that relies on being able to demonstrate some conformity between our beliefs and our experiences. You want a logical approach to reality - a rational model of causality - that seems to apply in a universal fashion.

That would be the goal of traditional metaphysics anyway. A post modernist might of course like to claim the licence that everyone should have the right to their opinion and than judgement isn’t about a process of collective wisdom that stands the test of time.

It was metaphysics that claimed reality was a Cosmos. And the first metaphysicians did not see “paradoxes” as the problem but rather as the essence of existence. A world could arise as the dynamical balance of its fundamental divisions. A principle Heraclitus popularised as the Unit of Opposites.

So philosophy itself was founded on the systems view. But the Greeks also invented atomism as the alternative reductionist paradigm. And that proved very appealing once 16th C Europe wanted to re-imagine the world as a giant mathematical clockwork - a machine that could be constructed. Reductionism became the religion of the Industrial Revolution as engineering is a very effective mindset if you want to impose human control on the natural world.

To run nature, you have to be doing something that nature itself isn’t actually doing.

Burns's Theorem — Srap Tasmaner

To a Louse or group theory? Both work. Which did you have in mind?


Added:

To see oursels as others see us!

I'm not sure the presumption of hierarchy is needed - you might understand me, and I, you.

But at some point the zooming out needed exceeds the human perspective — Srap Tasmaner

Boom and bust is a natural thing. Speak to an environmentalist and they would say all legislation would have to be framed through the lens of how your latest proposal would be viewed through your grand children’s eyes. Or even out five generations hence.

But we have engineered our markets so that they can panic and crash in seconds with programmed trading. Then re-jigged them so they can’t be allowed to crash as the national debt instead gets exponentialised to the point that even five generations of thrift couldn’t repay it.

So our problems certainly don’t exceed our grasp at an intellectual level. It is more that systems rigidity of this kind - laws that might bind us five generations out of- have become politically unthinkable.

It is all about balance. Traditional societies might have had the mindset of no social order change ever. Modern society might have fetishised not just change but infinite acceleration. No limits. Let’s just blast through the singularity.

In between those two extremes, the environmentalist pushing a five generations rule would seem to have a better intellectual grasp of the world’s ecological and thermodynamical realities.