Suchergebnisse

AbstractNatural philosophy is being revived by way of grounding it in thermodynamics and information theory. This discourse systematizes information from all the sciences so that every field of knowledge of nature supports every other as parts of a concept of general evolution. The point is to construct an intelligible picture of the world. Change in material systems involves both development and evolution. General evolution is primarily developmental, and the specification hierarchy of integrative levels can be used to model it. In this hierarchy, biology is seen as a kind of material system, and social phenomena as kinds of biological systems. This pattern implies there was a tendency toward psychology on the earth. This scheme is biased by having been produced by psychological, social, biological beings, integrating humans with the rest of nature, and so it embodies valuation. Natural philosophy welcomes values in its constructions. There has never been a culture without an origination myth; general evolution, as constructed within natural philosophy, differs by referring to its own genesis within a picture of the genesis of the world. Copyright © 2001 International Society for the Systems Sciences.

AbstractScalar hierarchies represent the structure of the world of matter in motion, the overall extensive system. Subsystems within this undergo changes that can be dichotomized into development and evolution (individuation). At a higher scalar level these modes of change are united under the rubric 'self‐organization'. Development finds a very general, indeed, lawful description in non‐equilibrium thermodynamics discourse. Subsystems in the scalar hierarchical world are all dissipative structures. In their development at least living dissipative structures traverse a specification hierarchy of increasingly intensive being. At a higher temporal scalar level, developing dissipative structures form ontogenetic trajectories, the seat of self‐organization. At these higher scalar levels ontogenetic trajectories multiply to fill space as the dissipative structures that make them up access more and more geographical coordinates in a thrust outward toward what can be called a virtual thermodynamic equilibrium.