The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

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What do We have to Understand to Understand this New Science?​

 

How do We Understand what We do not Think is Real?

What could be more challenging than realizing that one's basic assumptions about reality, about 'how things actually happen,' are dangerously inadequate? To be clear, what systems science confronts us with is not that our physics and concepts of mechanistic causation are false, but rather, that this way of understanding phenomena is incomplete. In one sense, this challenge to existing science-based assumptions is not new. Many times in recent centuries, the expansion of scientific knowledge has 're-written' its concepts of nature. However, this time it has overturned our cultural expectation that all scientific 'facts' would necessarily portray the world as a manifestation of predictably deterministic causation. If we must now adopt assumptions which validate unpredictably emergent, self-ordering, and agency-driven aspects of 'how things happen,' then we are confronted with a fundamentally different reality.

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Both professional scientists and more non-technical people will understandably resist this preposterous conclusion. However, anyone who regards scientific method as the most reliable means of discerning what is 'actual' from what is not, must now give this new science serious consideration. Admittedly, it is tempting to dismiss it as somehow peripheral to a practical mindset. However, it turns out to be essential to understanding how and why modern civilization has both failed to attain its ethical ideals and promoted ecological collapse at the same time. Understanding this science is crucial to our very survival as a species. It is a practical necessity. But, it also has the potential to provide us us with an enhanced sense of meaning and purpose.

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Accepting that Reductive Science can Reveal What It Cannot Explain -- and Why

Perhaps the most challenging first step towards this next worldview involves our sense of 'scientific reality.' We must somehow comprehend that it is our exquisitely precise knowledge of deterministically causal phenomena that has provided us with evidence for unpredictably emergent ordering and subsequent system agency. It is our ability to measure and calculate the dynamical behaviors of systems that reveals their self-ordering, self-asserting properties. Our capacity to quantify changes in complex systems actually provides evidence for how these are occurring in ways that are not predictably deterministic. It seems fair to say that this is 'not what we expect from science.' But, it is what we are getting.

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Knowledge of deterministic causality does not lose importance in the worldview of complex systems science. Rather, it becomes a basis for discerning the dynamics of emergent ordering and the manifestation of agency. Indeed, systems science derives from applying a sophisticated understanding of causality to detect and tract self-ordering, self-directing feedback networks -- thus the manifestation of their characteristic forms of agency.​​ The scientific method has not changed. But our assumptions about what it can reveal must. The 'why' of how science can reveal what it cannot fully analyze and explain is in the insight it provides into the strange dynamics of complex adaptive systems: the actual self-ordering and self-directing of these systems cannot derive directly and only from deterministic causation. The laws of physics actually confirm this fact. The world and life are emergently ordered and agentic 'because' that is the only way such levels of complexity can manifest -- according to the laws of physics.

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The Re-Definition of Chaos as Spontaneous Order Generating Turbulence

The concept of "chaos" is often understood as 'the absence of order.' Complex systems science derives in large part from study of unpredictably erratic systems, such as weather. Though 'driven' by deterministic factors or forces, thus conceivably predictable if those factors could be measured accurately enough, such systems are shown to manifest in ways that are termed 'non-periodic.' They vary in unpredictably turbulent ways. At they same time, they tend to produce spontaneous increases in organization that, because these are not fully predictable, are termed "emergent." This ordering 'emerges' from the disorder in the system. This emergently order generating turbulence or chaos appears to be the basis of yet further emergent self-organizing systems that can actually sustain and even manipulate their own ordering -- termed "complex adaptive systems."​​

 

The Fundamental Concept of 'Harnessing' Emergent Order from Disorder in Recursive Feedback Networks

Unlike basic physics' description of deterministic causation, systems science does not offer easily conceived 'laws' for understanding complex dynamics. The 'rules' of comple​x systems, by which they self-organize and self-direct, are not strictly deterministic, but fundamentally unpredictable. Complex adaptive systems literally 'make up their own rules' --  they self-generate their ordering, and can change it purposefully.  These 'emergent' system properties and behaviors cannot be understood in strictly deterministic or mechanistic terms.

 

Perhaps the most important concept to bear in mind, if we are to incorporate systems science into a new/next worldview, involves how systems can create their forms and behaviors from their own internal turbulence -- or, 'order made from disorder.' To approach such phenomena, we must focus upon how recursive flows of 'intra-acting' influence among system parts and their network nodes occurs concurrently, or simultaneously, to synergistically generate their emergent properties. We might describe this as the concept that complex system feedback networks are the fundamental 'genesis' of emergently self-directing ordering and agentic system properties. In this way, recursive feedback networks can 'harness' the spontaneous order generation of turbulent or chaotic activity. Serious examination of feedback networks will transform our understanding of most natural and human systems.

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The Basic Challenge: Consciously Thinking through Two Contrasting Dynamics Using Both Our Brain Hemispheres

This science of what can be known about how complex systems 'do what they do,' as well as what cannot be known, is a mathematical odyssey. Comprehending its implications 'in the real world,' from our existing expectations, is torturous. However,  just as systems science has challenged our modern mechanistic assumptions about reality, by revealing emergent ordering and agentic systems, neuroscience confronts us with the reductive left brain hemisphere attentional bias of our thinking. Fortunately, this science of mind can assist our 'making sense' of this new dynamical model of 'how things happen.' To think in more realistic scientific terms, we must not only study systems science. We must also consciously analyze how we are using the 'two minds in our one brain' to attend to, interpret, and experience all complex phenomena.

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​The 'Why' of the 'How' -- Seeking Understanding of Agentic Phenomena through Purposefulness

One of the most confounding aspects of complex systems science is its evidence for agentic system behaviors -- that some systems can self-direct and reconfigure for the purpose of asserting their continued existence (as if manifesting agency). Further, systems without discreet biological bodies or brains can be shown to do so. This information poses a new basis for 'the question why.' The word why is defined as meaning 'for what reason or purpose.'  That is an inquiry into 'motivation.' Thus, to be accurate, one must be careful about confusing the question 'why' with that of 'how.' Defined as 'in what way or manner, or by what means,' the question how is reflexively reductive. It seeks the 'mechanism' of an event's occurrence. 'How' appears then to be a 'materialistic' inquiry. In this sense, the answer to 'how' must be quantifiable and definable. If the 'manner and means' of an event cannot be fully described and explained, then the 'how' of it is incomplete. There is then an inherent limitation to answering 'how' questions when it comes to emergent ordering and agentic systems. Indeed, If, when asking 'why.' as in 'for what purpose,' systems science indicates it that the 'how of why' is not a question that has any reductive, mechanistic answer. In other words, the question 'why' is always an inquiry into the agentic properties of emergent self-organizing networks.

 

If we seek understanding of 'how' agentic systems 'do what they do,' we must necessarily seek information about 'why.' In so far as agentic systems act purposefully, then these 'do what they do,' resulting in material effects that can be measured, by emergent self-ordering for future purposes. What information about the 'how' of this 'why' that we can access is found by analyzing ways system feedback networks promote particular system forms, properties, and behaviors in relation to their potential continued existence. That approach to 'why' is not limited to animal or human intentionality. It is not limited to 'feelings.' It is not primarily an investigation of 'emotion' or 'opinion,' or even 'reason' -- all of which can now be seen as emergent properties of animal complex systems' capacity for purposeful self-assertion which also manifests in non-animal systems. A simplistic summary statement might be: the 'how' of deterministic causation somehow provides the basis for emergent self-organization, which is the 'how' of the 'why' of agentic system behaviors -- only, that latter 'how' is not entirely deterministic.

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We cannot have significant insight into our own human systems, especially large scale super organism socio-economic ones, without close examination of their underlying purposefulness deriving from the configuration of their influence feedback networks. Only through such analysis can we differentiate between our intentions for those systems and what  purposes their agentic self-assertion is actually promoting, or resisting.

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The 'Doubled Vision' of 'Seeing Bi-Dynamically'

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To perceive in terms of the 'two ways things happen' can be thought of as 'seeing bi-dynamically,' or both in terms of deterministic causation and emergent ordering. Somehow, we require a kind of 'doubled vision' that provides awareness of ​when phenomena are occurring in one manner or the other. Yet, also, how these are inextricably entwined in the emergence of complex systems and agentic networks.

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​'Seeing both ways at once':

 

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So What do We 'See' when We 'See Bi-Dynamically?'

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The Oscillating Bi-Hemispheric Attention of Bi-Dynamical Awareness

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From the perspective of systems science, forming awareness of a bi-dynamical reality and its fundamentally relational phenomena would seem to be an evolutionary necessity. To survive we must have this capacity. And indeed, we do have bilateralized brains evolved to provide it. Our contemporary problem is that we have not been using 'both sides of our brains' adequately.

 

For we mechanistic moderns, this 'bi-dynamical' perspective for 'seeing' the new scientific reality' is profoundly challenging. It requires a kind of 'meta' awareness of how we are attending to and thinking about phenomena. Because our default mode of understanding is in terms of deterministic causation. we must be constantly 'suspicious' of how we are conceiving and interpreting 'how things happen.' We must be alert to the fact that we tend to 'see' reductively rather than inclusively, that we reflexively interpret in terms of deterministic causation, while ignoring emergent ordering and its agentic effects. This is the primary practice of re-configuring our worldview. It can be promoted by becoming more aware of the roles our two brain hemispheres play in forming our awareness and modes of interpretation.

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It has been posited that our bi-hemispheric brains, with two different attentional modalities, evolved to function cooperatively, yet in a kind of circular process that promotes the right hemisphere's inclusive perspective. In this view, the inclusive right hemisphere modality initiates awareness that is then examined by the more reductive left hemisphere mode, whose interpretations are then 'passed back' to the right for overall integrated interpretation. In contrast, modern attitudes are regarded as being biased toward the left modality in ways that obviate the operations of the right as the 'final arbiter' of 'how things happen' and 'what that means.' If that view is correct, then it provides guidance for how we need to re-direct our perception and interpretation of phenomena.

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Network Vision: 'Seeing' in Terms of 'Relational Phenomena'

Things , Events, Systems as the Properties of Relationships -- Deterministic AND Emergent or Agentic.

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Since complex system networks manifest self-ordering and agentic self-assertion that are emergent properties of their synergistic interdependent feedback flows, meaning those properties cannot be predicted or explained in reference to the material parts of the system nor its preceding history, then the 'behavioral whole' of such systems is a 'relational phenomena.' Self-organization and agentic purposefulness are 'of network relationships. 

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The science of networks provides a basis to conceive most all phenomena as having properties manifesting from networked relationships. If we adopt an attitude of 'network vision,' we can approach things and events as 'the relationships among the parts.'  Examining those relationships from a bi-dynamical perspective, we might be able to specify which are causally deterministic or emergent, or both.

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The Factual Spirituality of an Agentic Worldview

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A Baseline Concept of Agentic System 'Spirituality'

If we are to view the world in an adequately bi-dynamical manner, in some way or other we must acknowledge the primary role of systems which manifest agentic properties. Any adequately realistic worldview after systems science requires a category for such phenomena. This term 'agentic' is a formation derived from the word agency, defined as 'action to produce a particular effect,' and agent, usually understood as 'a person' who is the 'doer of an action,' which necessarily derives from an intention to produce a future effect. Agency is an obvious property of animals. Humans and most animals can readily be observed to be the 'doers of an action intended to produce a particular effect,' thereby manifesting purposeful behavior. Complex systems science provides insights in the 'how' of such motivated 'why' behavior by revealing the unpredictably dynamics of complex system networks, such as those of brain and mind. In so doing, the science also reveals how systems that are not discreet animals, such as societies, governments, and institutional organizations, manifest from the same network dynamics and produce similar future oriented purposeful behaviors. Thus, purposeful self-organizing, self-directing systems are not found only in animals. This 'self-animating' property is pervasive in both natural and human systems.

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The word spirit derives from the Latin spiritus and spirare, translated as breath and breathe. In philosophical and religious contexts, the word spirit is understood as the 'animating essence' of a person, or a 'vital principal' that animates all living things. Some version of this notion is found in all pre-modern cultures. In contemporary usage, people speak of spirit as a particular attitude expressed by how someone acts or thinks, as in, 'she expresses the spirit of the game,' or, 'He has the spirit of a lion.' That notion of spirit is also very ancient. From the perspective of systems science, the notion of an 'animating principle' can be understood generally as emergent self-organizing self-directedness in system networks which can be demonstrated as factual, through quantitative analysis of system actions and effects. In that view, 'spirit' can manifest in any complex adaptive system. Here, we can propose a baseline concept of agentic systems (those which express purposeful behaviors) as intrinsically 'spiritual.' From that position, complex systems science can be regarded as a 'science of spirituality.'

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The notion of spirit as a particular attitude or manner of acting, of expressing agency in a given context for specific purposes, suggests that animating spirit 'has character.' If 'spirit' can be differentiated into various 'versions,' then it expresses particular characteristics associated with both how a system behaves and for what purposes. In that regard, spirit (or agentic system behaviors) manifest in what might be termed a psychological way. That is, spirit or agentic behavior can be 'characterized' in terms of a behavioral 'attitude' associated with a system's purposefulness. The conclusion to all this might be: Agentic systems manifest 'spiritual animation' that can be characterized relative to the behavior of other agentic systems. Systems science has further references for these thoughts in that system behaviors can often be correlated with particular traits of how their feedback networks are configured and how influence moves among parts across those networks. Different network traits can give some indication of how agentic behavior might manifest, thus how a system might be characterized.

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Knowing Agentic Systems through Archetypal Characterization and Symbolic Representation

 

The Archetypal Network Characterization of Agentic Systems and Their Self-Asserting Behaviors

Because agentic systems are dynamically unpredictable (or, not mechanistic), it is not possible to know 'what they will do next' with any certainty. How then are we to have insight into their behaviors so we can act adaptively in response to theirs? If we cannot predict future behaviors confidently from past ones, then we can only gather references to form some expectations of how a system might behave relative to past behaviors and their apparent purposefulness -- what they did and for what seeming purposes.

That approach can be understood as 'constellating' networked references to pose the 'archetypal character' of an agentic system self-assertion. We can call this approach to understanding agentic systems as 'archetypal network characterization' of internal and external system relationships.  It is a cognitive effort we all do reflexively but must be formally promoted if we are to have a more realistic worldview.

 

The problem can be illustrated by reference to interpersonal human relationships. Other people often appear to behave in relatively consistent ways. But they also can suddenly behave in unexpected ways. That is because they are agentic complex adaptive systems. Thus, we must observe them over time, get a sense of their various ways of thinking in different contexts, perhaps gain some knowledge of their historical experience and behaviors. Then we might be able to roughly associate these references in ways that characterized them -- as selfish, generous, domineering, cooperative, competitive, or deceitful 'types.' Such categories can be extended to more formal psychological types, such as extrovert or introvert, type A or Type B personality, narcissistic or sociopathic. So this 'psychological profiling' is a form of archetypal characterization of how agency or spirit has manifested thus might be likely to do so in the future.

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The Symbolic Representation of Emergent Ordering Dynamics and Agentic / Spiritual System Character

A further method for representing types of agentic system behaviors is through metaphoric symbolism. This approach employs likenesses to provide references for characteristic expressions of agency or spirit. Metaphors 'stand for something' that is not directly or literally represented in the metaphor, whether in the form of words, images, or allegories. Metaphors in effect present a representation as 'like' another phenomena. We can think of this as a form of 'modeling,' in which the traits of the metaphoric expression are 'carried over' to characterize that of different thing or event. To state that 'John runs like a wolf, or 'John is a wolf,' metaphorically characterizes John in reference to 'wolf-ness.' The meaning is not that John is literally a wolf, but that John's behavior can be understood in networked references to behaviors associated with wolves. That can be extended to the sense that 'John manifests wolf spirit.'

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This characterizing an agentic system in terms of likeness to phenomena that are not literally part of it, can be regarded as 'metaphorical modeling of dynamical behaviors.' When we describe living systems as 'machines,' we are suggesting those systems are dynamically mechanistic. From the perspective of systems science, that metaphoric representation appears inaccurate because biological systems are emergently self-ordering and agentic in ways that cannot be reduced to mechanistic dynamics. But if we characterize a government or corporation as a 'many-headed hydra monster,' then the metaphor can be seen as dynamically appropriate. Governments and corporations are emergently self-asserting super organism systems composed of many subsystems that manifest in conflicting ways and are intrinsically psychopathic. 

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In the context of artistic expression, the forms of an image or sculpture can be engaged as modeling complex dynamics metaphorically. A Jackson Pollack painting provides an experiential impression of how chaotically interacting elements can somehow 'synchronize' in our awareness, giving a sense of interacting 'wholeness' without being reduced to a singular, uniform, or sequential dynamical status.

 

Symbols similarly 'stand for' something these are not. That can mean a national flag or religious icon such as a cross. Metaphoric symbolization can be understood as a more overt characterization of some phenomena in a symbolic form. In this mode, images and concepts of 'divine agents,' such as gods and goddesses, can be approached as symbols that 'personify' how agentic system self-assertion becomes characteristically expressed in the world. As metaphoric symbols, the traits of a particular divinity are 'carried over' in our understanding to provide insight into the ways agentic systems 'do what they do.' An associated diversity of such divinities, as in a pagan 'pantheon' of gods and goddesses, poses an array of such symbolic characterizations that 'constellate' a dynamically active relational field of potential interactions among these, which collectively models the potential ways agentic system self-assertion can form and interact.

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The Cultural Implications of a Networked Centered Perspective
 

The World as it Appears ... Now​

Self, Society, and Culture in an Agentic Worldview

 

Identity after Systems Science

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Society after Systems Science

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Culture after Systems Science

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-- the political, social, economic relevance: these CAS systems cannot have ethics,  thus agents most aligned with the self-assertion of those systems are more likely to act in service to that self-assertion 'as their own' than from human empathy

--hegemony as 'harnessing' of lower level turbulent emergent ordering 'for manipulative purposes'

--hierarchical social systems 'justified' in terms of self-assertion purposes: for power or human/natural 'well being'

--individualism vs communal/collectivism in adaptive system behaviors

--Freedom is source of SO but can debilitate it

--society as 'creaturely' in ways relative to its network configurations and feedback flows
--living as, in, with fundamental mystery and ambiguity
--new view systems, society, culture, identity,
--a shift impossible directly from our existing left hemisphere biased mentality
--A Cultural Bias Toward Right Brain Hemisphere Understanding

--conundrum of education divided by left-hemisphere biasing causal realism vs 'everything else'

--ideology and deception: abstracted concepts/assumptions about adaptive purpose become basis for super organism systems manipulation of agents -- 'floating signifiers'

​--language usage​

fundamental Uncertainty and mystery:,  cognitive fuge

individuality and identity

Social Systems
Culture

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Confronting this New Scientific Reality is a Necessity in Our Time of 'Poly-crisis'

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​Ecosystem collapse, a sixth mass extinction of species occurring at record speed, and radical disruption of global climate systems resulting in devastating weather, have all been factually attributed to human behaviors. These concerns are at the core of what has been termed the "poly-crisis." Systems science provides stunning new insights into how we have changed the very biosphere and planet. In doing so, it also reveals that those human behaviors derive from the feedback networks of our agentic super organism social and economic systems. Thus, this 'poly-crisis' of multiple existential threats to future prosperity, perhaps even human survival, is actually a crisis of civilization. It is about the way our human system feedback networks are configured to self-assert in ways that devastate natural ones, thus ultimately humans.  

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