What Is Systems Science?

Describing the eternal patterns and processes of nature, culture, and consciousness

Water cycles from the ocean through the sky, and the mountains and trees capture it as rain that flows in fractals of streams and rivers. Trees sequester the water in their roots, nurturing vast microbial networks that inform by carrying nutrients and messages from tree to tree, plant to plant, all organizing to emerge as the environment that shades and provides the moisture for rich and varied life.

The oceans, the atmosphere, the land, and the plants and animals are cycling, flowing, networking, informing, organizing without central control, and emerging to wholes within wholes. And, despite our attempts to contain and control, we humans organize ourselves in the same ways.

All things in existence are manifestations of the same universal patterns and processes.

This is the realm of systems science.

A science consists of three primary parts: The identification of regularities, the modeling and testing of those regularities, and the theories—the stories—that describe the meaning of those regularities.

Linneus identified the regularities of plants and animals, then he modeled them into a taxonomy of kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. This led and still leads to all kinds of experiments and theories about the interrelationships of various animals, plants, and those living things that are neither and both.

Indigenous Hawaiians noted the regularities of the moon, seasonal phases, and plant growth, and developed the moon calendar as a model. This leads to experiments and theories about various types of plants, seasons, and phases.

In systems science, the regularities are the patterns and processes organizing all things. We call these patterns, “system processes.”

While the conventional sciences focus on particular kinds of systems and then ask particular questions about them, systems science asks these questions, and many more, of every system: What are its subsystems? its suprasystems? How is it a network or part of a network? What are its boundaries? Inputs and Outputs? Cycles?

Thanks to computing, we can model system processes to show how networks within networks create boundaries, how things amplify in feedback loops and how balancing feedback checks it, how things cycle and synchronize, how things evolve and organize into whole new systems, and more.

This leads to a theory of systems that describes how, for 14 billion years, Nature has used the same system processes to organize everything. Nature’s experiments lead to successes and failures, and to the emergence of what exists in the ever-changing now.

Humans attempt to control, conquer, and use Nature. But in the long run, as any indigenous wisdom teacher will tell you, it doesn’t work. We may think that we go to parks to experience nature, but our bodies and selves, cities and technologies, even philosophies and theories are natural systems.

We humans are one of Nature’s many experiments, and may be only a brief blip in the ever-increasing complexity of the wonder of life on this planet. But we humans are creative beings.

Systems science has a clear purpose and direct usefulness. If we transcend the tendency to separate and divide, control and conquer, and if we can learn to organize ourselves as Nature organizes, toward nurturing life, then maybe we can create a world that nurtures us.

Please note: This view of systems science is grounded in Len Troncale’s Systems Processes Theory. The definition of science comes from conversations with and an unpublished paper by Duane Hybertson, author of Model-Oriented Systems Engineering Science.