Drawn from Coming Back to LifeInstead of looking for basic
building blocks, these life scientists took a new tack: they
began to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead
of substances. They discovered that these wholes--be they cells,
bodies, ecosystems, or even the planet itself--are not just a
heap of disjunct parts, but are dynamically organized and
intricately balanced "systems," interdependent in every
movement, every function, every exchange of energy and
information. They saw that each element is part of a vaster
pattern, a pattern that connects and evolves by discernible
principles. The discernment of these principles gave rise to
general living systems theory. By shifting their focus to
relationships instead of separate entities, scien-tists made an
amazing discovery--amazing at least to the mainstream western
mind. They discovered that nature is self-organizing. Or rather,
assuming that to be the case, they set about discerning the
principles by which this self-organizing occurs. They f