The Radical New Reality of Systems Science
Our Next
World View
An Overview of The New Science & Its Implications
Confronting the Science of Unpredictably Self-Animating Systems We Cannot Control
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Ordering has been shown to emerge unpredictably from disorder, leading to self-ordering, self-directing systems
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From ecologies to economies, cells to societies, systems manifest as feedback-driven, self-organizing networks
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These self-promoting networks enable systems to act in ways we can neither fully explain nor control
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Even human systems self-direct in ways we do not intend or perceive, often debilitating both humans and Nature
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This emergent ordering, and resulting purposeful system behaviors, pose a profoundly new 'way things happen'
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The facts of these 'self-animating' networks reveal our catastrophic ignorance about 'how the world actually works'
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SYSTEMS WE CREATE BECOME AUTONOMOUS AGENTS THAT MANIPULATE US FOR THEIR SELF-ASSERTION
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The evidence even poses a basis for a scientifically factual, naturalistic spirituality, and its symbolic representation
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We are confronted with a new scientific reality that is incomprehensible to our mechanistic modern worldview
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But, neuroscience shows how re-emphasizing our right-brain hemisphere mode of knowing can change that worldview
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This scientifically factual, symbolically elaborated, right-brain hemisphere biased worldview is essential to our survival
Website Layout
The pages of this website are arranged in an introductory sequence to guide you through the basic concepts in a non-technical manner. The bare essentials are outlined in the sequence of pages found under the "Intros Part 1" menu tab. Additional information on some of these topics is listed under the "Intros Part 2" menu tab. Pages exploring more perspectives are listed under the "Further Info" tab. Links to more technical descriptions of the science are found on the "References" page.
What Science Now Tells Us that We Have Yet to Understand
This website seeks to introduce you to the implications that recent research in complex adaptive systems science has for our understanding of 'how the world actually works.' The view taken here is inspired by a number of leading researchers from diverse disciplines within the sciences, such as Stuart Kaufman, David Nobel, Ian McGilchrist, Terrance Deacon, Robert E. Ulanowicz, Steven Johnson, Ilya Prigogine, Ervin Laszlo, Per Bak, John Holland, Alexei A. Sharov, Albert-László Barabási, Miacheal Levin, and Jesper Hoffmeyer. The work of these thinkers and others has stunning implications for our understanding of reality -- or 'how the world actually works.' Yet those implications have barely begun to permeate the larger realm of science, much less entered into our commonly shared worldview. Thus far, the novel ideas and evidence emerging from the study of complex adaptive systems seems to be regarded as 'just more information.' The view presented here seeks to show that this science constitutes, in fact, a radically different concept of 'how things happen,' of how the world gets organized, and thus 'actually works.' As such, it changes our understanding even across non-scientific fields of knowledge.
The attempt made here is to abstract some of the more stunning aspects of this science in a way that average people might be able to incorporate into their understanding -- of their selves and the world we all inhabit. The trouble is, this new view of 'how things happen,' thus 'how the world actually works,' differs so drastically from our familiar assumptions that it is virtually un-thinkable in familiar terms. Nonetheless, the factual basis of that new view demonstrates how we must immediately incorporate it in our worldview if we are to change our behaviors in ways that might avoid our destroying the biosphere we depend upon. This website attempts to provide insights that will promote this now essential re-thinking of how we think about the ways order arises and sustains life on earth.
This science is not 'just more information,' but a fundamental shift in our understanding of functional reality. It is not just useful knowledge that might enable us to better 'manage' our selves and the world. It confronts us with fundamental aspects of nature that are intrinsically unpredictable, thus beyond control, yet purposeful, and lead to the manifestation of autonomous agency -- even in systems that are not biological living things. Thus, it confronts us with unexpected limitations upon both our ultimate understanding and our ability to control phenomena. Yet, at the same time, it also presents us with factual mystery that can provide a basis for enhanced meaning and sense of greater purpose in our lives.
A Simplistic Preview:
The science of complex adaptive systems involves multiple fields of research, which collectively foster "complexity theory":
This science uses quantitatively reductive scientific methods to reveal how spontaneous self-organization emerges unpredictably through feedback loops of circulating influence, which form spontaneously among less ordered elements and factors. These can become self-sustaining networks of self-organization, leading to the capacity of "complex adaptive systems" to both self-regulate and self-adapt their forms and functions -- for the purpose of promoting their continued existence. These feedback relationships aggregate from less ordered conditions, into 'intra-active' networks, building upon each other -- in a continual flow emerging from underlying disorder.
Actions become interactions that become 'intra-active' relational networks with self-organizing properties:
The interdependent interactions of networked parts can become self-perpetuating and continually self-organize into the relational wholes of systems. The more complex of such unpredictably "emergent" systems can selectively direct their own operations -- by responding to changes in their environment, in adaptive ways, that promote their continued existence, making them technically self-directing, thus 'self-animating' systems. These systems are termed "adaptive" because they can alter their forms and functions in ways that sustain their existence.
Interacting parts become networked into self-ordering 'wholes': From these 'relational wholes' emerges adaptive 'self-animation':
In this general manner, feedback interactions among various parts and actions give rise to larger scale complex adaptive systems in an unpredictably synergistic manner. We are confronted with an inherent impulse in nature that promotes self-ordering interactions and, thus, adaptively self-directing and 'self-asserting' systems -- system "properties" that are unpredictable from preceding conditions. The interacting relationships among plant and animal species of a particular ecosystem become the basis for the emergence of that overall adaptive system. But, while the 'parts' of that system are relatively easy to specify, their enmeshed interactions are relatively 'invisible.' Thus it is said, 'you can't see the forest for the trees.' A system's 'parts' are not the same as its 'integrated relational wholeness' that emerges from its networked interdependencies. The self-ordering properties of the larger system can be quantified as 'more than the sum' of the traits of its parts.
The wholeness of an adaptive system (the 'forest') emerges as 'something more than' its parts (the 'trees'):
In revealing unpredictably emergent self-ordering in disorderly systems, which leads to system capacity to self-direct, our reductive scientific methods also reveal that this phenomena cannot be fully analyzed, explained, or predicted in the mechanistic terms of deterministic causation. Its 'in puts' and 'out puts' can be fairly well quantified, thereby demonstrating the disproportional emergence of new self-organization. But exactly how emergent self-organization happens among simultaneous interactions, then results in unpredictable system properties and behaviors, remains a 'dynamical black box.' We can quantify the 'before and after' of emergent self-organization, but not the synergistic dynamics of the 'in between' of interdependent feedback interactions.
Complex adaptive systems are a 'dynamical black box' of emergent interdependencies that cannot be fully understood:
To become more fully scientific about reality, about 'how the world actually works,' we must confront this conundrum of unpredictably emergent self-ordering that leads to 'agentic' (agent-like) complex adaptive system self-assertion. The problem is, this phenomena does not conform to our assumptions that all phenomena derive from predictably deterministic causation. Here, we must confront a 'bi-dynamical' reality in which there are 'two ways things happen' -- two fundamentally different ways that order is created, but are inherently linked in natural phenomena! There exist sequentially dependent, deterministically causal dynamical events that result in predicable ordering AND synergistically interactive dynamical events that result in unpredictably emergent ordering. The first occurs 'one thing after another,' each event determining the next. The other happens as the 'everything effecting everything else all at once,' in the simultaneously recursive flows of network feedback. The world is an entangled interplay of these two 'ways that things happen.'
Sequentially deterministic events and simultaneously synergistic influences are entangled aspects of complex order creation:
It is this interplay of ordering arising predictably in a mechanistic manner from deterministic causation AND unpredictably, from emergently self-ordering interdependent interactions, that generates the forms and functions of self and world. It appears that mechanistic actions interact to generate a "critical state" of interdependency, which enables the emergent properties of self-organizing interactions -- such as in hurricanes. From that basis of self-organization can emerge complex adaptive systems with self-asserting agency, which then interact to form collective 'meta-systems' or "super organisms," like ecologies, societies, economies, etc.. Those meta-systems 'behave like creatures,' even though these have no brain or central control mechanism. They can assert their self-determination by manipulating the sub-systems from which they emerge, to promote their continued existence. Human 'agents' are manipulated by the agentic social systems their interactions give rise to -- systems that are functionally 'psychopathic' because they have no capacity for empathy but only an impulse to self-assertion and dominance.
Emergent system self-organization from material actions: Meta-system emergence from collective system interactions:
These self-organizing events, and the self-animating systems that emerge from them, are best modeled as dynamical networks of interdependent relationships -- dynamically active networks 'driven by' feedback flows of influence between system parts, and between them and the system's external environment. 'Relational networks' is the primary metaphor used here for representing these phenomena. It is the interdependency of networked feedback dynamics from which emerge self-ordering and complex adaptive systems. Emergent self-organization can regulate feedback relationships that reinforce and even re-direct system behaviors. Network science provides the basis for a 'network vision' -- the 'seeing' of mostly 'invisible' network relationships -- which enables us to better perceive the 'forest' that emerges as an additional, self-directing system, from the interactions of 'the trees.' Abstract network modeling assists in 'visualizing' these dynamic relationships.
Interactive flow of influence in complex system network: Formation of self-regulating, self-directing interdependencies:
The profound challenge of comprehending complex systems science is daunting for our familiar mechanistic worldview. Fortunately, recent neuroscience on the functions of our left and right brain hemispheres provides us with ways to shift our understanding. That research reveals how these two aspects of our one brain can profoundly influence our thinking. The left hemisphere mode has been shown to promote more exclusively reductive, sequential attention, while the right facilitates more inclusive, holistic attention. To appreciate both 'ways that things happen' now revealed by systems science -- predictably deterministic and synergistically emergent -- we must practice using both modes of attention. However, our modern worldview is heavily biased toward the reductive left hemisphere modality. That reduced emphasis upon our inclusive right-hemisphere mode of attention 'blinds' us to how complex adaptive systems form and function emergently. To be genuinely scientific about 'how the world actually works,' we must now promote the relational 'network vision' of our right hemisphere mode of attending to phenomena -- if we are to engage the implications of systems science.
Exclusive / Reductive left-hemisphere attention: Inclusive/ Holistic right-hemisphere attention:
A fuller comprehension of the implications of this science, with its 'invisible' realm of interdependent dynamics and emergent, self-directing system agency, will be further facilitated by connecting it with pre-modern philosophical wisdom traditions and the symbolism of our archaic mythological and spiritual imagination. There, we can find representations of this 'new' but actually ancient bi-dynamical worldview, along with representations of uncontrollable system agency that become 'psychopathically monstrous.' Our science is now rediscovering aspects of reality once symbolized by pre-scientific cultures.
Bi-dynamical symbolism from pre-modern human cultures: Spiritual symbolism of meta-system 'monstrosity':
By associating the unexpected new scientific knowledge of systems science about 'how the world actually works' with our ancient mythical imagination we can better comprehend both. In that way, we can gain the 'doubled vision' of 'scientific symbolism.'
Basic Concepts in Outline:
From Unpredictably Emergent Order to Self-Animating Systems -- with and without Brains
A New Science of Self-Organizing Complex Adaptive Systems
In recent decades, scientific research has revealed how ordering emerges in unpredictable ways that are not entirely explainable by deterministic causality alone. From Chaos Theory to Complexity Theory and complex adaptive systems science, a stunning yet little known revolution has occurred in our understanding of 'how the world actually works.' Research in nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, network theory, evolutionary adaptation, and related areas, confronts us with unpredictably emergent self-organization that enables some systems to adapt their forms and functions for the purpose of promoting their continued existence -- and, that this 'agent like' behavior manifests even in systems without brains.
Two Ways Things Happen
Now Two, Paradoxical, 'Ways that Things Happen'
This recent science confronts us with a new 'way that things happen.' In addition to the familiar notion of deterministic cause and effect, in which events are strictly determined by preceding factors, we must now learn to perceive how ordering emerges from more disordered conditions in fundamentally unpredictable ways. We can think of this contrast as between sequences of dependently determined events, as in 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction,' versus concurrent interactions that influence each other interdependently, as in 'every thing, every which way, all at once.' The self-ordering relationships of the latter necessarily arise from significant inconsistency. To be scientifically realistic, we must know think in these terms of both predictably deterministic causation and unpredictably emergent ordering -- the latter mode being the actual source of most order and function in human as well as natural systems. Thus, we are confronted by a 'dynamical paradox' in natural phenomena: that of predictably sequential, deterministic causation and that of unpredictably emergent self-organization from more disordered conditions. This concept of "self-organization" is crucial to grasp. Systems that 'self-organize' do so 'internally,' through interactions of their parts, in ways that cannot be explained entirely in relation to preceding conditions or 'external forces.'
A Net-Worked Worldview
Networked Relationships Make the World
The concept of 'networks' provides the fundamental basis of a systems science perspective on phenomena -- on 'how things happen.' A 'net' is understood as 'multiple elements or parts that are connected in ways that allow these to influence each other.' How the elements influence each other results in 'how a net works,' or, what effects result from the influence of elements in a 'net' that make it a 'network.' These 'relationships' between elements that constitute a 'network' can involve dynamically deterministic actions of one element upon another, or emergently self-organizing interactions that result in unpredictable effects. Complex systems involve the interactive, or 'intra-active,' relationships between the elements of their constituting 'net-working.'
Order from Disorder in Feedback-driven System Networks
The emergent self-organization of complex systems arises synergistically from interdependent relationships between system parts. The actions of each part moves, or 'flows,' through the system in multiple, interacting 'loops.' That recursive blending of influence is termed "feedback." In such systems, many parts are connected to many others, so that their actions influence or effect others. Those influences then 'feed back' in an altered form to the originator -- 'round and round, back and forth,' simultaneously. In the process, influence is modified in ways that then modify other influences across the system. These mutually modifying flows of influence are modeled as system feedback networks. The activity of relationships between parts in these networks involves areas of inconsistency or relative disorder. That underlying instability is crucial to how a system's forms and functions become self-organized into networks of relational 'intra-actions', as well as how these can adaptively re-organize and change those forms and functions. The resulting increases and changes in system organization can be measured, but how it emerges from interdependent network interactivity cannot not be explicitly described and explained in strictly deterministic terms. There is an inherent impulse in nature, arising from turbulent interactivity, that promotes self-ordering interactions and, thus, self-directing systems.
Self-Asserting Systems
A World made by Emergently Self-Organizing System Networks 'Beyond Control'
With this knowledge, it becomes evident that both the naturally evolved realm of the biosphere and the technologically evolved one of human societies are composed of numerous, interdependently interacting, self-animating, purposefully self-asserting systems -- systems which, due to their unpredictably emergent self-organization and self-direction, are technically 'beyond predictable manipulative control.' We cannot control events that do not occur in predictably deterministic sequences. Indeed, systems science demonstrates how attempts to control such systems can readily debilitate their self-ordering, self-adaptive network capacities. To perceive and act realistically, our science now compels us to think in terms of systems that purposefully regulate and adapt themselves through their operational networks -- and not just those of biological creatures, but also of ecologies, economies, institutions, and corporations. Even complex systems without brains self-organize and adaptively self-direct. They 'have their own purposes' and can effectively 'act like creatures.' It is these system networks that shape the world around us. And though they can be influenced, even debilitated, they are inherently beyond our direct control. Most profoundly, at the larger scale of societies and economies, these become "super organsim" systems emerging from the interactions of human agents that then manipulate and even dominate those agents.
Emergent Self-Organization and Characteristic 'Agency' of Self-Directing Systems
The capacity of complex adaptive systems to emergently create and adaptively change their 'selves', whether biological entities, from body cells to animals, or collective meta-systems like ecologies and societies, requires some ability to perceive, interpret, and selectively respond to, the conditions of their environments. That selective responsiveness, which 'serves the future purpose' of their continued existence, constitutes a from of self-directing agency -- or, the autonomous ability to act purposefully. Self-ordering, feedback-driven system networks impose and change constraints upon their own activity to produce unpredictably emergent system behaviors that are adaptively 'self-directed.' How a system's feedback network becomes configured drives its unpredictable yet characteristic behaviors. This self-directing self-assertion constitutes a from of agency: the capacity to act selectively for some future purposed -- whether overtly 'conscious' or not. Humans and animals are not the only 'agents' whose purposeful activity 'makes the world.' Systems from bee hives to societies and corporations 'act purposefully' to assert their existence without having 'brains.' We not find our selves confronted with a scientifically confirmed 'agentic' or 'agential' world, one composed of 'agent-like' entities besides animals, which self-create and self-assert.
A Baseline Concept of Nature as Fundamentally Self-Ordering and Self-Directing
If chaotic activity tends to generate the spontaneous emergence of more complexly ordered forms, out of less ordered states, and those self-organizing interactions can become self-sustaining, then self-directing systems, then these dynamical phenomena are fundamental to nature. Yes, there are deterministically causal aspects of most phenomena, but 'the world as it manifests' only 'works that way' because there is a baseline transition from predictably deterministic causality to unpredictably emergent self-organization.
'Technical Magic'
Emergent Self-Organization as 'Technically Magical'
In so far as such emergent self-organization in complex systems, with its consequences of purposefully adaptive behaviors and agency, do not entirely result directly from deterministic causation, such phenomena are 'causally impossible,' thus 'technically magical.' That is, these events and their emergent properties of selective system self-direction are somehow 'mysterious' from the perspective of the deterministic "laws of physics." That concept, however, does not necessarily classify emergent order and agency as 'supernatural.' There is no evidence that those deterministic laws are 'violated' by self-organization. Rather, our reductive science, in identifying emergent phenomena, is compelling us to redefine our cultural concept of how reality and nature are actually constituted. Our 'technical' modes of quantitative measurement and calculation now confirm both the effects of predictably deterministic causation from pre-existing conditions and unpredictably emergent self-organization from more disordered conditions -- but cannot explain the latter entirely in the terms of the former.
Factual Spirituality
System 'Agency' and the Factual 'Spirituality' of Purposefully 'Self-Animating' Systems
Given that complex adaptive systems networks can manifest selectively purposeful, self-directing behaviors, then such systems are effectively 'self-animating.' That property of system networks constitutes a factually derived basis for understanding them as manifesting the sort of 'animating agency' referred to by archaic cultures as 'spiritual.' Again, this is not to pose some 'supernatural' category of phenomena, but to expand our science-based conception of what is 'natural.' We have extensive evidence that 'agentic' activity emerges at many 'levels' of self-organizing networks, from which emerge its most complex elaboration in the 'agents' of animals and humans. The world actually 'works' because complex systems manifest selective agency. That is fundamentally essential knowledge of reality. This is where pragmatism becomes 'mysticism.'
Meta-Crisis
Civilized Systems are Destroying the Self-Organizing Network Agency of Natural Ones
With the above insights, it becomes obvious that the contemporary phenomena of ecological collapse and climate system chaos are consequences of human system behaviors which are disabling the self-organizing networks of those natural systems. This is possible because human systems have technological leverage that enables them to evade the mutually beneficial constraints typical of interdependent, ecologically evolved natural systems. Human social and economic systems have become 'rogue agents' whose self-asserting agency defies our 'best intentions,' both ethical and ecological, in their unconstrained impulse toward dominance over humans and nature -- resulting in a 'Meta-Crisis for Life on Earth.' Our 'greatest enemy' now is not 'other people' but the unconstrained self-assertion of our own human systems. To survive, to effectively adapt, we must now personally act in defiance of those systems. Human agents must act selectively to re-configure the feedback networks of the social and economic "super organisms" that have come to dominate our lives and, in the process, debilitate the self-sustaining self-assertion of the biosphere. That makes this crisis a cultural one. We must dramatically re-orient our cultural values or priorities, thereby our cultural worldview, in ways that constrain our the super organism systems that emerge from our behaviors.
Complex Systems Science and a New/Next Worldview
The Logic of Systems Science as the Basis for our Next Worldview
This science uses the reductive analysis of physics to demonstrate how the more complex forms of ordering, such as biological systems, necessarily emerge unpredictably from more disordered conditions. It provides a 'logic' for how such complexity can only emerge synergistically from the self-ordering interdependencies of feedback relationships in underlying, and ongoing, disorder. Yet these phenomena -- though unpredictable, uncontrollable, and 'agency producing' -- do not violate the laws of physics. They manifest from those laws but generate different dynamical effects. Most importantly, it is this unpredictable emergence of order from less orderly conditions that results in most of the ordering and functions of the biosphere. Thus, to be 'scientifically logical,' we are compelled to incorporate this new science into our worldview.
Our Modern, Mechanistic Worldview is Catastrophically Delusional
But, complex systems science is not only logical as our new framing of reality, it is a practical necessity. It reveals that our modern cultural bias toward perceiving all phenomena as materialistically mechanical (as consequences of predictably deterministic causation), is utterly inadequate to understanding 'how the world actually works.' Our mechanistic worldview has led us to exploit natural systems to the point of collapsing their self-organizing agency. We are, thereby, profoundly, indeed catastrophically, deluded about reality. Our modern mechanistic worldview is proving biocidal for the biosphere, thus suicidal for our species.
What We Need to Know, and How to Know It, Have Changed Dramatically
The existential threats of self-regulating network collapse in ecological and climate systems compel us to rethink what we most need to know and how we can know it effectively. Thinking through, and teaching, the insights of complex system science are now the most important concern for our survival. That must be the fundamental focus of our cultural and social priorities, if we are to become scientifically realistic. We must learn how to reconfigure our human systems so these act not for control and exploitation, but for the facilitation of natural systems' self-directing networks. Our educational systems require radical reorientation. If we employ systems science perspectives, we can re-interpret much of our existing knowledge in new ways that will change our understanding of 'what we think we now know,' thus of reality. There is much in both science and the humanities that can be profoundly re-interpreted through a systems science perspective.
Complex Systems Science frames Our Next Worldview
Our human survival, along with that of the biosphere, depend upon our generating a radically different cultural worldview. That worldview must orient our ideas, thus our goals, thus our behaviors, toward facilitating the mutually beneficial interdependency of human systems with the natural systems upon which we depend. But that requires us to think in profoundly different ways -- ways that alter our experience, thus our motives for our behaviors. Complex systems science frames the perspectives and factual references for such a 'new/next worldview' -- but, that will require a confusing metanoia, or 'complete change of mind.' We can either do this voluntarily, or have it forced upon us by the collapse of natural systems that will in turn collapse existing human ones -- the 'collapse of civilization.'
'Two Brains' for 'Two Ways Things Happen'
The Neuroscience of Our Two Brain Hemispheres can Guide Us
Such a fundamental shift in our cultural conception of reality will be facilitated by reference to another field of scientific research -- the neuroscience of how our two left and right brain hemispheres effect our 'ways of attending,' thus thinking about and experiencing, phenomena. This science shows how we have 'two minds' in our one brain that evolved to facilitate knowing the dynamical paradox of deterministic causation versus unpredictably emergent self-organization -- the new scientific understanding of 'the two ways things happen,' thus 'how the world actually works.' This science reveals how our modern worldview is reflexively biased toward our left hemisphere's reductive, mechanistic mode of understanding. A systems science framing can restore the role of our right hemisphere's inclusive, holistic mode of knowing. Emphasis upon our right hemisphere attending, thinking, experiencing can promote our understanding of the science.
'Spiritual' Systems
Comprehending the Agency of Systems Requires a Culture of Factual 'Spirituality'
To effectively change the behaviors of human systems, we require an emotionally compelling cultural impetus. That will involve the cultural incorporation of some form of 'spiritual reality' based upon the scientific evidence for self-directing system agency. This shift would constitute a scientific 'reinvention of the sacred,' one in which unpredictably emergent system agency becomes 'all important' because it 'makes the world,' and does so in ways that are technically mysterious from the perspective of predictably deterministic causation. Such a view of a 'self-animating world' is not a matter of 'belief.' It is a logical consequence of the factual science. And it will be informed by the ways our ancient mytho-logical imagination represented characteristic system agency 'psychologically,' as archetypally distinct spirits, gods, and goddesses.
Dynamical Symbolism
Symbolism can Elaborate the Significance of Systems Science to Motivate Cultural Change
That 'new/next worldview,' based upon systems science, proves to have many similarities to pre-modern human imaginations of an 'animated world.' Consequently, the science can be elaborated by the same metaphorically symbolic imagination that has assisted archaic human cultures to adapt sustainably, within a 'self-animating world,' for tens of thousands of years. By correlating the concepts of systems science with the dynamical symbolism of our trans-cultural, mytho-logically spiritual imagination, and its modern manifestations in artistic expression, we can enhance our comprehension of the science with emotionally compelling experience. Metaphoric symbolism is now understandable as an essential epistemological method for 'knowing realistically.'
The Necessity of Using This Science as the Basis for a Radically New Cultural Worldview
This website explores how the perspectives of complex systems science fundamentally re-frame a factual understanding of 'how the world actually works.' That re-orientation to 'how things happen' emerges as a radical challenge to many of our most basic assumptions about our selves and reality. This challenge is so extreme that it is virtually 'un-thinkable' from our existing perspectives. Nonetheless, it confronts us with our logically 'next' worldview and poses profound implications for how we configure our concepts of identity, society, and culture.
This scientifically factual, symbolically elaborated, right-brain hemisphere-biased worldview, poses fundamentally different parameters for conceiving our sense of self, our social systems, and the practices of a shared culture. Here, self-hood appears as an inherently conflicted network of contrasting components from which an unpredictably variable system continually emerges -- from internal disorder. Social systems are shown to be self-asserting entities whose 'behavior' is inherently psychopathic, and thus can only be constrained by individual humans capable of feeling empathy. Culture becomes a set of human practices that can serve sustainable human survival only by constantly constraining the psychopathic self-assertion of human systems. Systems science shows us that there is much about society and culture that we must change to survive -- and very little time in which to do so.