The systems view of life pdf download

Indeed, such a new conception has emerged over the last 30 years. In our new book, The Systems View of Life, we integrate the ideas, models, and theories underlying this new understanding of life into a single coherent framework.

We offer a multidisciplinary textbook that integrates four dimensions of life: the biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions; and we discuss the philosophical, social, and political implications of this unifying vision.

Taking a broad sweep through history and across scientific disciplines, beginning with the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, we chronicle the evolution of Cartesian mechanism from the 17th to the 20th centuries, the rise of systems thinking in the s and s, the revolutionary paradigm shift in 20th-century physics, and the development of complexity theory technically known as nonlinear dynamics , which raised systems thinking to an entirely new level.

During the past 30 years, the strong interest in complex, nonlinear phenomena has generated a whole series of new and powerful theories that have dramatically increased our understanding of many key characteristics of life.

Our synthesis of these theories, which takes up the central part of our book, is what we refer to as the systems view of life. In this article, we can present only a few highlights. One of the most important insights of the systemic understanding of life is the recognition that networks are the basic pattern of organisation of all living systems.

Wherever we see life, we see networks. Indeed, at the very heart of the change of paradigms from the mechanistic to the systemic view of life we find a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. Closer examination of these living networks has shown that their key characteristic is that they are self-generating.

Technically, this is known as the theory of autopoiesis, developed in the s and s by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Living networks continually create, or recreate themselves by transforming or replacing their components.

In this way they undergo continual structural changes while preserving their web-like patterns of organisation. This coexistence of stability and change is indeed one of the key characteristics of life. In our synthesis, we extend the conception of living networks from biological to social networks, which are networks of communications; and we discuss the implications of the paradigm shift from the machine to the network for two specific fields: management and health care.

One of the most rewarding features of the systems view of life is the new understanding of evolution it implies. The logic of part and whole is one understandable reason why many scientists and critics reject systems theory, which in its organicist mode begins to look like a reactionary approach to our fragmentary, viral ecosocieties. One way around these objections is the second-order systems theory of Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann, but this is the path not taken by Capra and Luisi. The textbook addresses Luhmann briefly in a section on social autopoeisis.

What both of these theorists add in their readings of first-order cybernetics is a collection of concepts that no longer requires the distinction between part and whole. The same approach also brings into play some of the epistemological problems that attend to self-referential systems for example, that we observe self-referential systems as self-referential systems when we are systems thinkers , but which are absent from the text.

Why does systems thinking matter for ecocritics? Even more, systems thinking appears to be one of very few methods of interpreting the world that does not have some form of nature-culture distinction or anthropocentrism built into it from the outset. For those who are interested in learning how systems theories play out in cultural criticism, recent work by several American critics applies systems thinking literature and other media.

For example, Cary Wolfe in What is Posthumanism? Other examples could also be cited that show a recent growth of interest in the tradition summarized by Capra and Luisi. Finally, systems thinking has the potential to influence how critics conceptualize scientism and naturalization, and thus how they relate to claims made by the natural sciences. The Systems View of Life is one of a whole swathe of texts, from the new materialism in cultural theory to speculative realism and new naturalism in philosophy, that now argue for an anti-reductive naturalism of the kind laid out by Capra and Luisi.

Where naturalism has in the past been associated with reductionism and the loss of something distinct, such as mind, that science boils down to matter, the irreductionist naturalisms tend to leave such somethings intact as emergent properties, fully natural and material yet unexplainable in terms of the bottom level of reality.

Where naturalism has been affiliated with naturalization, in the sense familiar to critical theory, of social and historical constructs, the new naturalism would embrace these categories without taking away their contingency. Much in biology can never be destiny because biological systems rarely work in the mode of strict determinism, as when one gene always produces the same characteristic, in every environment.

This means that the ability of biology to do the ideological work it has done in racial and sexual determinisms is no longer available, not because the social replaces what had been naturalized, but because biology now looks very different from the way it looked in the heyday of gene centrism. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann. Bloomington: Indiana UP, This course consists of twelve pre-recorded lectures, with one new lecture being posted each week.

Each lecture is about 40 minutes long and is supplemented with downloadable written and visual materials. The course includes exclusive online discussion forums in which Fritjof will participate.

All students will be able to fully interact both with Fritjof and other participants, posting comments and questions, and sharing materials via the course forums. The number of participants will be strictly limited to , to allow high-quality interactions in our discussions. The fees for the course are structured in three tiers, a structure that has been created in order to allow as many people to participate as possible, independent of their current incomes.

A small number of scholarships are also available. Read More. Each lecture will have an associated Forum where you can post your comments and questions, and discuss the themes and ideas that Fritjof introduces, both with Fritjof himself and your fellow course participants. These discussions will help develop your systems thinking abilities in a multi-disciplinary environment with participants from a range of backgrounds and competencies.

Participants are encouraged to post their own real-world case studies, projects and initiatives as well as insights gained as the course progresses. It has been one of the most exciting and thrilling experiences of my life. Not only have I been taught by one of my heroes, but also the knowledge has arrived in a very important stage of my life when I am seeing and understanding things that have brought new perspectives and new understandings.