"Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 121–180 AD)
"Living things have no inertia, and tend to no equilibrium." (Thomas H Huxley, "On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences", 1854)
"A vital phenomenon can only be regarded as explained if it has been proven that it appears as the result of the material components of living organisms interacting according to the laws which those same components follow in their interactions outside of living systems." (Adolf E Fick, "Gesammelte Schriften" Vol. 3, 1904)
"[A living organism] feeds upon negative entropy […] Thus, the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment." (Erwin Schrodinger, "What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell", 1944)
"Cybernetics is a word invented to define a new field in science. It combines under one heading the study of what in a human context is sometimes loosely described as thinking and in engineering is known as control and communication. In other words, cybernetics attempts to find the common elements in the functioning of automatic machines and of the human nervous system, and to develop a theory which will cover the entire field of control and communication in machines and in living organisms." (Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics", 1948)
"General systems theory is a series of related definitions, assumptions, and postulates about all levels of systems from atomic particles through atoms, molecules, crystals, viruses, cells, organs, individuals, small groups, societies, planets, solar systems, and galaxies. General behavior systems theory is a subcategory of such theory, dealing with living systems, extending roughly from viruses through societies. A significant fact about living things is that they are open systems, with important inputs and outputs. Laws which apply to them differ from those applying to relatively closed systems." (James G Miller, "General behavior systems theory and summary", Journal of Counseling Psychology 3 (2), 1956)
"Many of the activities of living organisms permit this double aspect. On the one hand the observer can notice the great deal of actual movement and change that occurs, and on the other hand he can observe that throughout these activities, so far as they are coordinated or homeostatic, there are invariants and constancies that show the degree of regulation that is being achieved."
"Learning is a property of all living organisms. […] Since organized groups can be looked upon as living entities, they can be expected to exhibit learning […]" (Winfred B. Hirschmann, "Profit from the Learning Curve", Harvard Business Review, 1964)
"[...] in a state of dynamic equilibrium with their environments. If they do not maintain this equilibrium they die; if they do maintain it they show a degree of spontaneity, variability, and purposiveness of response unknown in the non-living world. This is what is meant by ‘adaptation to environment’ […] [Its] essential feature […] is stability - that is, the ability to withstand disturbances." (Kenneth Craik, 'Living organisms', "The Nature of Psychology", 1966)
"System theory is basically concerned with problems of relationships, of structure, and of interdependence rather than with the constant attributes of objects. In general approach it resembles field theory except that its dynamics deal with temporal as well as spatial patterns. Older formulations of system constructs dealt with the closed systems of the physical sciences, in which relatively self-contained structures could be treated successfully as if they were independent of external forces. But living systems, whether biological organisms or social organizations, are acutely dependent on their external environment and so must be conceived of as open systems." (Daniel Katz, "The Social Psychology of Organizations", 1966)
"Conventional physics deals only with closed systems, i.e. systems which are considered to be isolated from their environment. [...] However, we find systems which by their very nature and definition are not closed systems. Every living organism is essentially an open system. It maintains itself in a continuous inflow and outflow, a building up and breaking down of components, never being, so long as it is alive, in a state of chemical and thermodynamic equilibrium but maintained in a so-called steady state which is distinct from the latter." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)
"Today our main problem is that of organized complexity. Concepts like those of organization, wholeness, directiveness, teleology, control, self-regulation, differentiation and the like are alien to conventional physics. However, they pop up everywhere in the biological, behavioural and social sciences, and are, in fact, indispensable for dealing with living organisms or social groups. Thus, a basic problem posed to modern science is a general theory of organization." (Ludwig von Bertalanff, "General System Theory, 1968)
"The fundamental problem today is that of organized complexity. Concepts like those of organization, wholeness, directiveness, teleology, and differentiation are alien to conventional physics. However, they pop up everywhere in the biological, behavioral and social sciences, and are, in fact, indispensable for dealing with living organisms or social groups. Thus a basic problem posed to modern science is a general theory of organization. General system theory is, in principle, capable of giving exact definitions for such concepts and, in suitable cases, of putting them to quantitative analysis." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)
"A living system, due to its circular organization, is an inductive system and functions always in a predictive manner: what happened once will occur again. Its organization, (genetic and otherwise) is conservative and repeats only that which works. For this same reason living systems are historical systems; the relevance of a given conduct or mode of behavior is always determined in the past." (Humberto Maturana, "Biology of Cognition", 1970)
"The words 'general systems theory' imply that some things can usefully be said about (living) systems in general, despite the immense diversity of their specific forms. One of these things should be a scheme of classification. Every science begins by classifying its subject matter, if only descriptively, and learns a lot about it in the process; and systems especially need this attention, because an adequate classification cuts across familiar boundaries and at the same time draws valid and important distinctions which have previously been sensed but not defined." (Geoffrey Vickers, 1970)
"Any living thing possesses an enormous amount of 'intelligence' [...] Today, this 'intelligence' is called 'information', but it is still the same thing. [...] This 'intelligence' is the sine qua non of life. If absent, no living being is imaginable. Where does it come from? This is a problem which concerns both biologists and philosophers, and, at present, science seems incapable of solving it." (Pierre P Grassé, "Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation", 1977)
"The autonomy of living systems is characterized by closed, recursive organization. [...] A system's highest order of recursion or feedback process defines, generates, and maintains the autonomy of a system. The range of deviation this feedback seeks to control concerns the organization of the whole system itself. If the system should move beyond the limits of its own range of organization it would cease to be a system. Thus, autonomy refers to the maintenance of a systems wholeness. In biology, it becomes a definition of what maintains the variable called living." (Bradford P Keeney, "Aesthetics of Change", 1983)
"The dynamics of any system can be explained by showing the relations between its parts and the regularities of their interactions so as to reveal its organization. For us to fully understand it, however, we need not only to see it as a unity operating in its internal dynamics, but also to see it in its circumstances, i.e., in the context to which its operation connects it. This understanding requires that we adopt a certain distance for observation, a perspective that in the case of historical systems implies a reference to their origin. This can be easy, for instance, in the case of man-made machines, for we have access to every detail of their manufacture. The situation is not that easy, however, as regards living beings: their genesis and their history are never directly visible and can be reconstructed only by fragments." (Humberto Maturana, "The Tree of Knowledge", 1987)
"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static 'snapshots'. It is a set of general principles- distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management. [...] During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character." (Peter Senge, "The Fifth Discipline", 1990)
"We need to abandon the economist's notion of the economy as a machine, with its attendant concept of equilibrium. A more helpful way of thinking about the economy is to imagine it as a living organism." (Paul Ormerod, "The Death of Economics", 1994)
"All systems evolve, although the rates of evolution may vary over time both between and within systems. The rate of evolution is a function of both the inherent stability of the system and changing environmental circumstances. But no system can be stabilized forever. For the universe as a whole, an isolated system, time’s arrow points toward greater and greater breakdown, leading to complete molecular chaos, maximum entropy, and heat death. For open systems, including the living systems that are of major interest to us and that interchange matter and energy with their external environments, time’s arrow points to evolution toward greater and greater complexity. Thus, the universe consists of islands of increasing order in a sea of decreasing order. Open systems evolve and maintain structure by exporting entropy to their external environments." (L Douglas Kiel, "Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences: Foundations and Applications", 1996)
"Entropy [...] is the amount of disorder or randomness present in any system. All non-living systems tend toward disorder; left alone they will eventually lose all motion and degenerate into an inert mass. When this permanent stage is reached and no events occur, maximum entropy is attained. A living system can, for a finite time, avert this unalterable process by importing energy from its environment. It is then said to create negentropy, something which is characteristic of all kinds of life." (Lars Skyttner, "General Systems Theory: Ideas and Applications", 2001)
"All living organisms must feed on continual flows of matter and energy: from their environment to stay alive, and all living organisms continually produce waste. However, an ecosystem generates no net waste, one species' waste being another species' food. Thus, matter cycles continually through the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)
"The science of cybernetics is not about thermostats or machines; that characterization is a caricature. Cybernetics is about purposiveness, goals, information flows, decision-making control processes and feedback (properly defined) at all levels of living systems." (Peter Corning, "Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Evolution of Politics", 2005)
"When defining living systems, the term dynamic equilibrium is essential. It does not imply something which is steady or stable. On the contrary, it is a floating state characterized by invisible movements and preparedness for change. To be in dynamic equilibrium is adapting adjustment to balance. Homeostasis stands for the sum of all control functions creating the state of dynamic equilibrium in a healthy organism. It is the ability of the body to maintain a narrow range of internal conditions in spite of environmental changes." (Lars Skyttner, "General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspective, Practice", 2005)
"The living world can be viewed as a biological hierarchy that starts with subcellular particles, and continues up through cells, tissues and organs. Ecology deals with the next three levels: the individual organism, the population (consisting of individuals of the same species) and the community (consisting of a greater or lesser number of species populations). At the level of the organism, ecology deals with how individuals are affected by (and how they affect) their environment. At the level of the population, ecology is concerned with the presence or absence of particular species, their abundance or rarity, and with the trends and fluctuations in their numbers. Community ecology then deals with the composition and organization of ecological communities." (Michael Begon et al, "Ecology: From individuals to ecosystems", 2006)
"Organisms live and die by the amount of information they acquire about their environment [...]" (Andreas Wagner, "From bit to it: how a complex metabolic network transforms information into living matter", BMC Systems Biology, 2007)
"We can draw several general conclusions. First, because populations of living organisms tend to grow exponentially, numbers can rise very rapidly. This explains the inevitable population pressure that helped Darwin realize the role of natural selection, Second, exponential growth must always be a short-term, temporary phenomenon; for living organisms, the growth typically stops because of predation or a lack of sufficient nutrients or energy. Third, these laws about growth apply to all species- our intelligence cannot make us immune to simple mathematical laws. This is a critical lesson, because human population has been growing exponentially for the past few centuries. Of course, our intelligence gives us one option not available to bacteria. Exponential growth can stop only through some combination of an increase in the death rate and a decrease in the birth rate." (Jeffrey O Bennett & Seth Shostak, "Life in the universe" 3rd Ed., 2012)
"Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)
"Shallow ecology is anthropocentric, or human-centered. It views humans as above or outside of nature, as the source of all value, and ascribes only instrumental, or ‘use’, value to nature. Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)
"Cybernetics studies the concepts of control and communication in living organisms, machines and organizations including self-organization. It focuses on how a (digital, mechanical or biological) system processes information, responds to it and changes or being changed for better functioning (including control and communication)." (Dmitry A Novikov, "Cybernetics 2.0", 2016)
"Living organisms are not just bags of information: they are computers. It follows that a full understanding of life will come only from unravelling its computational mechanisms. And that requires an excursion into the esoteric but fascinating foundations of logic, mathematics and computing." (Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life", 2019)
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