The scientific jumping off place for exploring my speculative hypothesis would be General Systems Theory, from which we may abstract a number of perhaps useful concepts. While the more general a theory is the less useful it is for extrapolating observations from which to draw conclusions because generalities can’t be tested or verified, nonetheless the kernel of truth in a generality can prove useful indirectly.
Kenneth Boulding classified systems into eight levels, five of which are living: cells, plants, animals, human beings, social organizations, and transcendental systems, the latter to include “the ultimates and absolutes and the inescapable unknowables, that also exhibit systematic structure and relationship” (Boulding, “Management Science, 2, 3 (Apr 1956) p. 208).
James Miller’s “Living Systems” (1978), distinguished additional system categories to include eight levels of living systems: cells, organs, organisms, groups of organisms, organizations, communities, societies, and supranational systems. They all contain the same essential twenty subsystems to process matter, energy, and information, or a combination thereof. By Miller’s categorization, societies are “loose associations of communities, with systematic relationships between and among them”, while supranational systems are “organizations of societies with a supraordinate system of influence and control.” Regardless of whether global human society is classified as a “society” or “supranational system”, it still satisfies the requirement of a living system that it contain those 20 subsystems to process matter, energy and information.
Kenneth Boulding “General Systems Theory” (1956) classifies systems by their complexity, from the simplest framework of naturally occurring patterns, e.g. the arrangement of atoms in a crystal, up through increasingly complex living systems of cells, plants, animals, humans, and social organizations. He adds a final category, “transcendental systems”, to include “the ultimates and absolutes and the inescapable unknowables, that also exhibit systematic structure and relationship.” Living systems, according to Miller,
All systems are characterized by input, output and through put of matter, energy and information, as well as feedback loops for autonomous self-control. And all are characterized by a boundary defining the border between a system and its environs.
Systems theory finds and generalizes commonalities across various categories of systems (Simon 1962). Systems theorists distinguish between biological and physical systems, between real and abstract systems, and sub-categories of each. Social institutions such as corporations or other hierarchical organizations have their own category in systems theory. All systems, including social systems, include a subsystem where controls of the entire system is centered. A bureaucratic organization has its leadership. But global society’s disperse existence means that easily identifiable control subsystem is apparent. Global society is regulated indirectly with internal checks and balances and feedback from the external environment, in this the planet’s natural environment.
An economy is a system whose elements are prices and quantities. An “invisible hand” (Smith 1776) regulates this market. But within a corporation commodities and services are exchanged among divisions, branches and departments, and such transactions have shadow prices. Looking at both those transactions between economic agents which are governed by market forces and transactions between the the subsystem divisions or departments, i.e. agents, within a larger corporation or bureaucracy, the totality of economic transactions can be see as partitioned into those taking place via a market system and those within hierarchies. Some are controlled hierarchically via a control subsystem within the bureaucracy, and some are controlled indirectly via the self-regulation of markets (Williamson).
Human society, like the economy, contains both types of control systems, not unlike the sympathetic and , that and way market-clearing supply, demand and prices regulate economic systems, or predator-prey dynamics regulate ecological systems, global society, as a system, is similarly directed without an inherent and clearly identifiable control subsystem. In economics, the distinction between markets and hierarchies, points out that some transactions arise between hierarchically structured actors, while others occur within such hierarchies. Society, global or otherwise, is a self-regulating system that lacks hierarchical order. Society, global or otherwise, is comprised of biological, physical and abstract subsystems, i.e. for example people, machines and languages or cultures.
Systems theory doesn’t address metamorphosis, per se, but it does categorize the types of discontinuous change, perhaps applicable to organic and/or societal metamorphoses. And systems theory points to the fundamental analytic tool of categorizing sub-systems according to whether they primarily process energy, information or both. Concepts of discontinuous change in systems theory all apply to inorganic systems, and lack any element of through-continuity spanning the continuity, a thread that seemingly guides the reconstituted system on the other side, as organic metamorphoses are more than mere discontinuous developments, but also manifest purpose and direction in an organism’s purpose, be it sexual maturity or other metamorphic transformation. The energy/information polarity affords initial means by which to crack open the holistic oneness of systems, integrated with their surroundings, especially living systems and by extension social systems.
Following Boulding (1)/1. Kenneth Boulding, “General Systems Theory – The skeleton of Science”, Management Science, Vol 2, Number 3, April 1956/, systems may be categorized by increasing complexity into (paraphrasing): i) static structures or frameworks, ii) mechanistic clockwork-type systems with predetermined and necessary motions, iii) cybernetic systems with control mechanism, like thermostats, iv) self-maintaining open systems like organic cells, interacting with their environment, v) the genetic-societal level systems, typified by plants, vi) animal systems characterized by increased mobility, goal-directed behavior and self-awareness, vii) individual human beings considered as flesh and blood systems, characterized by self-consciousness and self-reflection, which is more than mere the self-awareness of lower animals, viii) social organizations, and ix) transcendental systems. Boulding describes transcendental systems as including “ultimates and absolutes and the inescapable unknowables, which also exhibit systematic structure and relationship.” Global human society, with all its accoutrements including clocks, thermostats, farms and factories, organizations, codified frameworks, governance subsystems, and also culture or cultures, is such a transcendent construct. As Boulding continues: “It will be a sad day for man when nobody is allowed to ask questions that do not have any answers.”
Miller*/*”Living Systems”, James Grier Miller, 1978 (panarchy.org/miller/livingsystems.html)/ points to various system types, and components and dimensions applicable to systems analysis that help organize our thinking. A system may exist in a physical or conceptual space and conceptual systems may be either abstracted from a concrete system or purely conceptual. Concrete systems exist in a 3-dimensional physical space in which they may move in any direction and in a time-dimension in which they may move only forward (ignoring here those very large astronomical systems where time may go backward). Concrete systems have mass-energy and are subject to the laws of entropy.
information — 1/11/20 6:52pm
Elsewhere Boulding offers (2)/2. Kenneth Boulding, “Toward a General Theory of Growth”, The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol 19, No. 3, August 1953/ several principles of structural growth and development which may be applicable to metamorphosis in a transcendent system. These general principles of growth and development appear across differing types of systems: in crystal structures, cell differentiation, growth and development of organisms, organizations, languages and mental structures, buildings, and societies.
The first principal is that of nucleation, in which an initial nucleus forms and around which a larger system may grow. Once the nucleus has formed, subsequent growth proceeds qualitatively differently. It’s easier to analyze that subsequent growth than the appearance of the nucleus, and little in general can be said about nucleation itself. For example we know something of how complex living structures grow from DNA cells, but almost nothing about how DNA cells emerged. In societal development, we understand something of how an institution, once formed, may grow, but much less about the environmental conditions produce an leader or lead to its initial formation.
A second principle, more applicable to our purpose, is that of non-proportional change. As a system grows, its parts cannot develop in constant proportion because some depend on volume, some on surface area, and some on linear scale. So a system compensates, for example by taking on convoluted forms to increase surface to volume ratio, or by devoting proportionally more resources to a function dependent on volume or surface area than linear scale, as for example when an organization disproportionately expands administrative and internal communications functions as it grows in scale. As a corollary, non-proportional change limits overall size when the increasing costs of disproportional compensation come to outweigh any advantage to the system of increased scale and specialization. Another way to compensate for non-proportional change is to diminish the need for functions dependent on volumetric scale, as for example when an organization decentralizes administrative and communications functions.
Thirdly, form arises out of the historic pattern of growth, so for example a society with few resources devoted to education and science will develop a low-tech form and vis versa. Leadership history in a certain field will support continued leadership and relative growth in that field to the neglect of others, or may spill over and support the leadership in closely related fields. An economy builds upon and reflects its prior history which produces its resultant shape.
Fourthly, Boulding identifies principals of command and control. Systems need to correct course as they grow, to compensate for imbalances that arise historically or to adjust for environmental change. Some systems have a control authority that constantly recalibrates growth while others have self-correcting mechanism that operates by what Boulding calls a “principal of equal advantage”, without centralized control. At the societal level some systems are centrally planned while others are governed by markets following a principal of supply and demand whereby resources find their way automatically to where they can be most useful. We have hierarchies and markets.
Nucleation, disproportional growth, historical pattern and alternative command and control systems all come into play when a system metamorphoses.
For additional systems insights we turn to Living Systems Theory.
Applying Systems Theory, a generalized model spanning physical, mechanical, organic, and social systems, reveals that all systems contain sub-systems processing matter, energy, information, or a combination of these. This recognition extends to subsystems ad-infinitum, down to the atomic level, processing matter, energy, and information. These three dimensions are simultaneously distinguishable and inseparable. While the origins of this model are ancient and intuitive, it has not proven particularly useful in deductive scientific analysis.