Systems Theory and the Sciences of Complexity
Systems Theory and the Sciences of Complexity
Wilber's View
Wilber treats the 20th-century emergence of systems/complexity theory — General System Theory, cybernetics, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, cellular automata theory, catastrophe theory, autopoietic system theory, dynamic systems theory, chaos theory — as the scientific breakthrough that closes the gap between matter and life that modern science itself had opened (see great-chain-of-being). The key discovery, in his telling, is that under the right conditions matter itself "winds up" into higher order rather than only running down — a whirlpool forming spontaneously in draining water is his illustrative example of "order out of chaos." That gives holism ("everything is connected to everything else") a basis in hard science rather than only in tradition or intuition.
What this page doesn't yet cover: the source notes behind this page stop at Wilber's positive case for systems theory — what it gets right, and why it matters for reuniting the physiosphere and biosphere. Elsewhere in SES he goes on to criticize systems theory's limits (roughly: that it can still describe only exteriors — patterns, structures, behavior — and doesn't by itself account for interiority, meaning, or consciousness, risking a subtler version of the "flatland" he criticizes elsewhere). That critique isn't excerpted here yet because it isn't in the source notes this page was built from — flagged as a clear next addition once more of the book gets processed, not a stance this page is silently taking.
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
"Under certain circumstances matter will 'wind itself up' into states of higher order…"
The closing of the gap between the physiosphere and the biosphere came precisely in the rather recent discovery of those subtler and originally hidden aspects of the material realm that, under certain circumstances, propel themselves into states of higher order, higher complexity, and higher organization. In other words, under certain circumstances matter will "wind itself up" into states of higher order, as when the water running down a drain suddenly ceases to be chaotic and forms a perfect funnel or whirlpool. Whenever material processes become very chaotic and "far from equilibrium," they tend under their own power to escape chaos by transforming it into a higher and more structured order—commonly called "order out of chaos."
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Book 1: The Web of Life
"The sciences of complexity — including General System Theory, cybernetics, nonequilibrium thermodynamics…"
The new sciences dealing with these "self-winding" or "self-organizing" systems are known collectively as the sciences of complexity—including General System Theory (Bertalanffy, Weiss), cybernetics (Wiener), nonequilibrium thermodynamics (Prigogine), cellular automata theory (von Neumann), catastrophe theory (Thom), autopoietic system theory (Maturana and Varela), dynamic systems theory (Shaw, Abraham), and chaos theories, among others. I do not mean to minimize the very real differences between these various sciences, or the great advances that the more recent sciences of complexity… have made over their predecessors. But since my aim is very general, I will refer to them collectively as systems theory, dynamic systems theory, or evolutionary systems theory.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Book 1: The Web of Life
"Everything is connected to everything else"
They claim, in other words, that "everything is connected to everything else"—the web of life as a scientific and not just religious conclusion.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Book 1: The Web of Life
See Also
- great-chain-of-being — the older, traditional picture this modern science is presented as vindicating
- holons / holarchy — the units and structure systems theory is describing
