The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

A Scientific Approach to 'Spiritual Animation' and Its Mytho-logical Imagination

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The Systems Science Case for a Factual Spirituality​

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Self-Organizing Networks and Self-Asserting Systems are Natural but 'Causally Mysterious,' or 'Technically Magical' 

If predictably deterministic causation is insufficient to describe and explain the unpredictably self-organizing dynamics of complex adaptive systems and their emergent agentic capacities for purposeful self-assertion, then these properties are causally mysterious to a strictly deterministic or mechanistic perspective on the reality of 'how things happen.' We might then describe these phenomena as 'technically magical' in the sense that they result in quantifiable dynamic changes which do not occur in an entirely deterministic causal manner.

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Emergently Agentic Complex Adaptive Systems are Effectively Self-Animating Phenomena

If complex adaptive systems can self-direct and self-assert unpredictably to purposefully promote their continued existence, in ways which are not determined entirely by external factors or strictly pre-programed internal ones, then such systems are 'activated from the inside out.' These systems can alter their forms and resulting behaviors by interpreting data about their environment then re-configuring their own feedback networks adaptively in an agentic or agent-like manner. Such activity can be factually characterized as 'self-animating agency'.

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The Evidence Shows not only Creatures, but Ecological and Social Systems, to be Self-Animating

Biological creatures are the most obvious instances of agentically self-animating complex adaptive systems. However, given that the systems of ecologies and societies can be shown to manifest agentic, purposefully self-promoting behavior, (by quantifying 'self-induced' changes in their own configuration and the effects of those changes on their environments), these systems also manifest as agentically self-animating phenomena.

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Systems Science has Posed a New, Factual Description of 'Mysterious, Mystical, or Magical Action' and 'Spiritual Agency'

Systems science has described phenomena that are, in part, causally mysterious, thus technically magical, and purposefully self-animating agentic systems. These traits of emergent self-ordering, agentic self-assertion, and purposefully adaptive behaviors are sufficient to characterize such systems as 'mystical spiritual agents,' in the sense that 'how they happen' involves effects 'beyond complete causal explanation' and demonstrates purposeful agency.

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The Pervasive Influence of Agentic Complex Adaptive Systems on the Biosphere 'Spiritualizes' Nearly Everything

Since emergent self-organization, and the agentic properties it enables in some complex adaptive systems,​​ pervades the biosphere to such a degree that self-animating life forms have literally altered the composition of the atmosphere and the terrestrial environments that act upon evolutionary natural selection, it is evident that these factors have influenced nearly all forms and functions we perceive. Thus, nearly all phenomena and objects can be regarded as in some way effected by these 'technically magical' and agentically 'spiritual' aspects of nature.

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The Implications for a 'Psychology of Self-Animating Systems' and its Symbolic Representations

 

Mind and Intelligence can now be Understood as Emerging from the Agentic Properties of Complex Adaptive Systems

The types of system network dynamics which associate with emergent self-organization and agentic system self-assertion in general have been identified as fundamental to the neurological operations of animal brains. It now appears evident that the phenomena referenced by terms such as mind, psyche, consciousness, and intelligence are emergent properties of those underlying dynamics. Thus, the agentic properties of animal minds appear as but the most elaborated instance of complex adaptive system self-assertion, which can be characterized as self-animating 'spiritual agency.'

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Psychology can Now be Approached as Study of Mysteriously Agentic Systems in the Form of Human Minds

​Psychological study of human behavior can now be understood as concerned with the manifestation of this causally mysterious system self-assertion, and thus with 'spiritual agency,' which is not an exclusive property of animal, much less human, mental systems.

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The Characteristic Behaviors of Complex System Self-Assertion Constitute a Larger Domain of 'Psyche-logical' Behavior

If psychological study is fundamentally the examination of human behavior (or, 'the logic of psyche'), as the expression of self-asserting complex adaptive system network dynamics, ​then there is a basis for regarding such systems in general as somehow 'psychologically behavioral phenomena.'

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Traditional Cultural Mythological Imagination as the Symbolic Expression of Systems Science

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Correlating Evidence for Emergent Ordering and Agentic System Self-Animation with Mythological Symbolism

These science-derived ways of defining 'magical action,' 'spiritual agency,' and general system self-assertion as 'psychological,' provide new references for interpreting the concepts, stories, and imagery associated with archaic cultural mythologies. In this association, cross-cultural themes of involving seemingly acausal phenomena (or, 'magical action') and non-animal purposeful agency (or, 'materially animating spiritual agents'), can be regarded as symbolic representations of complex adaptive system dynamics and their emergent properties.

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Mythic Symbols and Concepts Approached as Archetypal Modeling of Emergent Ordering and Agentic Systems

​​When the seemingly acausal events of mythic narratives and their non-animal spiritual agents (gods, goddesses, etc) are considered from a systems science perspective, these can be interpreted as a kind of  symbolic 'archetypal lexicon' for modeling ways that emergent self-organization and the agentic properties of complex adaptive systems influence 'how things happen,' thus 'how the world actually works.'

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Myth's Spiritual Notions can be Regarded as the 'Symbolic Psychology' of Agentic Systems in both Humans and Nature

​In regard to the notion that the agentic properties of complex adaptive systems can be approached in a psychological manner, as the manifestation of agent-like behaviors, spiritual traditions can be seen as archetypal symbolism that 'characterizes' the range and diversity of those behaviors through 'imaginal actors.'

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​This 'Mythological Psychology' of Complex Adaptive Systems viewed as Human Adaptation through Cultural Evolution

These associations suggest that archaic humans intuited the primary roles of emergent self-organization and agentic properties of complex adaptive system dynamics in their ecological environments. Such awareness then prompted people to represent these aspects of reality in their worldview to promote adaptive behaviors which fostered sustainable survival. That representation took the emotionally compelling form of metaphorical and spiritual symbolism.

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