The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

The End of The World 'As We Have Known It'

is the Beginning of Knowing Less Precisely yet more Realistically

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A Profound Change in 'What There is to Know' and 'How We can Know It'

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Just How Strange is the Next Worldview of Systems Science?

Appreciating the implications complex systems science has for understanding self, society, and nature, is deceptively difficult. ​​Since its insights into emergent ordering and agentic network properties derive from quantitatively reductive scientific methods, this information can seem like 'just more knowledge' about cause and effect -- more ways we can manipulate materials and events. However, its primary significance derives from evidence very much to the contrary. Because emergent self-organization and agentically self-directing system networks are themselves not entirely the consequences of strictly causal events -- which can in turn orchestrate causally deterministic events purposefully -- this science now frames a world utterly beyond our mechanistic assumptions and expectations of predictable control.

 

A human person can maneuver an automobile or engineer and program a computer to function in predictably causal ways. However, our human ability to manipulate those casual phenomena (to 'drive a car') involves more than physically causal aspects of our bodies and brains. We can only 'drive' and 'engineer' because our mental systems emerge from unpredictably purposeful, thus technically non-causal, self-directing (or agentic) self-ordering feedback. An airplane does not exist and fly solely due to its physical properties. It exits and flies because of emergently agentic human purposefulness. Thus, it is not entirely explainable in strictly causal terms. Similarly, a 'person' is not a physical entity, but an emergently agentic network phenomena, which involves deterministic causality but is also 'something more and different.' In the absence of emergently agentic network dynamics, a 'person' is only a 'corpse.' According to systems science, neither you nor society and nature, not even 'technology,' can be completely mechanistically reduced to the deterministic causality of physical materials. All these exist primarily because of the emergent properties of complex adaptive system networks -- which, due to their unpredictable dynamical character, cannot be directly controlled nor predicted. The reality of systems science involves fundamentally unpredictable, yet explicitly purposeful system behaviors, making it intrinsically mysterious.

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To logically approach that new reality, we must confront the notion that we cannot configure a new worldview around it in the terms of how we arrived at it. We have 'known the world' in strictly physical and mechanistic terms. That is what we have assumed science to be about. We have 'arrived at' the knowledge of systems science through quantitative scientific reduction. The science involved is full of all the familiar measurements, quantifications, calculations, and formulas, which we assume define, describe, and explain 'how things happen' in deterministic terms. BUT -- the actual evidence these reductive methods now reveal is not at all familiar to our expectations for 'scientific facts.' Those facts take us beyond any expectation of certainty or final predictive knowledge about 'how things happen.' The 'world as we have known it,' as physical materials and deterministically causal events, is no longer scientifically complete. We now require new ways of perceiving and thinking about phenomena to frame a worldview that is scientifically realistic.

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'What There is to Know' and 'How We can Know It' have Changed Dramatically

​A simple way to state the implications of systems science is that it has revealed phenomena that we were not fully aware of and did not have methods to adequately analyze. ​Emergent self-organization, system self-direction, and agentic system behaviors are 'something new in the world,' from the perspective of a mechanistic modernist mentality. The implications of these recently confirmed phenomena has not yet begun to permeate our cultural awareness. Those implications reach far beyond the arcane fields of technical systems science.

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Re-Thinking what Science can Teach Us

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​Beyond Certainties to New Cultural Assumptions About the Role of Science in 'How We Know What There Is to Know'

​It is now evident that science can not only teach us about predictable certainties, but also about the inherent uncertainties of emergent ordering and the fundamentally unpredictable yet pervasive influences of agentic systems. That is, science can teach us about what it cannot definitively describe and explain, about the dynamics that lead to the unpredictable properties of complex systems and their adaptive agency. Thus, it is no longer logical to assume that we can obtain complete and conclusive knowledge about 'how things happen,' thus 'how the world actually works.' We must now approach 'how to know what there is to know' as involving more than deterministic certainties. We must embrace the self-defining limits of scientific reduction on 'what we can know for certain.'​

 

Somehow, we must alter our assumption that reductive science necessarily explains all phenomena as deterministically causal. Systems science is scientific method applied to all types of dynamical systems, both mechanistic and emergently self-ordering, linearly dynamical and nonlinear, even agentically self-asserting. We must accommodate to the evidence that reductive methods can provide evidence of irreducibly complex interdependencies which result in unpredictably creative, self-regulating, self-adaptive, system ordering.

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​Science can give us insights into how emergent events might happen,

but neither exactly 'what will happen,' nor how:

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​Science and 'Intellectual Honesty'

The utterly unexpected emergence of these strange dynamics of complex systems, emergent ordering, and agentic networks, underscores the importance for 'doing science' in an ideologically neutral, or un-biased manner. Our modern cultural assumptions that all phenomena derive from predictably deterministic causality, in a mechanistic manner, has been shown to be 'un-scientific.' The concept in academic knowledge fields of 'intellectual honesty' means that a researcher should formulate interpretations of what ever subject they study in a manner that accounts for all available evidence relative to their discipline -- rather than simply to promote a particular theory even if it is contradicted by other evidence. To me academically rigourous, one must 'take into account' all the relative data and existing analysis which one can access. Similarly, the strictest interpretation of 'doing science well' means understanding existing research, incorporating that into one's analysis, and not proposing conclusions as factually verified which cannot be substantiated by experimental testing. When there are inconsistencies or contradictions in data and interpretations, those are supposed to be acknowledged.  Similarly, it is unprofessional to ignore or dismiss existing validated evidence.

 

After complex adaptive systems science, it is no longer intellectually honest for scientists to assume that all phenomena are the exclusive result of deterministic causality. Systems science has changed the framing within which we both 'do science' and interpret the evidence derived from a rigorous application of scientific method. Indeed, this new science places even non-scientific knowledge domains in a new framing for realistic interpretations. From history to sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology, systems science provides new references for 'how things happen.' In a transdiscipliary manner, it compels us to analyae and reason in relation to the new facts about emergent ordering and agentic systems, if we are to be intellectually honest.

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Approaching the New Dynamical Contrast of 'How Things Happen'

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Our Logically Next Worldview is a Paradoxical Coherence of Seemingly Contradictory Dynamics

The challenge of a 'bi-dynamical' next worldview is not just in the decoupling of our assumptions about reality from deterministic causality, but also one of 'thinking bi-dynamically.' This is not a case of  thinking either one way or the other. We must perceive, interpret, and conceive through both causal and emergent/agentic dynamics simultaneously. Nearly every context we encounter is an entangled combination of causal and emergent ordering. We must now understand change as involving both ordering predictably determined by preceding ordering in a proportionally consistent, causally dependent manner, and ordering emerging unpredictably from preceding ordering through disjunctive, interdependent interactions in a disproportional manner.   Learning to 'think complexity' in this way is essential if we are to generate assumptions and priorities for behavior that are realistic enough to foster long-term survival.

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Sequential causality and interdependently emergent ordering appear 'entangled':

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Confronting Our 'Dynamical Naivete'

​However, to 'think complexity' means distinguishing it as a dynamical concept from a sense of 'very complex mechanism.' In systems science, 'complex' is not the same as 'extremely complicated.' We must understand that dynamical complexity involves nonlinear relationships, emergent ordering, and thus potentially agentic systems network properties.These are fundamentally foreign dynamical concepts to a mechanistic worldview.  If we do not fully grasp this difference we will be trapped in a delusional attitude of 'dynamical naivete.'

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​Perceiving Phenomena in Terms of Networks and Relational Fields that Involve both Deterministic and Emergent Effects

​Central to this shift in our awareness is to begin perceiving, and thinking, not only in terms of sequences of cause and effect, but in terms of networks and 'relational fields.' That means contexting sequences of causal events 'within' a larger view of feedback networks as 'fields of interdependent relationships. It is only through this 'network vision' that we can become aware of emergent ordering and agentic system behaviors.

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​Mechanistic knowledge is essential, but without Awareness of Emergently Agentic Systems We are Catastrophically Ignorant​

​Our mechanistic insights about deterministic causation from reductive science is astonishingly potent and useful. So much so it has been easy to assume it has not limits, that it can enable us to 'solve all problems' and  'take us' to complete understanding of the universe. Systems science now confronts us with new limitations to that knowledge. But most importantly, it shows us how dangerous to the survival of both the biosphere and our species our ignorance of emergent ordering and agentic systems is. This new perspective arguably places knowledge of complex adaptive systems ahead of mechanistic knowledge as essential to our survival.

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We can now consciously and scientifically attempt to differentiate the dynamical aspects of 'how things are happening'

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Living in the 'Two Worlds of this One'--the 'There and Back Again' of Bi-dynamical Awareness's  'Double Vision'

​Bi-dynamical awareness is inevitably a kind of 'bipolar' existence. If we are to track both predicable causal and emergent/agentic dynamics, we must learn to shuttle our awareness and understanding between these divergent dynamical modalities. ​Systems science uses the logic of reductive analyses of 'parts' and deterministic causality to quantify the unpredictable effects nonlinear dynamics and emergent ordering. Consequently, it also shows how it is not feasible to 'think' emergenct dynamics through that samne logic. This conundrum frames the challenge to our modernist assumptions of appreciating the implications of the science.  ​

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​Reductive                                                                                                                         Inclusive

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It does not appear possible to 'see' both ways simultaneously. Yet, though these two modes are profoundly different, they are complimentary in revealing the interdependencies of the 'two ways things happen.' It is essential to be able to 'perceive complex wholes,' then to 'zero in' on specifics, so as to identify the 'world' as causal factors and sequences. It is then again essential to 'zoom out' to perceive how that dynamical domain is part of the holistically emergent, self-ordering 'world' and its agentic phenomena. This contrast can be thought of as associative versus dis-associative thinking. As mechanistic moderns, we have come to favor the dis-associative mode.

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​Disassociation of Reductive Point/Sequence Focus                                  Association of Inclusive Field/Network Perception

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​Confronting the Roles of Agentic Systems in Our Lives and Social Relationships

 

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From Doubling Our Awareness of Dynamical 'Ways Things Happen' to 'Spiritually Agentic' Collective Systems

By expanding our dynamical awareness to include the unpredictably emergent ordering of feedback networks, we confront the purposefully agentic system properties that can result from it. Network analysis reveals the agency of individual organisms of a plant, animal, or human, to be a complex adaptive system emerging from similar subsystems -- as an additional 'collective system.' This emergence of a larger scale system from the collective interdependency of other systems results in myriads of overlapping, interacting collective systems, such as ecologies and societies. Though not constituted as a unified organism, these too are effectively self-animating systems which can self-assert in an autonomous manner. That makes them a type of  'spiritual agent,' in the sense that they can direct their behaviors selectively, for the purpose of promoting their continued existence.  These systems are not human or even animal. But they can use the agents of animals and humans as the basis for their own autonomous self-assertion.

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Both Natural and Human Social Systems must now be Regarded as Agentic Entities -- or Super Organisms

Perhaps the single most profound insight from complex systems science involves how we must now regard larger scale natural and human systems as 'agents.'  From local ecosystems to the biosphere and social institutions, corporations, economies, and governments, the new science confronts us with agentically self-asserting entities.  These 'behave like' individual organisms, thus are termed "super organisms." However, lacking brains and nervous systems, they have no intrinsic capacity for empathy, making them effectively 'psychopathic actors.'  In regard to natural systems, we must understand how their components of plant and animals species, landscapes, and weather, interact through interdependent relationships from which emerge agentic properties which organize and adaptively sustain ecosystems. Thus, when human disrupt those relationships, their self-sustaining dynamics can collapse. 

 

When it comes to human systems, we must realize these are 'autonomous agents' whose purposeful self-assertion is reflexively 'psychopathic' and neither under our direct control, nor inherently linked to our presumed intentions for those systems. Collective social and economic systems can never be 'trusted' to do as we intend. Additionally, human individuals, whose personal self-assertion becomes amplified by positions of power in those systems, are more likely to act in league with psychopathic system self-assertion, rather than empathetic human values. 'The individual' is an agent 'of' a larger collective social system. But that system is a 'creaturely entity of its own.' As individual humans, we are always 'at odds with' the self-asserting impulses of the organism systems which emerge from our interactions.

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The Self-Asserting impulse of super organism social systems makes these reflexively hierarchical, 

manipulative, and Intrinsically psychopathic, agentic entities

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​System Information Processing and Meaning Making in 'How The Word Actually Works'​

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​Agentic Systems Manifest through Information Processing and 'Immaterial Meaning Making'

Appreciating this new worldview requires confronting the 'immaterial' role of 'making meaning' from raw data. Complex adaptive system networks somehow 'detect' data about external environments then interpret that data for the purpose of promoting their continued existence.  Their ability to adapt in sustainable ways depends upon "semiotic activity," or rendering data into 'meaningful information' pertinent to their self-regulation and self-assertion.  From a physical or mechanistic perspective, such 'meaningful information' might be understood as 'the physical data' of temperature, availability of food, or an imminent attack by a predator, which gets represented in neurological actions, words, or numbers. But that view ignores the role of network interpretation. It is the relationships between numerous feedback factors in a complex adaptive system network that emergently 'make data meaningful,' as a reference for unpredictably emergent adaptive behaviors. The meaning your mental networks are 'making' from the marks on this webpage is not 'in' those marks, (termed 'letters' and 'words'). The meaning exists only as an emergent property of feedback relationships between aspects of those mental networks. 'Meaningful information' is not a thing, but a complex of interdependent relational associations. It is, in some fundamental way, not 'physically material,' not explicitly quantifiable -- thus, 'technically mysterious.'

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The Biosphere as 'Meaningful Conversation'

Approaching meaning through systems science makes defining thought, intelligence, consciousness, and 'life it self,' more difficult even than it has been for a mechanistic worldview. Just where these phenomena 'begin,' or what types of complex systems can be understood as agentic, is extremely difficult to define from a system science perspective. We not only inhabit a world 'animated by agentic systems,' it is dynamically difficult to even specify which are and are not agentic, or when and where these become 'autonomous agents.' And, complex systems not only 'make meaning,' many can use it to 'communicate meaningfully' with other such systems. In this reagard, the entire biosphere, from micro to macro scales, is a vast 'conversation of conversations,' a unimaginably chaotic, yet somehow ultimately self-regulating effusion of 'meaning making' and inter-system 'conversation.'

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A Re-Association of Human and Non-Human: The Shift from Civilization's 'Tame' Minding to Nature's 'Wild Minding'

​Civilization, as human systems that attempt adaptive survival through managing a human-determined domesticated context of 'the tame,' effectively competes with naturally evolved ecosystems. It 'dis-associates' from nature and then dis-associates the wholes of natural systems into 'parts' it can manipulate. (Think of genetic engineering of plant species.) In its dependence upon larger scale agriculture and urbanized populations, civilization is necessarily control-obsessed. Its 'minding' is preoccupied with 'technologies of taming' elements of nature. Such 'tame minding' tends to focus upon manipulative control thus deterministic causation. If we are to embrace the worldview of systems science, we must learn to 'think like nature acts,' more in terms of interdependent, intra-active relational feedback networks, with their unpredictable but self-animating emergent properties. We might characterize that thinking as 'wild minding.' We must re-associate with the interdependently agentic feedback networks of the biosphere if we are to promote our own sustainable survival.

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​Civilization's control-obsessed 'tame' alienation from nature:    The ecologically interdependent 'wild' worldview of systems science:

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A Naturalistic, Science-based 'Spritiuality' and a new Definition of 'the Sacred'

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Once Again, We Find Our Selves of a World of Mystery and Agentic Spirituality

​Lo and behold -- modernity's march to ultimate knowledge, that appeared to invalidate any basis for 'spirituality,' has now positioned us in a factually mysterious world of emergent ordering and agentic systems -- even one's without brains. There is indeed an 'other world' to that of mechanistic physical phenomena. There is testable evidence for a 'way that things happen' that is causally mysterious. We do inhabit an existence pervaded by mystery and unpredictably purposeful 'agentic forces.' This science-based 'spirituality' is not literally the same as our historical pre-modern spiritual imaginations. It is, however, similar enough for us to reconsider just how those archaic notions of 'spiritual agency' might have been symbolic representations of the strange dynamics now evident through systems science.

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'The Sacred,' as a 'Purposefully Creative Origin' of the Universe and Life, has a New Characterization

Mythological imaginations from pre-modern cultures generated varied depictions of 'spiritual agents' that animate the world. These figures represented the purposefully intentional 'forces of creation' whose 'world making' effects constituted 'the sacred.' A related sense of 'the sacred' can now be associated with the roles of emergent self-organization from less orderly conditions and purposefully self-directing agentic systems.

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Systems Science Reveals the Realistic Insights of Spiritual and Artistic Symbolism

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A New Science of Metaphoric Symbolism

Network analysis and the infinitely interdependent dynamics that promote agentic system properties all provide a new perspective for interpreting the seemingly unrealistic expressions of spiritual imaginations and artistic representations. If these modes of human expression are viewed as representations of complex dynamical system 'behaviors,' they can be encountered as methods for 'making meaningful cognitive experience' of those strange dynamics and their 'world animating' properties.

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​Symbolism is an Essential Way of Knowing this New Reality

The correlations between scientific evidence for agentic system networks and archaic notions of 'magical actions' or spiritual animation pose a potentially important epistemological role for symbolic representation of emergent ordering and network agency.  Though reductive scientific method now validates the reality of these 'technically acausal' phenomena, as the basis for selectively purposeful system behavior, it also demonstrates its limits in representing such phenomena in a tangibly explicit manner. An adequate appreciation of the implications of systems science requires some emotionally compelling representation. The archaic mode of modeling emergence and agentic systems through overtly non-literal images, concepts, and stories still induces emotional effects even upon people ideologically committed to a mechanistic worldview.  If that symbolism could be understood as representing actual scientific evidence and theories, then it could profoundly amplify our appreciation of the science. ​

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Mytho-logical Tales as 'Stories' of Emergence and Agentic System Behaviors​

From animistic indigenous cultures of Australia, North America, and Africa to the pantheistic mythologies of ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, China, and India, mythical tales symbolize the strange 'other worldly way things happen' according to systems science. ​From coyote tales to the epics of Homer, and even in contemporary 'super hero' entertainments, there are representations of those 'technically acausal' phenomena.

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Systems Thinking and the new Validity of Ancient Wisdom Traditions

All these aspects of a systems science based worldview provide new ways for understanding pre-modern cultural wisdom traditions. Those culturally evolved modes of thinking can now be understood as metaphorical models and philosophical orientations which enhance awareness of complexity, emergence, and agentic effects. In effect. these were the systems science versions of cultural evolution that served to promote long term human survival in pre-scientific societies. Examples from civilized cultures include aspects of Hindu and Buddhist philosophical traditions and related "mindfulness" practices. Perspectives from these traditional modes of thinking can make the data and concepts of systems science more tangible meaningful.

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Changing 'What There is To Know' and "How We can Know It' Changes Sense of Self

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In this Logically Next Worldview, Culture, Society, and Identity Appear Radically Different

If we take the above perspectives seriously, we will discover surprising new ways to understand how culture, society, and identity are actually configured, and how those configurations enable or constrain a more realistic understanding of the world. 'An individual' now appears as a fantastically interdependent array of agentic systems emerging from subsystems -- from 'alien' microbes that are essential to digestion to organ systems and communicating networks of neurological systems -- from which emerge cognitive mental systems, whose interactions somehow manifest 'immaterial meaning-making' and a 'sense of self' with relatively coherent though ultimately unpredictable personal behaviors. And so appear the dynamics of cultural and social systems. Contrast, disorder, even contradiction are revealed as 

inherent in and even essential to the self-ordering and self-directing agency of all these.

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​The Necessity of Promoting Our Right Brain Hemisphere Modes of Attention

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Facilitating this Transformation of our Assumptions and Cognitive Habits Requires Overt Promotion of Right Hemisphere Attention

The difficulties in fully appreciating this next worldview derive in large part from our reflexive assumption that all phenomena are dynamically linear and predictably causal. Neuroscience of how our left and right brain hemisphere's direct our attention, thus influence our thinking, indicates that this dynamical bias derives from our left-hemisphere mode of attention. If we are to consciously differentiate caual from emergent/agentic phenomena, so that we can 'live in both dynamical worlds,' we must make efforts to attend and think more through our right hemisphere mode of inclusive, holistic attention.​ Thinking the bi-dynamical realities of systems science requires 'using the two mindings of our one brain.' We must stimulate our right hemisphere intelligence to bring it 'back online' in guiding sustainable adaptive behaviors.​

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Using both our brain hemispheres to perceive and think bi-dynamically:​

 

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The Personal and Collective Adventure of a Systems Science-Based Worldview

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​Wisdom versus Knowledge in an Unpredictably Emergent, Agentically Self-Directing Worldview

The concepts of wisdom and knowledge gain important differentiation in a systems science-based worldview. If knowledge is considered to be understanding derived from scientifically verifiable evidence, then it now includes information about both deterministic events and, to a less precise degree, some aspects of unpredictably emergent, yet purposeful and agentic ones. Evidence for the latter confirms that there are phenomena we cannot predict nor control, and that those phenomena are actually what generate and maintain not only the biosphere but our capacity for consciousness. Thus, if wisdom is a capacity to perceive and interpret in the most inclusive manner, to attend to the 'wholeness' of phenomena, and thus have the most realistic perspective possible, then it must now involve appreciation of both 'ways that things happen.' That would mean ever-seeking insight and discretion about our actions in regard to the fundamentally unpredictable yet agentically purposeful factors of emergent self-organization. It would be ever-cautious about seeking certainties and complete manipulative control of either our selves or the biosphere, as that would be both delusional and could debilitate the self-sustaining capacities of human and natural systems. This view also indicates that wisdom is derived primarily from right brain hemispheric modes of attention and cognition. In short, to be 'wise,' we must never completely trust our left-hemisphere biased interpretations and judgments.

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The Adventure We Face is Both a Necessity for Sustainable Survival and an Encounter with Profoundly Enhanced Meaning

​There are both collective and personally individual aspects to this next worldview. It is essential to redirecting our civilized systems away from their human exploiting,  biosphere destroying trajectories. But it also offers a stunningly different way of experiencing one's self and the world. It puts purposeful agency back at the center of life and the manifesting or our embodied consciousness. ​

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​Transforming Our Worldview Assumptions about 'How Things Happen' is a Cultural Issue, not a Scientific One

​We now have the science we need to behave more adaptively in pursuit of survival. What is required now is a new culture -- that means new stories, imagery, art, tradition, and ritual, in intimate relation to this science. Our social systems cannot behave differently than they have been without a different set of cultural assumptions about reality that promote new priorities and values to guide our behavior.

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