Systems Philosophy

A Unified Theory

There is a deep simplicity that exists throughout the self-organizing universe…

“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe – to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – is a wonder beyond words.”

— Joanna Macy
“The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

— Ted Perry, inspired by Chief Seattle
“The wise is unified with all and has no distinction…”

— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition."

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”

— Friedrich Nietzsch, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“The tendency to synchronize is one of the most pervasive drives in the universe, extending from atoms to animals, from people to planets.”

— Steven Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
“Life is inherently intelligenct, creative, regenerative, and organizes itself into networks.”

— Firtjof Capra, Ph.D., scientist, educator, activist, and author of The Systems View of Life and The Tao of Physics
“The human body is an organization in which there is no boss. It is a situation of order resulting from mutual interrelationship of all the parts.”

— Alan Watts
“All the examples are variations on the same mathematical theme: self-organization, the spontaneous emergence of order out of chaos.”

— Steven Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
“The observation that very different systems can exhibit fundamental similarities is generally referred to as universality, and its apparent validity presents one of the deepest and most powerful mysteries in modern physics.”

— Duncan J. Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

Throughout this site, you are invited to flow with your curiosity via the hyperlinks to explore in detail the concepts and theories that together create the Nonlinear View.