Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge from Science to Religion

\u27Systems theory\u27 is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These \u27systems\u27 theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are thus relevant to both the natural and social sciences and even to the humanities and the arts. Concerned more with the complex than the very small or very large, they constitute a metaphysics that is centered in biology, and thus near rather than far from the human scale. Systems metaphysics forges a unity of science based on what is general instead of what is fundamental; it is thus genuinely about everything. It counters the nihilism of narrow interpretations of science by affirming the link between fact and value and the reality of purpose and freedom in the natural world. It offers scientific knowledge that is individually useful as a source of insight, not merely societally useful, as a source of technology. With the new world view that it brings, systems metaphysics contributes to the recovery of cultural coherence. It builds a philosophical bridge between science and religion that is informed by our understanding of living systems. It suggests a secular theodicy in which imperfection is lawful yet perfecting is always possible, and uses this perspective to analyze religions as systems. It provides scientific insights into traditional religious concepts, including those ideas that guide spiritual practice

Freedom as a Natural Phenomenon

This phenomenon of freedom in the natural world - and indirectly the question of free will - is explored using systems-theoretic concepts that link the idea of freedom to ideas about autonomy and agency. The focus is on living systems in general, and on living systems that have cognitive subsystems more specifically. After touching on the relevance to freedom of determinism vs. randomness, the paper examines four types of freedom: (i) independence from fixed materiality, (ii) activeness that is unblocked and wholistic, (iii) internal rather than external determination, and (iv) regulation by an informational subsystem. These types of freedom are not all-or-nothing but matters of degree

Understanding Imperfection

Because of their inherent abstraction, systems ideas are not themselves sufficient for gaining scientific knowledge or solving practical problems, but they can be a source of insights into the universality of imperfection, insights which can contribute to a new scientific world view. Systems theory offers a metaphysics, or more precisely an ontology, of imperfection. Through it, we can heed Spinoza\u27s injunction, “Not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.

Polymorphism and Polysemy in Images of the Sefirot

The resurgence of interest in Kabbalistic diagrams (Segol, Busi, Chajes) raises the question of how diagrams function in religious symbolism. This question can be approached via methods used in the graphical modeling of data. Specifically, graph theory lets one define a repertoire of candidate structures that can be applied not only to quantitative data, but also to symbols consisting of qualitative components. A graph is a set of nodes and links between nodes. What nodes and links are is unspecified in this definition. The Kabbalistic Ilan is – partially – a graph. The Sefirot are its nodes; the paths connecting the Sefirot are its links. The idea of a graph is actually not adequate to the Ilan, because in a graph nodes can be anywhere in space, while in the Ilan arrangement in space is significant and not arbitrary. However, graph theory can be supplemented with spatial considerations. What (an augmented) graph theory offers that is of special interest is a way to conceptualize the structural polymorphism of a symbol, i.e., the various decompositions possible for the symbol viewed as a graph. Structural polymorphism correlates with conceptual polysemy. A structural decomposition conveys a particular interpretation of the symbol, and to viewers of the symbol the variety of possible decompositions presents simultaneously a multiplicity of meanings. This polymorphism and thus polysemy is what gives many symbols their richness and evocative power. This paper will apply the graph theory-based methodology of decomposition to the Kabbalistic images of the Sefirot

The Basic Dualism in the World

Graham Harman writes that the “basic dualism in the world lies…between things in their intimate reality and things as confronted by other things.” This paper supports Harman’s assertion from a systems theoretic perspective and illustrates it with some examples, including conceptions about truth, ethics, value, and intelligence. But dualism implies irreconcilable difference; what Harman points to is better expressed as a dyad, where the two components not only imply one another but are related, and where this spatial dyad is usefully augmented with a temporal dimension, expressed in a third component or an additional orthogonal dyad

Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge from Science to Religion [Presentation]

\u27Systems theory\u27 is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These \u27systems\u27 theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are thus relevant to both the natural and social sciences and even to the humanities and the arts. Concerned more with the complex than the very small or very large, they constitute a metaphysics that is centered in biology, and thus near rather than far from the human scale. Systems metaphysics forges a unity of science based on what is general instead of what is fundamental; it is thus genuinely about everything. It counters the nihilism of narrow interpretations of science by affirming the link between fact and value and the reality of purpose and freedom in the natural world. It offers scientific knowledge that is individually useful as a source of insight, not merely societally useful, as a source of technology. With the new world view that it brings, systems metaphysics contributes to the recovery of cultural coherence. It builds a philosophical bridge between science and religion that is informed by our understanding of living systems. It suggests a secular theodicy in which imperfection is lawful yet perfecting is always possible, and uses this perspective to analyze religions as systems. It provides scientific insights into traditional religious concepts, including those ideas that guide spiritual practice

Speculative Realism and Systems Metaphysics

Recent developments in Continental philosophy have included emergence of a school of “speculative realism” which rejects the human-centered orientation that has long dominated Continental thought, but also opposes naïve realism or positivism. Proponents of speculative realism differ on several issues, but most agree on the need for an object-oriented ontology. Speculative realists who draw upon Marxist thought identify realism with materialism, while others accord equal reality to objects that are non-material, even fictional. Several thinkers retain a focus on difference, a well-established theme in Continental thought. This paper looks at speculative realism from the perspective of the metaphysics of systems theory. Many of the tenets of speculative realism have long been features of systems metaphysics and are expressed clearly in a systems framework

Ideas & Graphs

A graph can specify the skeletal structure of an idea, onto which meaning can be added by interpreting the structure. This paper considers graphs (but not hypergraphs) consisting of four nodes, and suggests meanings that can be associated with several different directed and undirected graphs. Drawing on Bennett\u27s systematics, specifically on the Tetrad that systematics offers as a model of \u27activity,\u27 the analysis here shows that the Tetrad is versatile model of problem-solving, regulation and control, and other processes

The Diagram of the Supreme Pole and the Kabbalistic Tree

This paper discusses similarities of both form and meaning between two symbolic structures: the Diagram of the Supreme Pole of Song Neo-Confucianism and the Kabbalistic Tree of medieval Jewish mysticism. These similarities are remarkable in the light of the many differences that exist between Chinese and Judaic thought, which also manifest in the two symbols. Intercultural influence might account for the similarities, but there is no historical evidence for such influence. An alternative explanation would attribute the similarities to the ubiquity of religious-philosophical ideas about hierarchy, polarity, and macrocosm-microcosm parallelism, but this does not adequately account for the similar overall structure of the symbols. The question of how to understand these similarities remains open

Rosenstock-Huessy’s “Cross of Reality” and Systems Theory

This paper is a systems theoretic examination of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s “cross of reality,” a structure that fuses a vertical spatial dyad of inner-outer and a horizontal temporal dyad of past-future into a space-time tetrad. This tetrad is compatible not only with the human-centered phenomenological point of view that Rosenstock-Huessy favors, but also with a world-centered scientific point of view. It is applied by him explicitly or implicitly to a wide variety of individual and collective human experiences. In this paper I mention a few examples of these applications from the realm of language, religion, and social critique. I also show that Rosenstock-Huessy’s tetradic structure accords with and diagrams some basic concepts in systems theory