rethinking healthcare as a complex system timothy beushausen

8/10/2019 Rethinking Healthcare as a Complex System Timothy Beushausen

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Knowledge Area Module 3:Principles of Organizational and Social Systems

Student: Timothy Beushausen [email protected] ID # A00128233

Program: PhD in Applied Management and Decision SciencesSpecialization: Leadership & Organization Development

KAM Assessor: Dr. Steven Tippins [email protected] Mentor: Same

Walden UniversityNovember 25, 2012


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ABSTRACT: BREADTH

SBSF 8310: Theories of Organizational & Social Systems

The purpose of this research is to trace the development of complexity thinking, as it has

emerged in the physical, biological, and social sciences. The modern concept of complexity

emerged in late 19thand early 20thCentury social science even as the Cartesian/Newtonian

paradigm was being destroyed in physics by new thinking about new experimental evidence.

Beginning with Fritjof Capra1(Capra, 1999), who started out as a physicist, I show how his

encounter with Eastern Philosophy led to a new concept of relationship, causation and function

that forms the basis for thinking about complex systems. He projected that civilization would

reach a turning point, which Jay Forresters2research shows we have passed and missed.

Humanity is now descending into the chaos of overshoot, even as our leaders consider mild-

mannered espousal of the Sustainability Initiative as part of corporate propaganda for human

relations as narrowly defined by the immediate bottom line. Yaneer Bar-Yam3analyzes the

differences between implicit expressions of a biological organism, which can enable us to create

a General Will while fully celebrating human rights, expressed as a democratic mentality, or

explicit reification of such an organism, with its ensuing fascist mentality, as expressed by

Hitlers abuse of Social Darwinism. Although we are now floundering in our efforts to create a

1Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and

Eastern mysticism.Boston: Shambhala Publications.2Georgescu, C., Meadows, D., Perccei, R., & et_al. (2012, October 2). Report to the Club of Rome

2052 A global forecast for the next forty years.Retrieved October 21, 2012, from The power of themind: http://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.html

3Bar-Yam, Y. (1997). Human civilization II: A complexity transition. In Y. Bar-Yam, Dynamicsof complex systems (Studies in nonlinearity).New York: Perseus Book Group.


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sustainable social order, one mentality or the other (Charny, 2006)4 will emerge as the mind of

the new social organism. We have a stark choice between New Jerusalem and Hell, and we are

pretty far down the wide road to the latter.

4Charny, I. W. (2006).Fascism & democracy in the human mind: A bridge between mind andsociety.Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.


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ABSTRACT: DEPTH

AMDS 8321: Current Research in Organizational and Social Systems-Systems Engineering

The purpose of the following analysis is to examine the scope and impact of the work of Capra,

Forrester, and Bar-Yam within the context of the modern complexity thinking. Capra5saw the

limitations of the Cartesian/Newtonian paradigm in the very physics it had founded, and found

the model of wu-weiin Chinese philosophy providing illumination between field and quantum

physics. He expanded these insights into biology and sociology, never wavering from a new

vision of complexity thinking that now informs all of the sciences. He saw the current system

reaching its turning point. Jay Forrester showed the consequences of overshooting that turning

point. His students developed the World3 mathematical model, finding as of October of 2012

that we are dangerously near a point where our social order cascades into chaos. Bar-Yam picks

up where the Social Darwinists left off, showing the way to a democratic rather than fascist

mentality for our new social organism. These theorists have generated much discussion,

culminating in the proposal to create a Learning Society through the process of public education,

which means educating all members of the public to their highest capacities. The ideas of each of

these thinkers are still generating rich new research questions and providing us with the means to

use our own eyes to see what is going on in spite of all of the apparent complexity of todays

world, and will continue to generate research, action and discussion throughout the 21stCentury,

providing fresh humus for robust new research into the foreseeable future.

5Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physics andEastern mysticism.Boston: Shambhala Publications.


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ABSTRACT: APPLICATION

AMDS 8331: Applications of Systems Engineering and Analysis

From the standpoint of the wretched of the Earth, the Sustainability Initiative spells only

human disaster because it is being applied by way of the explicit fascism Bar-Yam warns us

against. The discredited trickle down theories of the University of Chicago economists that are

now being imposed on what Mao Zedong designated as the Third World can never cause all

boats to rise because they are entirely grounded in negative feedback, equilibrium economic

models that cannot reflect the complexity of todays world. However, such theories can support

some lifeboats while all of the Irish in steerage drown (Cameron, 1997) 6. America is intractably

stuck in the two-tier world social order that is emerging, and can only retain her position, for the

select few, by waging permanent warfare against her own people as well as the remainder of

those who cannot be accommodated by a few corporate lifeboats with access to economic

markets. That is the project for a new American century (PNAC) that has emerged by borrowing

real money (earned through slave labor) from China while paying interest on ersatz debts to the

Federal Reserve Bank. And all for what purpose? To create a New Millennium (Tausendjhriges

Reich), an American Century of permanent warfare on three simultaneous fronts. Orwells 1948

nightmare is emerging from metaphorical and interpretive to descriptive and explanatory reality

(Charny, 2006)7, which is in fact a complex transformation.

With a world-wide fascist mindset expressing an explicitly Nazi conception of the

social organism, all who survive the upcoming holocaust in all of its social, political,

6Cameron, J. (Director). (1997). Titanic[Motion Picture].



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military and economic dimensions will be the foundation of the New World Order.

Those of us who are not among the chosen few will have to engage in the struggle for

survivability, and in fact replace the explicit, reptilian (old brain, governed by the

amygdala) Dominant Mindset with an implicit, humanistic General Will. As I have

shown in previous work (Beushausen, 2013)8, for such a social mind to be concretized,

an actual, implicit democratic rather than explicitly fascist psychology (Charny, 2006)9

must be in place. The struggle for single payer healthcare must hold all ecological,

biological, social, economic, and financial systems to accountability for the maintenance

of individual human rights. We cannot achieve adequate healthcare, education, and

employment opportunities while yet accommodated to a rank-order world system that

denigrates relationship and reflects no consensus. We analyze all of these dimensions

brought by all of the speakers to the Aurora Healthcare Speak out, including U. S.

Congressperson Dennis Kucinich; Congresspersons Mary Flowers and Mike Boland,

both members of the Illinois House of Representatives who formed the state

congressional single payer healthcare committee for IL HB 303 along with then Illinois

Rep. Barack Obama; and presidential candidates from the Libertarian, Green, and

Communist Parties.

8Beushausen, T. (2013).Human Development.Kindle Digital Books.



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TABLE OF CONTENTS

BREADTH.8 Principles of Complex Systems..8

Individual and Social Organism..9Capra and the Cartesian/Newtonian Paradigm..11The Turning Point. .32The Puritan Work Ethic: Core of the Capitalist Value System.....44Forrester and Systems Dynamics..........50The Counter-intuitive Behavior of Social Systems...56Networks....63The Legacy of Donella Meadows..65

DEPTH.....77Annotated Bibliography...............77Literature Review Essay.......96

Bricmont on Determinism.96Causality in Complex Dynamic Systems....106Complex Adaptive Systems as a Generative Metaphor..112Human Health as a Complex System..................114Evaluating Complex Healthcare Systems...118Jay Forresters Shock to the System121Supply Chain Management is no Beer Game......124Mathematical Modeling of Complex Biological Systems...127Spirituality and Eco-culture.130The Sustainability Transition...........133Improving the Effectiveness of Healthcare Delivery Systems.135

Relationship in the Public Sphere.....137An Aquarium Eco-system Project for Middle School Students...139Emergence of Cooperation from Heterogeneity of Degree..141The Learning Society........,...144

APPLICATION...........148War and Conspiracy........148Healthcare vs. Warfare........165Health, Wealth, and 9/11.....171

Reptilian Conspiracy Theory.......175Summary............177

WORKS CITED..........182.


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BREADTH

PRINCIPLES OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

My purpose is to show that the 20 thCentury development of complexity theory by

researchers in several disciplines as diverse as economics, biology, chemistry, physics and

meteorology discovered general principles of thinking about complex systems that provide the

basis for all areas of 21stCentury science, extended to philosophy and theology as well. Broad

perspectives on human concerns inherited from the 19thCentury laid the groundwork for

complex systems as a discipline that includes the ethical and moral evaluation of social

phenomena. Fritjof Capra, Jay W. Forrester, and Yaneer Bar-Yam, each with varying

disciplinary backgrounds, discovered philosophical, theoretical and practical perspectives by

which all of human knowledge may be unified in terms of complex systems. The perspectives

provided by complexity thinking, from primary through secondary, graduate and post-graduate

education and research can enable us to find our way as a species through the myriad crises that

confront us.

Philosophically, the problematic of this age is to grapple with the counter-revolution that

arises from within the heart of revolutions, even revolutions in thought as important as that

represented by the Sustainability Initiative. Humanity has passed a turning point in which

sustainability must take a back seat while we grapple with survivability and the human

conditions under which we desire to make the transition to the Solar Age. We must focus the

efforts of every man, woman and child on this goal in order to achieve it, and can no longer

avoid making difficult sacrifices and going through much suffering before we arrive at this goal.


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Individual and Social Organism

The variety of 19thand early 20thCentury perspectives forged in the social and physical

sciences led to the realization that the behavior of complex systems requires philosophical and

theoretical developments that transcend all scientific disciplines, unifying social and physical

phenomena through categories such as emergence, transcendence, hierarchical embedding of

systems within systems, function, and causation. The Sustainability Initiative rose out of the

World310model, but failure to meet critical demands at what Capra designated as the turning

point forces us to choose between humanistic and mechanistic responses to ensure survivability,

only beyond which the questions raised by sustainability may be answered. The ruling

institutions left behind by Bretton Woods now implement the Sustainability Initiative in a

manner that forces the vast majority of humanity to endure starvation and early death, even

though hundreds of millions now die from easily controlled diseases, and no country in the world

is incapable of feeding its own people. The Anti-globalization movement, which has provided us

with the imperative to act locally and think globally, provides a viable and humanistic alternative

to the austerity (only for others, not for themselves) imposed by the World Bank, the

International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Only the wretched of the Earth

themselves can lead the way forward toward humanistic solutions that transcend the University

of Chicago trickle down theories of Milton Friedman now being imposed in the name of

Sustainability.

Social science can remain the most hopeful and important intellectual endeavor we have

yet undertaken only in and through the application of complexity theory through the eyes and

10Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J. I., & Behrens, W. W. (1974). The limits togrowth: A report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind.New York: UniversePublishing, Inc.


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minds of the revolutionary subjects of todays freedom struggles. Social knowledge must be

humanized into a spiritual awakening rather than reified into a material force. When Marx

projected the separation between science and life as a priori a lie(1947)11, he envisioned the

solution, which is to engage the talents of every man, woman and child in working out solutions

to myriad complex problems. No one person can provide a blueprint for the learning society

adequate to the transition from the industrial, carbon age to the information, solar age, but

billions of people tapping every last reserve of human capacity and talent could accomplish the

task. Because the problem of overshoot has now put a question mark over the survival of

humanity, nothing less than such a response is sufficient to meet the challenge, either morally or

ethically.

Together, we can create a non-reified, implicit rather than explicit (Bar-Yam Y. , 1997)12

social organism capable of reflecting the passionate concern and involvement in human history

postulated by the worlds religions as characteristic of God, who can only act in and through

human consciousness. As an approach to human liberation informed by complexity theory, social

science must put down the goal of social control for that of human freedom, in which we all

emerge as co-controllers of human destiny. This is the perspective made possible by complexity

theory, which is now expanding to embrace philosophy and religion in addition to the whole of

science. The choice is between creating a social organism with a fascist mentality

11Marx, K. (1947). Science, society and life: Extract from private property and communism. In R.Dunayevskaya, G. L. Boggs, C. L. James, & J.-F. Tendency of Socialist Workers' Party (Ed.),Essays byKarl Marx selected from the economic-philosophical manuscripts(G. L. Boggs, Trans., pp. 22-23). NewYork: Martin Harvey. Retrieved from Autodidact Project:http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html

http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.htmlhttp://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.htmlhttp://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html


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(Bar-Yam, 199713; Charny, 200614), and creating one that taps into the infinite reservoir of love

that lies at the source of human cooperation. When the former consolidates its power, we may no

longer have the power to choose.

Capra and the Cartesian/Newtonian Paradigm

Systems theory is a multidimensional, evolutionary approach to the sciencesphysical,

biological, and socialuniting all scientific endeavor in interlocked orders of complexity, from

the leptons of quantum physics through cellular, ecological and social systems to solar systems,

systems of galaxies and even parallel universes, in at least one plausible interpretation of

quantum physics (Wolf, 1990)

15

. Scientists, working opaquely in a variety of disciplines (now

known as pigeonholes because they lacked common paradigms or means of interdisciplinary

communication), from forecasting weather to economic theory, quantum physics, cosmology,

electronics, and mechanical dynamics, discovered that they had common problems that could be

placed in a common theoretical framework, expressing the unification of the sciences (Gleick,

198816; Kauffman, 199517). Because systems theory generalizes from this process of scientific

unification, a plethora of mathematical models from neurological networks to weather systems

could be used as theoretical complex systems analogues for social systems, without ever looking

at biological models. However, for the purpose of exploring the commonalities of a variety of


14Charny, I. W. (2006).Fascism & democracy in the human mind: A bridge between mind and

society.Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.

15Wolf, F. A. (1990).Parallel universes: The search for other worlds.New York: Touchstone divof Simon & Schuster.

16Gleick, J. (1988). Chaos: Making a new science.New York: Penguin Group.

17Kauffman, S. (1995).At home in the universe: The search for the laws of self-organization andcomplexity.New York: Oxford University Press.


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systems, and their transformations through the emergence of complexity in each, I will focus on

evolutionary biological models of complex systems, following Capra (1975, 1982, 2002), Bar-

Yam (2005), and Forrester (1961, 1969, 1971).

There are several reasons for using biological models rather than those from economics,

dynamics, electronics, weather, or even physics. Physical science has historically been taken as

the fundamental science to which all others can be reduced because it concerns the universal

constituents and dynamical mechanics of phenomena. Today it is well known that even physics

cannot be reduced to the elements of statics and dynamics that developed out of the scientific

Renaissance of the 16

th

century, through the philosophy of the 17

th

century, and went on to fuel

the 18thcentury industrial revolution in Great Britain.

Reductionism in philosophy arose out of the need to control the society, conceived as a

social machine, which developed helter-skelter out of this economic revolution. Classical physics

broke down as its methods were extended to explore ever more complex physical systems, laying

the groundwork for modern physics. New developments in the biological and social sciences

sounded the death knell for philosophic and methodological reductionism, and the original

attempts to explain biology and society in terms of mechanistic models have thereby been

rendered obsolete, creating even more demand for new mathematical and conceptual models.

The ecological web of life, resulting from 4.5 billion years of evolution, is certainly the

most complex stable system known. If humankind can ever create a basis for survivable

development (as we shall see, sustainability is yesterdays opportunity that has gone out the

window) out of the myriad crises that are now shutting down the economics of greed, todays

legacy from the industrial revolution, we must work within the newly emergent super-organism


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resulting from the economic globalization (Bar-Yam Y. , 1997)18of McLuhan & Powers

(1989)19Global Village, technologically networked through the smallworld hypothesis

(Gros, 2008)20. Someday, this socially constructed organism may become the most stable

complex system. However, this fundamentally social reality was in fact created and is sustained

by human cognition (Marx, 1988)21, and its survival is by no means certain.

Human experience, the phenomenology of mind (including self-consciousness and

reason) unique to Homo sapiens, is relatively new, accompanying the sudden emergence

(Schwartz, 1999)22of our species within the past two million years. Capra (2002)23suggests that,

in attempting to understand, predict, and control the emerging, highly complex, and rapidly

evolving global economy (Bar-Yams super-organism), we must learn from evolutionary

ecological systems. These have developed complexly for billions of years, since the origin of life

itself, and have exhibited amazing resiliency through several extinction level events (Gould,

1989)24. During the course of biological evolution, the new phenomenon of life emerged through


19McLuhan, M., & Powers, B. (1989). The global village: Transformations in world life andmedia in the 21st Century.New York: Oxford University Press.

20Gros, C. (2008). Complex and adaptive dynamic systems: A primer. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

21Marx, K. (1988). The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist

manifesto.New York: Prometheus Books.

22Schwartz, J. H. (1999). Sudden origins: Fossils, genes, and the emergence of species .NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

23Capra, F. (2002).Hidden connections: A science for sustainable living.New York: Doubledaydiv. of Random House.

24Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: The Burgess shale and the nature of history.New York: W.W. Norton.


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molecular combinations of carbon compounds into higher hierarchical levels of complexity. As

Bar-Yam writes25(p. 1):

In biology, the common molecular and cellular mechanisms of a large variety of

organisms form the basis of our studies. However, even more universal than the constituents are

the dynamic processes of variation and selection that in some manner cause organisms to evolve.Thus, all scientific endeavors are based, to a greater or lesser degree, on the existence ofuniversality, which manifests itself in diverse ways. In this context, the study of complex systemsas a new endeavor strives to increase our ability to understand the universality that arises whensystems are highly complex.

Ecological modeling, applying lessons from four and a half billion years of the

sustainable evolution of eco-systems, may supply many suggestive solutions to the problem of

rebuilding human institutions that will be survivable for future generations. Although

sustainability is todays buzzword, our decades of talk and no action have resulted in putting a

question mark over human survival. Once we meet the more draconian imperatives imposed by

this new, self-imposed regime, for lack of a better expression the Survivability Initiative,we

may be able to return someday to thinking about sustainability. Because a massive human

extinction caused by pollution is now in progress (Georgescu, Meadows, Perccei, & et_al,

2012)26[for example, as of 2012, one in four people will contract cancer within their lifetimes,

and one in ten will eventually die of cancer, which has major environmental causes, including

diet and smoking, (UICC, 2012)27]. Health care delivery systems, which are grounded in systems

that are both biologically and socially complex, are a major focus in survivable development.

25Bar-Yam, Y. (2001). Ibid.

26Georgescu, C., Meadows, D., Perccei, R., & et_al. (2012, October 2). Report to the Club ofRome 2052 A global forecast for the next forty years.Retrieved October 21, 2012, from The power ofthe mind:http://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.html

27UICC. (2012). Cancer Epidemic. Retrieved November 12, 2012, from Union for InternationalCancer Control: uicc.org .
http://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.htmlhttp://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.htmlhttp://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.htmlhttp://www.clubofrome.at/2012/bucharest/programme.html


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With the emergence of consciousness through the development of language and culture

(Mumford, 1970a)28humankind began to bind time into oral, then written history (Korzybski,

1995)29, organizing hierarchical social systems. The Egyptians built the pyramids using the first

human social machinery, controlled by a religious priesthood with a God/King at the top of the

hierarchy, as depicted by the eye at the peak of the pyramid on the back of the United States

dollar bill (The Jewish Star of David is an inverted pyramid superimposed over an upright

pyramid, pictorially depicting the first revolution in recorded history). Plato was the first to

express the myth of the machine as philosophy, organizing his conceptual democracy [the real

one by the time he wrote was already in an accelerated state of historic decline (Boguslaw,

2000)30] under a republic controlled by a priesthood of philosopher/kings, perhaps halfway

between gods and modern scientists, qualified to rule by their intuitive mastery of an a priori

realm of divine forms. This ideology passed on to Rome, and culminated in western civilization,

which Mumford (1970b)31designated as the modern pentagon of power. The rationalization of

labor under the Puritan work ethic developed into the ideology of Cartesian/Newtonian

systematics (Capra, 1999)32(hereafter referred to the C/N paradigm, or scientism).

28Mumford, L. (1970a).Myth of the machine: Technics and human development(Vol. 1).Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

29Korzybski, A. (1995). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and

general semantics.Englewood, NJ: Institute of General Semantics.

30Boguslaw, R. (2000). Utopian analysis and design. In E. F. Borgetta, & R. J. Montgomery(Eds.),Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd Ed.(Vol. 5). New York: Gale Group.

31Mumford, L. (1970b).Myth of the machine: The pentagon of power(Vol. 2). Orlando: Harcourt,Brace, Jovanovich.

32Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physicsand Eastern mysticism.Boston: Shambhala Publications.


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Auguste Comte (2009)33, the first modern social scientist, designated himself as the new

Pope of positivism (sociology, or social scientism) leading a new category of empirical

philosopher kings, and organized the new religion. In 1844, Marx (1988)34depicted history as

the record of class struggle, and Fromm (1973)35as that of freedom struggles (always written by

the victor):

The history of mankind is, indeed, a history of the fight for freedom, a historyof revolutions, from the war of liberation of the Hebrews against the Egyptians, thenational uprisings against the Roman Empire, the German peasant rebellions in thesixteenth century, to the American, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Algerian, andVietnamese revolutions(p198).

The current development of decentralization (Bar-Yam Y. , 2005)36is a continuation of this

progressive liberation from hierarchical structures. History emerges as humans become

psychologically and socially more complex.

Historically, the need for a general theory of, as well as mathematical approach to

complex systems and networks first appeared in the biological and social sciences, as insight into

the real complexity of evolutionary systems began to emerge. It started with Darwins simple

postulate of adaptation to environment in the struggle for existence as the cornerstone of his

theory of the progressive origin of species, which are today seen as the bases for even more

complex ecological systems. Darwins 1859 application of evolutionary thinking to biological

33Comte, A. (2009).A general view of positivism, 2nd. Ed.(J. H. Bridges, Trans.) Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

34Marx, K. (1988). The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 and the Communistmanifesto.New York: Prometheus Books.

35Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness.New York: Henry Holt.

36Bar-Yam, Y. (2005).Making things work: Solving complex problems in a complex world.Brookline, MA: Knowledge Press.


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systems in Origin of Species(1979)37sounded the death knell for the Aristotelian Great Chain

of Being that had previously shackled the minds of intellectuals to Aquinas argument from

design(1948)38. It served as a wake-up call for a group of scientifically inclined albeit

theologically trained churchmen of Elizabethan England who, as scientists at heart, went on to

conduct the professionalization of science during the late 19 thcentury (Ruse, 1999)39. Ludwig

Von Bertalanffys seminal General Systems Theory(1976)40is the modern foundation of systems

biology, which provides a general biological framework for the way men such as Capra,

Forrester, and Bar-Yam think about social systems.

The Great Chain of Being still confuses some paleontologists who try to conceive of

biological and human progress as linear rather than multidimensional (Schwartz, 1999)41. As we

shall demonstrate, within critical realism (Sayer, 2010)42there is room for causal explanations of

the apparent telos(purpose) of nature in terms other than Darwins, but there can be no return to

intelligent design, as Behe (2006)43proposed, even if he has demonstrated that there could never

have been enough deep time for evolution to have followed a mathematically random walk

through all of its pathways. In fact, although Darwins theory of the mechanism ofspeciation is

37Darwin, C. (1979). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation offavored races in the struggle for life.New York: Random House Value Publishing.

38Aquinas, T. (1948). The summa theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas.(Fathers of the EnglishDominican Province, Trans.) New York: Benziger Bros.

39Ruse, M. (1999). the Darwinian revolution: Science red in tooth and claw.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.

40Bertalanffy, L. (1976). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. NewYork: George Braziller.

41Schwartz, J. H. (1999). Sudden origins: Fossils, genes, and the emergence of species .NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

42Sayer, A. (2000).Realism and social science.London: Sage Publications, Ltd.

43Behe, M. J. (2006).Darwin's black box: The biochemical challenge to evolution.New York:Simon & Schuster.


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only one among many possible mechanistic theories of evolution, however it occurred, evolution

is universally demonstrated. Darwins simplified model of natural selection of fittest, random

variations through the interaction between species and environment was among the first to

exhibit a fundamental aspect of complex systems (Schoech, 2004)44: systems that seem to be

comprised of several simple elements may exhibit surprisingly complex behavior. The other side

of this discovery is that systems that we would ordinarily think of as complex can exhibit simple

behavior.

To cite Capra (2002)45in putting it succinctly, comparing anything found in nature to a

product of human intelligence (the only known kind) is an anthropomorphic insult to Mother

Nature (to personify metaphorically). She is, if one insists on inappropriate comparisons, far

more intelligent than we are. With perhaps 15 billion years of evolutionary experience (since we

are already using a phenomenological metaphor, anyway!), through processes humans can only

glimpse fleetingly, nature is incomparably ahead of humanity in the design game. To call Mother

Natures innate creativity intelligent design expresses little more than the contempt and hubris

humans have built into our models of knowledge since we first attempted to control, subdue,

conquer, and otherwise rape our Earth mother [Capra, 198246; see also Brownmillers 197547

analysis of the psychology (pp. 31-325) and summary of the history of rape (pp 376-380); see

44Schoech. (2004). Concept paper: Systems theory.Retrieved November 5, 2012, from Universityof Texas at Arlington:

http://wweb.uta.edu/faculty/schoech/cussn/courses/5306/coursepack/theory_systems.pdf


46Capra, F. (1982). The turning point: Science, society, and the rising culture.New York: Simon& Schuster.

47Brownmiller, S. (1975).Against our will: Men, women and rape.New York: Simon andSchuster.
http://wweb.uta.edu/faculty/schoech/cussn/courses/5306/coursepack/theory_systems.pdfhttp://wweb.uta.edu/faculty/schoech/cussn/courses/5306/coursepack/theory_systems.pdfhttp://wweb.uta.edu/faculty/schoech/cussn/courses/5306/coursepack/theory_systems.pdf


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especially Sir Francis Bacons particularly brutal, sexist language in describing the relationship

between science and nature (2012)48]. As Capra argues, such sexist, brutal attitudes toward our

natural environment, cloaked in the beatific adulation of science (Bacon, 1993)49, launched the

historic period known as the first industrial revolution in Great Britain, more simply designated

as the capitalist revolution, and still characterize todays world capitalistsystem.

The Great Chain of Being entered history as a Platonic ideal in Platos (c. 428-347 BCE)

Timaeus(2001)50and was defined by Aristotle (c. 384322 BCE) as telos, or natures

purpose (Metaphysics, 1998)51. This was the Peripatetic Philosophers revolution against Platos

theory of forms, his summation of Greek Ionian philosophy, and his manifesto of first

philosophy, establishing the time-honored tradition of killing the father in academia. Aristotles

concept of purpose (final cause) in nature entered St. Augustines (c. 354430) neo-Platonic

argument from design in City of God(2003)52. St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 12251274) used this

mind-forged manacle(Blake, 1982)53as his fifth argument for the existence of God in Summa

Theologica(1948)54. The Great Chain of Being thus came to express the Prime Movers

48Bacon, F. (2012).Novum Organum: True directions concerning the interpretation of nature.Whitefish, MT: Rare Reprint Imprint of Kessinger Publishing.

49Bacon, F. (1993, August).New Atlantis.Retrieved November 6, 2012, from Oregon StateUniversity:http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.html

50Plato. (2001).Plato's Timaeus.Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing div of R. Pullins.51Aristotle. (1998).Metaphysics.New York: Penguin Group.

52Augustine, A. (2003). City of God.New York: Penguin Putnam.

53Blake, R. (1982). London. In R. Blake, & D. V. Erdman (Ed.), The complete poetry of RobertBlake(p. 23). New York: Random House.

54Aquinas, T. (1948). The summa theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas.(F. o. Province, Trans.) NewYork: Benziger Bros.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.htmlhttp://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.htmlhttp://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.htmlhttp://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/atlantis.html


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(subsequently, Gods, by way of Augustine and Aquinas) purpose in nature, linking all living

things into a natural order with roots in Platos theory of forms (Timaeus, 2001)55.

Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. 90168) summarized the geocentric view of nature expressed

in this great chain of being (quabeing) inAmalgestum(1515)56. Within this divine purpose,

everything has its place in nature, from Earth (at the center), to water, air, and fire, with the Fifth

Essence, the realm of the crystalline, ethereal spheres, habitat of stars and planets, circling

everything in cosmic perfection, chiming away for those with ears to hear (Murchie, 1985)57.

Renee Descartes (c. 15961650 CE) and Sir Isaac Newton (c. 16431727 CE)

promulgated the revolutionary ideas of Nicholas Copernicus (c. 14731543 CE), whose On theRevolutions of the Heavenly Spheres(1995)58, published posthumously, correctly identified the

Sun as at the center of the known planetary orbits rather than the Earth. Nevertheless, the

Cartesian/Newtonian systematics (Newton, 199959; Descartes, 199160), to which I shall

henceforth refer as the C/N paradigm (Capra, 1982)61, did not go far enough in disentangling

religious dogma from science. This paradigm could live comfortably with Aquinas Argument

from Design precisely because it created an unbridgeable gulf between mind and matter, and

55Plato. (2001).Plato's Timaeus.Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing div of R. Pullins.

56Ptolemaeus, Claudius (1528).Almagestum seu magnae constructionis mathematicae opus.Trans (Gr. Into Latin): Georgius Trapezuntius. Edited by Luca Gaurico. Venice: Luc'antonio Giunta.

57Murchie, G. (1985).Music of the spheres: The material universe from atom to quasar, simplyexplained(Vol. 1 & 2). Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

58Copernicus, N. (1995). On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres.(C. G. Wallis, Trans.)

Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

59Newton, I. (1999). The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy.Los Angeles,CA: University of California Press.

60Descartes, R. (1991).Principles of philosophy.(V. R. Miller, & R. P. Miller, Trans.) Norwell,MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.



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winked at the constant miraculous interventions of God in creating new species required by

William PaleysNatural Theology(2012)62. By the time Charles Darwin took an interest in the

origin of species, Paleys reincarnation of the Greek demi-urge had long provided the religious

superstructure for the ostensibly value free C/N paradigm of scientific methodology. Paley

designated the Greek telosas Divine Watchmaker, whose intelligent designprovided the

purpose for being quabeing.

While co-existing with this ancient Greek notion, the C/N Paradigm actually incorporated

the Greek materialism of the Roman Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 9955 BCE), who wroteDe

rerum naturain 50 BCE (Lucretius Carus, 2001)63

: actually, the atomism of Epicurus (c. 341

270BCE), an ancient Greek acolyte of Democritus(c. 460370 BCE), who was a pupil of

Leucippus of Miletus (c. 500-? BCE). According to Leucippus, the urstuff is made from

indivisible, identical, eternal elements, or atoms, which occupy the void. The C/N Paradigm

became the basis for the positivism of Auguste Comte (2009)64, the first modern philosopher of

science, which was then established as the new dogma of the Dominant Mindset that still

controls scientific funding (Beushausen, 2013)65.

Atomism fit in well with the dualism of Descartes, who separated mind from matter,

reducing the former to little more than a ghost in a machine(Ryle, 2009)66. John Locke (c.

62Paley, W. (2012).Natural theology on the existence and attributes of the deity collected fromthe appearances of nature.Holmen, WI: Suzeteo Enterprises div of Athanatos Publishing Group.

63Lucretius Carus, T. (2001). On the nature of things.(M. F. Smith, Trans.) Indianapolis, IN:Hackett Publishing.

64Comte, A. (2009).A general view of positivism, 2nd. Ed.(J. H. Bridges, Trans.) Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

65Beushausen, T. (2013).Human Development.Kindle Digital Books.

66Ryle, G. (2009). The concept of mind.New York: Routledge.


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16321704) was the philosopher who most influenced all succeeding British empiricists

(Harris, 2005)67, whose achievement was: to show the way towards the replication in moral

philosophytowards A Newtonism of the mind (p3). Lockes philosophy of experience

(1979) expressed Roger Bacons (c. 12141294 CE) empiricism in Opus Majus(2005)68,

presented to Pope Clement IV in 1267. Although perhaps not the most popularly read

philosopher in England (he had a strong audience in the American Revolutionists Thomas

Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin), Locke laid the foundation of Liberalism and

Enlightenment social contract theory. He radically attacked a prioriknowledge as unobservable

Platonic forms, favoring instead the experiential notion that the mind is a blank slate (Aristotles

unscribed tablet inDe Animaor On the Soul, III(4) (2001)69; Avicennas Tabula Rasa in The

Book of Healing(2005)70; and the blank slate in Aquinas Summa Theologica(1948)71, on

which all human experience is written. This is the philosophy of empiricism, which disavows

any knowledge of its own preconceptions, with no self-consciousness whatsoever, postulating an

unbridgeable Manichean gulf between spirit and matter.

Along with mind, conceived as the phenomenology of observing, the new scientific

method also abolished any observation of Gods invisible Hand found in the details of creation.

The C/N paradigm left for Him only a place outside of space and time in which to create the

67Harris, J. A. (2005). Of liberty and necessity: The free-will debate in Eighteenth-Century Britishphilosophy.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

68Bacon, R. (2005). The opus majus of Roger Bacon. (J. H. Bridges, Trans.) New York: HenryFrowde.

69Aristotle. (2001).Aristotle's on the soul and On memory and recollection.Santa Fe, NM: GreenLion Press.

70Avicenna. (2005). The Metaphysics of The Healing. (Trans: Michael E. Marmura.) Provo, UT:BYU Press.

71Aquinas, T. (1948). The summa theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas.(Fathers of the EnglishDominican Province, Trans.) New York: Benziger Bros.


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universe, like a clockmaker designing a clock (More accurately, according to Dawkins (1996)72,

a blind watchmaker). God then left the mechanical clockwork universe to unwind

deterministically, without any further intervention. Although Copernicus had displaced the Earth

from the center of the universe, C/N systematics lived comfortably with humankind as the center

and focus of creation, even though it left no room whatsoever for mindor Creator. In

challenging this dogma (admitting, at best, only a mechanistic logosfor the origin of species),

Darwin snatched away the pillow for intellectual sloth provided by the blissful certainty of Gods

beneficent Hand in actively working out his divine purpose in creation, thereby committing the

heresy for which he has yet to be forgiven.

Not that Darwin did not do his best to emulate Newtonian science, while stripping away

some of the religio-teleological baggage the church had dragged into Christianity by way of

Aquinas and Augustines neo-Platonism. Specifically, he replaced the design element of telos:

intelligent design as the ultimate expression of Gods purpose in creation (Chambers, 1994)73

with blind chance as the source of variation in the evolution of species. Although the classical

education of the trained churchmen who represented science, and the orthodox clergy of England

interpreted the Argument from Design in Paleys (1803)74terms, requiring separate miracles for

the creation of each species; radicals, Deists, and progressives, along with increasing numbers of

the public, avidly welcomed Chambers view, which required God only to lay down the Natural

Law by which species evolved, whatever that law might be. This was a thoroughgoing extension

72Dawkins, R. (1996). The blind watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universewithout design.New York: W. W. Norton.

73Chambers, R. (1994). Vestiges of the natural history of creation: With a sequel.Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

74Paley, W. (2012).Natural theology on the existence and attributes of the deity collected fromthe appearances of nature.Holmen, WI: Suzeteo Enterprises div of Athanatos Publishing Group.


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of the C/N paradigm into the world of biology (Ruse, 1999)75, philosophically rather than

scientifically arguing that material causes formulated by the Creator governed the origin and

development of life, without requiring Him to constantly intervene with a new miracle every

time a new species was created. Darwins cardinal sin was to abolish the Argument from Design

altogether, replacing it with a purely mechanical process that operates solely through random

variation, selected through adaptation to environment governed by the Malthusian observation

that organic proliferation easily outstrips environmental resources, creating a struggle for

existence.

Ironically, it was the increasing comfort of the British middle classes (in spite of the dire

predictions of Thomas Malthus) that provided the psychological expectation of ever increasing

material progress as the technology of Industrial Revolution continuously provided more

material wealth, even for the working classes. Because Chambers Vestigesretained the Great

Chain of Being, restating it for the first time in a systematic evolutionary hypothesis, with man as

the apotheosis of progressive biological evolution, it did not matter that the work was not

scientific, and in fact was reviled by the scientific community both for its heretical rejection of

miracles, which were the ultimate pillows for intellectual sloth, and for the unscientific gibberish

by which the work pilloried itself. Nevertheless, it paved the way for the eventual acceptance of

Darwinian evolution as a fact, even though scientists continued to criticize various aspects of

Darwins theory,especially his theory that the simple, mechanistic, Malthusian hypothesis

expressed in terms such as struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is the only

explanation of species origins.

75Ruse, M. (1999). The Darwinian revolution: Science red in tooth and claw.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.


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Although the C/N paradigm was ostensibly grounded in the empiricism of Francis Bacon

(c. 1561-1626 CE), who borrowed the scientific method outlined inNovum Organum(1620)76

from the Persian philosopher Avicenna (c. 980-1037 CE) (McGinnis, 2010)77, in fact it included

numerous unobservable and inexplicable phenomena, such as the instantaneous action at a

distance of gravity (about which Sir Isaac Newton famously framed no hypothesis), the

absolute reference frame of space (with no still point to which it could be attached), no means

to distinguish forward from backward flow of time (the concept of entropy later helped to expose

the cracks in Newtonian physics that would soon revolutionize the subject, see Highfield &

Coveney, 1992

78

), and no explanation whatsoever for the presumption of equality between

gravitational and inertial mass (surely an embarrassing problem for even a Newtonian).

Nevertheless, Newtonian physics became the new systematics and dogma of hard science,

against which all other forms of scientific explanation were invidiously compared Capra

(1975)79.

Todays multidimensional systems thinking actually developed out of the C/N Paradigm.

Descartes (1991)80wroteLe monde and LHomme(1630-1633), which explicated his natural

philosophy, or system of the world, and was published in 1644. Here Descartes stated as a

fundamental principle of nature that a moving object will continue to move in a straight line at a

76Bacon, F. (2012).Novum Organum: True directions concerning the interpretation of nature.Whitefish, MT: Rare Reprint Imprint of Kessinger Publishing.

77Jon McGinnis. (2010).Avicenna.New York: Oxford University Press.

78 Highfield, R.; Coveney, P. (1992). The arrow of time: A voyage through science to solve time'sgreatest mystery.New York: Fawcett Columbine.

79Capra, F. (1975). The new physics, Ch. 4. In F. Capra, The tao of physics: An exploration of theparallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism.Boston: Shambhala Publications.

80Descartes, R. (1991).Principles of philosophy.(V. R. Miller, & R. P. Miller, Trans.) Norwell,MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.


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constant speed unless it runs into an outside force. Newton borrowed this principle from

Descartes as his First Law of Motion (which he named the Law of Inertia), although it actually

originated with Avicenna (McGinnis, 2010)81. Newton grounded hisPrincipia(1687)82andDe

mundi systemate(1728) in Descartes 1637Discours de la Methode(Discourse on the Method)

(1999)83andLa Geometrie(1954)84, explicitly adapting the entire system of Descartes to a

mathematical extension of Cartesian scientific methodology, laying the foundation for C/N

systematics. This system and methodology was the Cartesian extrapolation of the scientific

methodology of Galileo Galilei (c. 1564-1642 CE) into a brand new philosophy of nature.

Galileo had clearly founded the science of physics with the publication of his years of

experiments with falling bodies (1991)85, in which he first established that the velocity of a

falling body increases uniformly with time, with constant acceleration provided by the force of

gravity.

Newton later generalized Galileos work in his Second Law, F = m a, that the force on

an object is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration, for falling objects a constant equal to

9.8 meters/second2. In conducting his original investigation of the phenomenon of gravity,

Galileo used inclined planes, which, with rolling friction minimized, produced smaller

accelerations as the inclines became more nearly horizontal. Galileo generalized this to an ideal,

81McGinnis, J. (2010).Avicenna.New York: Oxford University Press.

82Newton, I. (1999). The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy.Los Angeles,CA: University of California Press.

83Descartes, R. (1999).Discourse on method and meditations on first philosophy, 4th Ed.Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.

84The geometry of Renee Descartes. (1954). (Trans: Smith, D. E.; Latham, M. L.) Mineola, NY:Dover Publications, Inc.

85Galilei. (1991).Dialogues concerning two new sciences.Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.


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in which a particle moves over a frictionless plane perpendicular to the action of gravity. This

particle would never change its speed or direction unless an outside force acted on it. Galileo

thereby made one of the first statements of the law of inertia under the gravitational field of the

Earth, although the principle of momentum can also be found in the work of Avicenna

(McGinnis, 2010)86. Through the eyes of today, well trained in the methods established by

Galileo and Newton, one can easily see the Moon moving in its course around the Earth in such

an orbit, or the Earth moving in orbit around the Sun.

Galileo probably dismissed Johannes Keplers (c. 1571-1630 CE)Epitome of Copernican

Astronomy(1995)87

for his discovery that planetary orbits are elliptical rather than circular,

contradicting Galileos own mystical belief in circles, which was at least as strong as Keplers

Pythagorean belief that the shapes of the first five regular geometric solids underlie the average

planetary orbital distances. Galileo was never able to publish his gravitational researches until

four years before his death due to prohibition from all publication during the final decades of his

life by the Holy Roman Inquisition, which had correctly found him guilty of embracing the

Copernican Revolution. Copernicus (c. 1473-1543 CE) had published his manifesto of the

scientific revolution (1995)88in the year of his death.

Kepler had just as surely embraced the Copernican heresy as had Galileo, but perhaps not

as blatantly, for Galileo (2001)89had used the Socratic dialogue, a Scholastic model of critical

86McGinnis, J. (2010).Avicenna.New York: Oxford University Press.

87Kepler, J. (1995). Epitome of Copernican astronomy & Harmonies of the world. Amherst, NY:Prometheus Books.

88Copernicus, N. (1995). On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres.(C. G. Wallis, Trans.)Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

89Galilei, G. (2001).Dialogues concerning the two chief world systems.New York: RandomHouse.


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inquiry, to expose the spokesperson for the Pope (Simplicio) as a fool. No less a sin was his

publication of the book in the Italian language, which immediately became a best seller. Had

Galileo hidden his work in the inscrutable Latin of Scholastic academic pedantry, it may never

have been put on the PapalIndex of Forbidden Books. In rendering the 1633 decision that

Galileo was under grave suspicion of heresy, the Papacy upheld the position of Ptolemy (c. 90-

168) in The Great Thesis (1994)90, that the Earth is the center of the planetary and solar orbits,

combined with Aristotles (c. 384-322 BCE) (1930)91position in hisPhysicsthat the Earth is

the center of the universe.

Although Galileo launched the science of physics, Newton gave it a mathematical

foundation, describing the laws of motion in terms of inertial and gravitational mass, which

coincidentally and inexplicably turn out to be equal. Just as mysterious from the point of view of

the C/N paradigm is the absence of any causal explanation of gravity, simply that a relationship

exists: F = G m1 m2/ d2, where F stands for F1 or F2, the equal but opposite gravitational force

exerted by either of two masses m1 and m2each on the other. In words, F is directly proportional

to the multiple of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance

between their centers of mass. The constant of proportionality is G, the Gravitational Constant.

In a strictly physical, causal, materialist, empirical methodology, accepting no explanation that

cannot be referenced to any of the five senses, the action at a distance supplied by gravity is a bit

embarrassing, rather like entertaining a ghost in the heart of the machine (Ryle, 1949)92.

90Ptolemaeus, C. (1515).Almagestum seu magnae constructionis mathematicae opus.(Trans.Trapezuntius, Georgius.) Venice, Italy: Luc'antonio Giunta.

91Aristotle. (1930).Physica.(R. P. Hardie, & R. K. Gaye, Trans.) Oxford: Clarendon Press.

92Ryle, G. (2009). The concept of mind. New York: Routledge.


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Further along the lines of the inexplicable in Newtonian physics, absolute space is the

absolute reference frame of Euclids Parallel Postulate with infinitely straight, parallel lines that

never intersect, defined by the zero point of intersection of the mutually perpendicular X, Y, and

Z axes, which, once arbitrarily established, provides the still point against which all motion

occurs. The invisible and immeasurable backdrop for this absolute space is the ether, filling it

with an elastic, uniform, Euclidian continuum that vibrates when light passes through.

Nevertheless, Newton himself entertained a corpuscular view, more in line with his philosophic

atomism, of the nature of light, which even then exhibited its particle-wave duality in a manner

determined by the experimental setup. By implication, observers A and C, moving near the speed

of light in opposite directions relative to observer B, who is at rest relative to the absolute

reference frame of the ether, must be moving at nearly twice the speed of light relative to each

other. An absolute speed limit in the C/N paradigm of the universe is inconceivable.

The Michelson/Morley experiment failed to detect predicted differences in the speed of

light emitted in different directions from an experimental station on Earth, which is hurling

through the ether at an orbital velocity of 29.8 km/sec relative to the sun, with a rotational

velocity of 0.47km/sec. Without gravity we would all go hurling into space at 44.7 km/sec. This

assumes the Sun is standing still relative to the ether, whereas Earth actually hurls through

ethereal space at a speed of 220 km/sec relative to the Galactic center, and 20 km/sec relative to

nearby stars. This means that in Newtonian theory, somehow, somewhere, there must be a

measurable difference in the speed of light relative to some observer. According to Mother

Nature, this is not the case. The only difference shows up not in the measurement of speed, but in

the Doppler red shift in the frequencies of light emissions from observable galaxies, which are all

hurling away from each other at speeds that increase with their distance relative to each other as


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measured in light years (the distance light travels in a year at its speed in a vacuum of 186,000

miles/sec), and by which Hubble measured the realm of the nebulae (Hubble, 198293; Feynman,

Leighton & Sands, 198994).

The methodological failure of the C/N scientific paradigm to examine even its own

fundamental presumptions constitutes a contradiction easily seen from within the C/N paradigm,

which perhaps explains the absence of self-consciousness in the C/N definition of value free

scientific objectivity. Probably with a glance back toward the only recently concluded Holy

Roman Inquisition, Descartes tied his system of philosophy to the Great Chain of Being, as much

to placate the remaining Inquisitorial attitude of the Church that had recently prosecuted Galileo

for the very same heresy as to stem the revolutionary tides that the capitalist (Calvinist, Puritan

work ethic), industrial (empirical, materialist) revolution was about to unleash on the world. For

the same reasons dragging in more Platonic absolutes, Descartes and Newton also took space and

time as separate, independent, and perfectly uniform, presuming without question Euclids

Parallel Postulate, that two parallel lines meet at infinity in both directions, as an accurate

description of physical space, and that light is corpuscular, or atomic in nature. Later Newtonians

described light as a transverse vibrational wave in an elastic medium called the ether, with an

absolute Cartesian coordinate frame of reference.

While the C/N paradigm provided the groundwork for two centuries of technological

development, 20thCentury science and technology outgrew being harnessed to an antiquated

value system that only permitted description of systems involving linear (as compared to

93Hubble, E. (1982). The realm of the nebulae.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

94Feynman, R., Leighton, R., & Sands, M. (1989). Feynman Lectures on Physics(Vol. 1).Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.


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iterative) relationships between two variables. Henri Poincar (c. 1854-1912 CE) (1895)95, a

founder of non-linear dynamics, showed that Newtons elegant Law of Gravitation immediately

disintegrates into chaos as soon as it attempts to describe the orbit of a third mass, even if it is

small enough not to disturb the orbit described by the two larger bodies. This demonstrates a

fundamental principle of the new systems theory we first noticed in Darwins evolutionary

mechanism: that even the simplest system can exhibit behavior that is completely deterministic

yet chaotic. This is due to the fact that small changes in an independent variable, X, can lead to

large changes in the dependent variable, or large Y, if there is a positive feedback loop, which

makes the dependent variable Y not only a function of X, but also a function of previous values

of Y.

Later, Einstein showed that space and time are related in a mathematically complex

manner, and that simultaneity in space-time is relative to the motion of the observer, as well as

that gravitational and inertial mass are intrinsically related through the curvature of space-time

into a gravitational field. Faraday discovered a field of force (similar to Newtons gravitation in

its inverse square law, although not in its dipole nature) between two magnetic poles, and

Maxwell showed that when this field is set to vibrating, it becomes electro-magnetic radiation

moving at C, 300,000 km/sec, which is the fastest speed at which any two coordinate frames can

move relative to each other, and the square of which Einstein demonstrated to be the constant of

proportionality between mass and energy in E = MC2. The Aristotelian values built into the

objective framework of C/N science had already crumbled long before Max Planck discovered

the quantum of action, as we see in the resulting discussions between Einstein and Bohr on the

95Barrow-Green, J. (1997).Poincar and the three body problem.Providence, RI: AmericanMathematical Society.


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principle of complementarity (Bohr, 1970)96, which Bohr had discovered in the philosophy of

Henri Bergson (2010)97.

With its strong roots in computer technology, todays systems theory is grounded in this

principle, which is today shown by the yin/yang symbol, a circle bisected into complementary

tear-drop shapes, of opposite color, each with an eye of the opposite color. The principle states

that any description of a system reflects the point of view of the observer, and that for any other

observer, the two viewpoints are complementary, rendering it impossible to entirely derive

observations of one observer from the other. This principle results from partial descriptions, and

may disappear if detailed observation is increased, in a manner similar to the convergence of

scientific observations found in the philosophy of C. S. Peirce (Beushausen, 2013)98.

Although the crisis in health care delivery systems is common knowledge, and the fact

that we are living in an era of crises in American and world institutions is well-established, I will

pay special attention to the ideological crisis, as reflected in the collapse of all human values in

the Dominant Mindsets embrace of the C/N paradigm, which is grounded in the strict

philosophic determinism of Newtonian physics (Capra, 1975)99and fixated on undifferentiated,

maximized economic growth.

Any realistic attempt to resolve the crisis in health care delivery systems must deal with

relationships between human health and all of the systems within which human beings are

96Bohr, N. (1970). Discussions with Einstein on epistemological problems in atomic physics. In P.Schilp (Ed.),Albert Einstein: Philosopher-scientist(pp. 199-242). La Salle, IL: Open Court.

97Bergson, H. (2010). Creative evolution.New York: Macmillan.

98Beushausen, T. (2013). Beushausen, T. (2013). Human Development.Kindle Digital Books.

99Capra, F. (1975). The new physics, Ch. 4. In F. Capra, The tao of physics: An exploration of theparallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism.Boston: Shambhala Publications.


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meshed. Capra (2002)100argued that the opening years of the 21stCentury witnessed

breakthroughs in ecological thinking that bear witness to the technical viability, feasibility,

profitability, and practicality of systems theory in defining a multitude of approaches to creating

sustainable social and economic institutions, which reflect directly in the improvement of human

health and happiness. The myriad crises in human institutions result from an economic value

system deliberately designed, in the biological analogy, for cancerous growth that is insane,

disastrous, and unsustainable (Capra, 1982)101. To resolve the crisis in health care, all human

institutions must be re-evaluated in terms of their impact on human health and healthcare, and

reformulated using principles of eco-design under the control of explicitly stated human values.

The Turning Point

Fritjof Capra wrote about the social problems facing humanity in the mid 80s

that are still unresolved, exacerbated, and growing three decades later. He identifies a

primary reason for this disarray as the Cartesian/Newtonian (C/N) paradigm that still

rules science, even though its premises have collapsed, nowhere more fully than in

physics, which has been the model for all of the other sciences. Disastrous economic

problems, such as the inversion of the Phillips Curve, the fragmentation of knowledge in

academia, the collapse of Western healthcare, and myriad other problems dealt with in

The Turning Pointhave deepened. Capra sees the myriad crises of this age in terms of the

life cycle processes of civilization itself: genesis, growth, breakdown and disintegration.

Civilization based on the C/N paradigm is in the final stage of this cycle, while the new




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civilization, which Capra designates as the Solar Age, grounded in systems thinking is in

fact emerging. Capra expresses the hope that we can face this turning point as the kind of

harmonious, peaceful cultural transition envisioned in theI Ching, in which yin and yang,

both active principles that refrain from acting against Nature, remain in balance.

Capra outlines current scientific and economic crises, examining the breakdown

of previous explanatory models of science and economy as insufficient to meet current

environmental needs. All of the sciences must explore models from systems theory in

terms of organic metaphors to begin to solve these problems. Capra describes the

Cartesian cognitive split between mind and body as reflecting the Newtonian world

machine.

On the crisis in economic theory, Capra traces the origin of the word property,

'privare', which means to deprive the commons of the value of a good or service. John

Locke applied the medieval concept of just price to regulate the relationship between

supply and demand, which is the determinant of who will survive and who will die in the

turbulent times just ahead. The 'invisible hand' that guided production during the

Industrial Revolution mechanized life and labor in society, turning all human effort into

raw material for machines. Seeing people as mechanistic, rational actors, we ignore

collective values and the psychological need for community. The advantages won by

modern workers in industrial society work to the detriment of workers in the developing

world, which is precisely why the new, information-based stage of globalization is now

able to by-pass these hard-won victories to exploit third world labor directly, rather than

merely exploiting their resources.


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Automation reduces employment while increasing inflation, which caused the

Phillips Curve to bulge outward by 1973, rather than supplying an inverse relationship

the Fed can manipulate using monetarist policies. Although there is nothing beneficent

about the Fed or its intentions, the designated US central bank has simply lost its major

means of control over the economy, as the law of decreasing returns causes interest rates

to permanently plummet. Capra takes a systems view of life that incorporates positive

feedback and the recognition of the role of cooperation in evolution, as opposed to the

Darwinian model that only sees competition. We need a model of human health that

acknowledges holistic principles and a Jungian psychology based on the collective

unconscious to provide a solid basis for a new, solar economy.

Capra explains learning in terms of categorizing new phenomena, which do not

always fit into old paradigms that suffice for what we already understand. Dissonance

results when the new information does not fit, forcing us to change paradigms to

accommodate new information. This is the basis for the evolution of knowledge, which

itself drives social change. The usefulness of the C/N paradigm for this effort has expired,

and we must acquire a systems view of a universe where everything is connected, rather

than cling to reductionism. Capra illustrates his ideas by integrating the biological and

psychological aspects of health care, as well as exploring the new eco-systems view of

the environment.

Capras voice was one of many contemporaneous thinkers showing how society

must be reorganized. At this time, the domestic oil production of the United States

peaked. The resulting stagnation of the economy forced reconsideration of Marxs

projection of the permanent tendency of interest rates to fall, while aggressive


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deregulation led to financial accumulation rather than growth in wealth, disrupting the

industrial production/consumer Keynesian infrastructure operational since World War II.

Capras ideas were pushed aside by an evanescent bubble of domestic growth in the

economy (primarily military), supported by the global acceptance of the US Dollar

permitting accumulation of massive trade deficits, which created the temporary illusion

of prosperity. Now that this bubble has burst, the outdated paradigm of prosperity from

growth in GNP and the losing war on microbes grounded in the specialization and

determinism of the C/N economic and biomedical paradigms have brought thinkers like

Dr. Capra back into the view of intellectuals now at a loss for adequate explanations.

As a theoretical physicist by training and practice, Capra had already offered The

Tao of Physics(1999)102, in which he turned to Chinese philosophy to explain new

developments in quantum physics. There he first integrated a holistic view of humanity

that we have yet to absorb. The deterministic paradigm of the Enlightenment no longer

works in any science, especially physics. Although human reality is socially created,

ignoring the realities of relativity, quantum mechanics, biology, and chaos theory leaves

humanity in the dark about the truth of the natural world, which is quite simply that

nature does not guarantee our existence! Providing an all-encompassing critique of

society that is thoroughly consistent with several views of critical realism, such as those

of Sayer (2010)103and Bunge (2001)104, Capra offers a fresh approach to the re-

organization of human knowledge and social systems.

102Capra, F. (1999). The tao of physics: An exploration of the parallels between modern physicsand Eastern mysticism.Boston: Shambhala Publications.

103Sayer, A. (2010).Realism and social science.London: Sage Publications, Ltd.

104Bunge, M. (2001). Scientific Realism: Selected Essays of Mario Bunge.(M. Mahner, Ed.)Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.


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Although his use of theI Chingmay seem spurious to some, its concept of wu

wei, the balance of active yin and yang, is crucial to understanding the origin of todays

human predicament. Our greatest error is that we have not refrained from action contrary

to nature. Capra quotes Chuang Tzuscommentary, Nonaction does not mean doing

nothing and keeping silent. Let everything be allowed to do what it naturally does, so that

its nature will be satisfied. The classical, Cartesian world view simply will not

accommodate complexity that originates in deterministic chaos, which is how the

majority of natural systems emerge. Mechanistic and reductionist approaches must be

replaced by holistic and ecological views. Physics can no longer serve as a model for

other sciences precisely because the interaction of physical systems themselves creates

the basis for emergent systems, such as life, that cannot be reduced to physics. Holistic

frameworks are the only means to be scientific, and must be adopted in the scientific

description and explanation of physical reality as well.

Capra traces the history of the C/N Paradigm through the Copernican Revolution,

to Descartes, Bacon and Newton. Sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, along with values,

ethics, quality, feelings, intentions, motives, consciousness, soul and spirit are all thrown

out the window as secondary phenomena, excluding human experience from the realm of

science. Einstein blew this entire philosophical framework aside with his 1905

publications on the photoelectric effect and Special Theory of Relativity (1999)105. This

laid the groundwork for quantum mechanics, and the Uncertainty Principle, which places

absolute limits on knowledge. Later, Schrdinger demonstrated that electrons and protons

105Einstein, A. (1999). On the electrodynamics of moving bodies.Albert Einstein, (trans. Jeffery,G. B.; Perrett, W.). Accessed August 23, 2013.http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/On_the_Electrodynamics_of_Moving_Bodies
http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/On_the_Electrodynamics_of_Moving_Bodieshttp://wikilivres.ca/wiki/On_the_Electrodynamics_of_Moving_Bodieshttp://wikilivres.ca/wiki/On_the_Electrodynamics_of_Moving_Bodies


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are best described as probability clouds, placing probability at the foundation of reality.

Bells theorem (Shimony, 2012)106demonstrates that physical reality is subject to non-

local phenomena spooky action at a distance. Although Newtonian gravitation

always had implied that every mass-particle in the universe exerts a force on every other

mass-particle that is inversely proportional only to the distance between their centers of

mass, physicists had simply ignored the spooky action at a distanceimplication.

Memory and consciousness also exhibit such non-local connections.

The revolution in physics had little effect on other fields, where the mechanistic

C/N paradigm, no longer suitable for physics, was still dominant. In biology, life was

considered as a function of its component parts, with the assumption that by assembling

them, we could create life, even though no such phenomenon has ever been observed.

Mapping the human genome has yielded little more than terrific computer models. This

method of analyzing smaller and smaller bodily mechanisms yields a view of disease as

the malfunctioning of specific mechanisms of biological organisms, in which the doctor

must intervene to correct. Cellular and molecular biology are the guides to this

fragmented view of the biological organism rather than any holistic approach, the

ultimate test of which will be the attempt to synthesize a cell. Nevertheless, simply

reversing this analytic dissection of the living cell by reassembling the pieces, even as

modeled by computers, will yield no complete explanation of the behavior of even the

simplest living system.

106Shimony, A. (2012, Winter).Bell's Theorem.(E. N. Zalta, Ed.) Retrieved from The StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy:http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/bell-theorem/
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/bell-theorem/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/bell-theorem/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/bell-theorem/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/bell-theorem/


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Although this conclusion is the best interpretation of empirical evidence,

biologists who are enamored with reductionism, especially in genetic engineering,

believe that the C/N analytical approach is the only valid research methodology, deeming

any biological phenomena that cannot be so reduced as not fit for scientific investigation.

Todays biologists are most at home in studying the non-living. This narrow,

compartmentalized approach, one historic analog of which may be seen in Stalins

Lysenkoism, makes it difficult to study the function of living systems as wholes and their

interactions with environment. Neuroscientists cannot even approach the question of how

neurons integrate themselves into the functioning of the entire system. Although

dissecting the body into its minute components has yielded knowledge about cellular and

molecular mechanisms, how we breathe, regulate body temperature, or digest remains a

mystery. The healing of wounds and the phenomenology of pain are also beyond the

scope of this method.

Embryonic development, by which cells replicate and specialize in an orderly

fashion to form organs and tissues, is another integrative activity beyond the description

of micro-mechanisms. The reason for this is because it involves myriad, functional

interactions between cells and genes that are more than the sum of the cellular

mechanisms involved. Embryogenesis results from the coordinating activity of the

organism as a whole, a process far beyond the analytical capabilities of reductionism, and

therefore not subject to biological research. The C/N analytic method of breaking every

subject of study down to its smallest elements has yielded success in solving many

problems that remain visible after such a procedure, but resulted in the neglect of all such


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problems as do not, thereby stunting the science of biology, as Lysenkos Lamarkianism,

in line with the ideology of Soviet realism, had stunted the same science in Russia.

The success of modern genetic research based on the C/N paradigm, breaking

chromosomes down to gene positions arranged in linear order, has led some to proclaim

the discovery of the atoms of heredity, explaining biological characteristics in genetic

terms, one gene per trait. Genes are now known that affect multiple traits and multiple

genes may control a single trait, such as skin color. Nevertheless, the study of the

cooperation and integrative activity of genes has been neglected. No genetic trait was

ever inherited outside of the cell structure within which genetic information is transmitted

and delivered, making cellular function a crucial element of heredity, even though such

questions are largely neglected.

Reductionism, which describes an integral whole in terms of its elements, thereby

loses its ability to understand how the entire system coordinates its activities. Even

character traits are not uniquely determined by genes. Genetic determinism results from

considering living organisms as machines in which a single cause is associated with a

specific effect. In fact, organismic systems function on multiple levels, from genes to

chromosomes, to cell nuclei, tissues, and organ systems. Mutual interactions occur at all

levels, influencing development and resulting in wide variations within the so-called

genetic blueprint.

The complexity of the evolution of species is not fully explained by the

Darwinian concepts of chance variation and natural selection, which are merely two

aspects of a larger, more complex system. Chance alone cannot be the source of all biotic

creation. Skeptics have mathematically demonstrated that even the most direct


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evolutionary sequence would not have occurred randomly within hundreds of billions of

years (Behe, 2006)107. Biologists who consider this to be the only conceivable hypothesis

have simply limited their own cognition, thereby rendering themselves unable to

conceive of the simple truth that, however we cannot understand it, the end state of a

system has some non-local influence on not only its initial conditions, but also its

developmental pathway. Absolutely free but blind chance could never have produced the

stupendous edifice of evolution, no matter how hard we try to pound the square peg into

the round hole.

Capra argues that change will come through medicine. Those functions of a living

organisms integrative activities and its interactions with its environment, precisely those

that remain intractable to any reductive description, are crucial for organismic health.

Physicians who follow the mechanistic program under which they were trained in treating

patients cannot understand or cure many health problems. Nurses, other health

professionals, and the general public are more inclined to recognize the methodological

problem than doctors are, and the demand for holistic health care is growing. Developing

holistic models will be a revolution in medicine, affecting both the conceptual framework

and the organization of biological research as well. All scientists who study life will find

that organisms, unlike machines, cannot be completely described in terms of their

elemental properties. Because scientists who study inorganic matter have already

abandoned the reductionist approach, life scientists will find it easier to make the

transition to complexity.

107Behe, M. J. (2006).Darwin's black box: The biochemical challenge to evolution.New York:Simon & Schuster.


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Modern medicine loses sight of the patient, reducing health to mechanical

function, and can do little more than facilitate healing without understanding the healing

process. All medicine aims at facilitating healing, yet this phenomenon is beyond

scientific investigation. Health and healing are not discussed more than perfunctorily in

medical schools precisely because these phenomena cannot be understood in reductionist

terms. Whether in wounds or illnesses, healing and health involve physical,

psychological, social, and environmental elements. Because they involve complex

interactions between multiple elements with cumulative causal powers that become

elements of the system itself, incorporating healing and health into medical science must

transcend any reductionist view of health and illness. Taking this wider viewpoint will

bring medicine into consilience with recent scientific ideas of complex systems.

The narrow, biological conception of health, the reality of which is closely related

to the concept of life itself, must be broadened to include individual, society, and ecology

to create a systems view of health. The preamble to the World Health Organization

(WHO) charter is a good start: 'Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social

well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.Although this

representation of health as a static state of per

rethinking healthcare as a complex system timothy beushausen

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