Premium
Natural philosophy and developmental systems
Author(s) -
Salthe Stanley N.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
systems research and behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 1092-7026
DOI - 10.1002/sres.444
Subject(s) - epistemology , hierarchy , natural (archaeology) , construct (python library) , philosophy of biology , sociology , natural science , teleology , field (mathematics) , cognitive science , social science , philosophy of science , ecology , philosophy , computer science , psychology , mathematics , geography , biology , law , political science , archaeology , pure mathematics , programming language
Natural 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.