Louisville Process Theology Network

Procoess Theology and Systems Science

A Holistic Perspective

It might be said that Systems Science is to science what Process Theology is to theology. Both fields cross academic disciplines in search of the holistic perspective on reality and life. Indeed, they use some of the same words and expressions with much the same meanings: interactions, cooperation, relational, and evolving.

Systems Science holds that everything we find in our diverse and complex universe is subject to some type of organization based on independent concepts and principles. Everything is a system, in other words. Studies in the field typically search for similarities, interactions, and connections among different kinds of things in nature.

A related field is Cybernetics, which is a technical discipline that focuses on information, operational control, feedback, and communication.

Systems studies examine everything, animate and inanimate, from atomic particles to galaxies. But, most of the time they concentrate on more practical studies of the things we see around us, such as human beings and economic systems.

Living Systems Theory

Systems theorist James Grier Miller drew a wide range of concepts and principles from the life sciences into an elaborate theory he named "Living Systems Theory."

The biological concept of "emergence" is one of its foundations. That concept holds that new characteristics emerge as "living systems" become more complex and complicated. In that sense, Living Systems Theory seems to be a detailed elaboration of Aristotle's famous axiom that "the whole is more than the sum of its parts."

Basically, Miller laid out 19 processes which he believed every living system needs to perform in order to compete and survive. There are eight processes for information, nine process for matter and energy, and two processes for both.

Miller saw billions and billions of different living systems in our world from cells to international organizations and he categorized them into seven levels from the simplest and tiniest to the largest and more complex.

Living Systems Framework

The practical purpose of the Living Systems Theory, Miller said, was to develop a diagnostic framework for determining the health of living systems; similar to the diagnostic practices of medical doctors. This framework might also be used in research to compare different kinds of systems, he said. The following is a simple sketch of the Living Systems Theory famework.


Seven Levels of Living Systems:

1. Microscopic cells
2. Organs
3. Organisms
4. Groups
5. Organizations
6. Societies
7. International Organizations and Systems


Three Kind of Inputs Needed by Every Living System.

1. Matter
2. Energy
3. Information


19 Processes Essential to the Survival of Every Living System:

1. Reproducer - giving birth to more living systems.
2. Boundary - holding the living system together.
3. Ingestor - bringing matter and energy into the living system.
4. Distributor - carrying matter and energy into the subsystems.
5. Converter - tranforming inputs into forms the living system can handle.
6. Producer - transforming inputs into outputs.
7. Storage - holding some matter and energy for use later.
8. Extruder - sending out matter and energy to the environment.
9. Motor - moving and repositioning internal elements.
10. Support - making structures that hold the internal elements in place.
11. Input Transducer - bringing information into the living system.
12. Internal Transducer - delivering information to the subsystems.
13. Channel and Net - circulating information among the subsystems.
14. Decoder - translating information into code the living system understands.
15. Associator - relating bits of information to each other.
16. Memory - holding some information for use later.
17. Decider - controlling the operation of the living system.
18. Encoder - translating information back into code the environment understands.
19. Output Transducer - sending out information to the environment.

Living Systems Theory fits perfectly with physicist David Bohn's observation that "everything mental is also physical and everything physical is also mental." This theory deals only with the living things we know in our world, though. Miller clearly did not intend to to go beyond biology and the social sciences. Still, this theory makes you wonder what other levels of livings systems are possible.

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International Society for the Systems Sciences