What is Systemics?
Visionary futurist R. Buckminster Fuller famously observed in his 1963 book, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth,
“Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.”
A good entry point to understanding the meaning of Systemics may be the notion that, if Spaceship Earth had come with some sort of operating manual, then that manual would be written in the language of Systemics. The instructions would take into account the innumerable dynamic relationships that comprise our planet’s living life support system. Our technologies have been created with these interconnected relationships in mind, much like Earth’s natural systems.
What is Systemics? Simply put, Systemics represents the holistic worldview, a paradigm shift in scientific thinking. Systemics is characterized by the ultimate expansion of analysis that is required to capture the inherent interconnectedness of terrestrial living systems, which by definition continuously adapt to their ever-changing environments.
The events that have characterized our transition into the 21st century demonstrate the harsh reality that the old way, of compartmentalizing variables with a unique set of blinders for each cluster of problems, is obsolete. The rigid, compartmentalized worldview of classical scientific inquiry and the practice of business-as-usual are no longer adequate to address our world’s most pressing issues of survival, such as climate change, national security, local energy production, and food and water shortages.
The time has come to acknowledge that these issues are intimately interconnected in such a manner that they can only be sustainably addressed when considered as a living whole. Systemics presents our species with the tools we need to understand and successfully adapt to the entangled challenges of our new millennium.
The technology of the future shall be derived from a Systemics-based worldview. Algae Systems has come a long way in developing our “technology ecology,” an expanding suite of solutions designed to address the climate and energy crises, with the health of the living whole as our ultimate vision. We recognize that the state of our watersheds and oceanic ecosystems cannot be separated from the stability of our global climate system, and that any measure of viability in world economies will continue to reflect our collective degree of success in supporting the health of the living whole.
(For more on Systemics, check out Bela H. Bethany’s 1997 article, “A Taste of Systemics,” from the International Society for Systems Sciences’ initiative, The Primer Project.)
Continue on to the next section: Why Algae Systems?