Why Systems Science Now
A Rosetta Stone for Understanding How Nature (and we as part of Nature) Works
Systems science has the power and potential to provide a template, a Rosetta Stone, for how Nature’s systems work. First, it’s pragmatic. If we can understand how complex systems work generally, then we see more clearly how specific systems work. This template can help us to not only design better systems, but it has the potential to show us how our systems go wrong and how to evolve them.
Traditionally, the highest honors in universities go to specialists, but the big problems–the climate crisis, world wars, economic disparities–can’t be tackled by specialists. Systems science offers another approach.
While the individual sciences ask particular questions about particular types of systems, systems science asks the same questions about every kind of system. Questions like:
Is this system made up of systems? Is it part of systems?
What are its boundaries? Inputs? Outputs? Are the boundaries open or closed? How can you tell?
Is it a network? Is it a node in a larger network or networks?
Does this system organize with others to emerge as new systems? Do its subsystems organize using a few rules to emerge as a whole?
How is energy, material, and information distributed through the system? Does the system rely on networks of distribution?
The science and the questions apply to everything, not only physical, chemical, biological, ecological, and astronomical systems, but to self, marriage, and family, to communities and organizations, to politics, economics, and justice, and even to ethics and spirituality.
Systems science offers a massive shift in worldview. Everything, our societies, technologies, even philosophies and religions, are natural systems. The science demonstrates how the separation is an illusion.
Systems science is the key to seeing our interconnectedness and interdependence, to seeing ourselves, individually and as a species, as part of the ever-changing kaleidoscope of being and becoming. But most importantly, it gives us new models and tools for organizing ourselves, individually and collectively, toward a more peaceful and healthier existence.