{"id":1786,"date":"2012-05-14T09:40:57","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T14:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=1786"},"modified":"2015-02-20T12:42:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T17:42:58","slug":"general-intro-natural-systems-synapse9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/general-intro-natural-systems-synapse9\/","title":{"rendered":"General intro: Natural Systems & Synapse9"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are quite a number of “systems of systems thinking”, that I broadly describe the history of in my entry in the\u00a0Encyclopedia\u00a0of the Earth on Complex Systems<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0Every science made up its own, for example, which are sometimes linked and sometimes not really linked much at all. \u00a0The introduction to the “Natural Systems Theory<\/a><\/strong>” behind it, a scientific method for studying naturally occurring systems, is found on the research archive site. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>The subject could also be called “General Behavioral Economics<\/b>” or for its focus on the complex development of local systems of organization serving as the working “capital” of nature and apparently all kinds of energy using systems, or<\/span><\/i>\u00a0a “General Systems Ecology<\/b>” as another name for\u00a0the same thing.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The thinking somewhat overlaps with “General Systems Theory”<\/b>\u00a0and “Complexity Theory<\/b>” but doesn’t focus as those\u00a0fields do on inventing theories for nature. The focus on\u00a0theoretical models, that people have often quite ingeniously developed, if for creating a substitute way to represent physical behavioral systems.\u00a0 The study here is more focused on\u00a0the organization and transformations of nature<\/span>, the ones we cannot define<\/span>. \u00a0 So it might then be called a “Real Systems Theory<\/b>” or “Non-theoretical Systems Theory<\/b>“.\u00a0\u00a0 The focus is on studying\u00a0actual individual systems of the natural world, in their own innate\u00a0forms and locations<\/span>. It still uses recorded information, but for study of where the information came from rather than how we can turn it into something else, using\u00a0abstract models to represent it.\u00a0 Carefully defined abstract models are certainly used, …but mostly to help expose and clarify the quite different means and different patterns of organization found in the intermittent relationships we find systems around us formed by, and how they behave as wholes.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This change in thinking is a sometimes confusing problem, which also displays “systems thinking” (as a culture and language) as going through evolutionary stages of emerging forms, like the great eruption of new biological forms called the Cambrian Explosion. \u00a0 Here the struggle is to move from a “modeling” to a “learning” approach to the complex organizations of nature, and how that will settle will not be clear for a while. \u00a0 This site records but one example of the struggle it involves, but clearly one of the places “where the action is”, at present. \u00a0 ed 9\/23\/14<\/em><\/p>\n

_______<\/em><\/p>\n

Many “systems of systems thinking” represent the\u00a0accumulation\u00a0of an individual person’s work over decades, and may be original enough to not have apparent\u00a0connections to other languages for how things work other than how they individually have learned to use them. \u00a0 So as a “discipline” \u00a0Systems Thinking is a “silo” with lots of “micro-silos”. \u00a0 Being thrown into them is a little “sink or swim”, with little to grab onto.<\/p>\n

Like most systems themselves, though, most people have some “starting point” for their organized way of thinking about systems. \u00a0 It might be the nesting of small operations\/management units within large ones, for example, as\u00a0you might find in studying how a business works. \u00a0 \u00a0I look at those common units of organization as a “cybernetic body parts” to be use to help understand the\u00a0observed\u00a0systems around you. \u00a0That treats systems thinking as a “learning process”, though, rather than as a a way to define the mechanisms of systems , though. \u00a0Real systems work in more complex ways than our mental models can describe.<\/p>\n

My main focus in on natural systems that are identifiable “self-managing units” of organization (natural systems). \u00a0\u00a0For them the “management” of the system becomes a role for the loops of relationships that are also the system’s “operations”, so operations and management are not separated, but the same. \u00a0The loops of relationships\u00a0define the “body” of its organization as a whole individual working unit. \u00a0 That definition by observation also provides an observable “natural boundary” to locate in the environment, and a way to define individual systems\u00a0for research studies\u00a0by their own unique shape and location.<\/p>\n

Maybe the following summary would offer a kind of \u00a0\u201clife preserver\u201d for the \u201csink or swim\u201d task, that the somewhat\u00a0unwieldy\u00a0accumulation of my work presents. \u00a0;-) \u00a0 \u00a0My approach starts with recognizing that growth, for a business, social or physical system, is itself a:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. a self-managing system for building whole systems,\n
      \n
    1. starting from a seed of organization<\/li>\n
    2. using existing resources in an open environment<\/li>\n
    3. that I can observe closely, and\n
        \n
      1. helps me pick out simple models of working parts<\/li>\n
      2. to then better understand the full relationships of the things seen in their real contexts<\/li>\n
      3. importantly for understanding the transition between growth and maturation\n
          \n
        1. when the system\u2019s surplus resources change use<\/li>\n
        2. from first developing internal relationships to then develop external relationships<\/li>\n
        3. from first building the scale of the growing system<\/li>\n
        4. and then to maturing its relationships<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
          \"Growth
          Systems develop on a path of changing organizational stages<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

          My materials are kind of scattered all over my site and blog.<\/p>\n

          PICS<\/a> projecting images of complex systems<\/p>\n

          Chapters<\/a> of whole system events<\/p>\n

          TEA<\/a> total environmental assessment PDF slides<\/a><\/p>\n

          Blog: Reading Nature\u2019s Signals<\/a><\/p>\n

          Intro: Open Systems Physics<\/a><\/p>\n

          HDS systems design science:\u00a0Consulting services<\/a>,\u00a0Publication list<\/a><\/p>\n

          Proposal: Natural Principles for steering the global economy<\/a><\/p>\n

          My Influences<\/a> general site \u00a0Synapse9<\/a> and \u00a0search tools<\/a><\/p>\n

          jlh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          There are quite a number of “systems of systems thinking”, that I broadly describe the history of in my entry in the\u00a0Encyclopedia\u00a0of the Earth on Complex Systems. \u00a0Every science made up its own, for example, which are sometimes linked and sometimes not really linked much at all. \u00a0The introduction to the “Natural Systems Theory” behind … Continue reading General intro: Natural Systems & Synapse9<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,7,8],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-among-best-2","category-teaching","category-econn","category-theory","tag-org-stage-models"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3055,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/3055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}