This is to be unpacked, it addresses questions of identity, systems organization and rules, dynamics and equilibria that will help set up the layers and variables.
Basics on Natural complex systems by Jessie Henshaw:
1. Natural systems are collections of separate things connected by the organization of their concurrent ways of working with each other, forming cells of independent design, and a secure ‘niche’ and ‘domain’ of stable external relationships.
a. An “organ” is a “biological engine” with a role in the workings of a body.
b. A “home” is a place for the workings of a family offering both protection and access to the world.
c. A “commons” is place for a wider family of communities can establish their successful customs.
d. A “business” is a place for people to work as a team, in a stable relation with their markets.
2. The boundaries of a system are used to identify a natural system, either the
a. cell of internalized relationships that define it,
b. the extent of its parts that work together as a whole
c. or their domain,
3. Such organized cells of separate things are utterly different from abstract models and theories
a. One is an organized way of connecting the differences of separate things, creating separate organizations in an open environment, each level of organization a different dimension of relationships.
b. The other composed of mutually dependent logical rules or equations that have no independent parts, and defined only for a mental environment, having only one level of organization.
4. That difference is not a defect if recognized as a reason for why one needs to still be able to refer to the natural systems themselves,
a. as the one way make real sense of the rules of logic we attempt to fit to them
b. and the best source for discovering new locally useful rules to use with caution, to either study, predict or engage with them.
5. In terms of the life cycle of natural systems, another feature that distinguishes them from theories and models, the design of natural systems comes from the productive accumulating organization they develop, building upon the starting event that initiates their development
a. first by a multiplying extraction of resources from their host environment
b. to then transition when it becomes more profitable to care for their resources than exploit them,
c. or fail to do so, and simply run their course by draining or destabilizing their internal and external relationships, without achieving a period of thriving in a stable state.