🪸On Systems Thinking: The Web of Life III

All knowledge is profitable; profitable in its ennobling effect on the character, in the pleasure it imparts in its acquisition, as well as in the power it gives over the operations of mind and of matter. All knowledge is useful; every part of this complex system of nature is connected with every other. Nothing is isolated. The discovery of to-day, which appears unconnected with any useful process, may, in the course of a few years, become the fruitful source of a thousand inventions." (Joseph Henry, "Report of the Secretary" [Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1851], 1852)

"The hosts of living organisms are not random creatures, they can be classified in battalions and regiments. Neither are they isolated creatures, for every thread of life is inter-twined with others in a complex web." (John A Thomson, "The System of Animate Nature" Vol. 1, 1920)

"The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble." (Rémy de Gourmont, "Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas", 1921)

"The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term 'ecological' is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature." (Fritjof Capra & Gunter A Pauli, "Steering business toward sustainability", 1995)

"These three insights - the network pattern, the flow of energy, and the nutrient cycles—are essential to the new scientific conception of life. Scientists have formulated them in complicated technical language. They speak of 'autopoietic networks', 'dissipative structures', and 'catalytic cycles'. But the basic phenomena described by those technical terms are the web of life, the flow of energy, and the cycles of nature." (Fritjof Capra," Turn, Turn, Turn: Understanding Nature’s Cycles", 1997)

"All living organisms must feed on continual flows of matter and energy: from their environment to stay alive, and all living organisms continually produce waste. However, an ecosystem generates no net waste, one species' waste being another species' food. Thus, matter cycles continually through the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)

"When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of a great order, a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in our body was once a part of previous bodies-living or nonliving-and will be a part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. We share not only life's molecules but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. Arid since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. We belong to the universe, we are at home in it, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)

"All living systems are networks of smaller components, and the web of life as a whole is a multilayered structure of living systems nesting within other living systems - networks within networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"In other words, the web of life consists of networks within networks. At each scale, under closer scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arange these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid fashion. But this is a human projection. In nature there is no 'above' or 'below', and there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

🪸On Systems Thinking: The Web of Life II

"It is thus that in the universe everything is connected; it is itself but an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing one from the other." (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"Brightness and freshness take possession of the mind when it is crossed by the light of principles, shewing the facts of Nature to be organically connected." (John Tyndall, "Six Lectures on Light Delivered in America in 1872-1873" 3rd Ed., 1901) 

"This whole electric universe is a complex maze of similar tensions. Every particle of matter in the universe is separated from its condition of oneness, just as the return ball is separated from the hand, and each is connected with the other one by an electric thread of light which measures the tension of that separateness." (Walter Russell, "The Secret of Light", 1947)

"We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are a part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity." (Maria Montessori, "To Educate the Human Potential", 1947)

"We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet." (James Lovelock, "Gaia: A new look at life on Earth", 1981)

"Nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else. Everything is intrinsically connected, irrevocably interdependent, interactive, interwoven into the fabric of all of life." (Neale D Walsch, "Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue", 2003) 

"In our Gaian world, everything is connected to and influences everything else." (Tim Flannery, "The Weather Makers", 2005)

"I understand that everything is connected, that all roads meet, and that all rivers flow into the same sea." (Paulo Coelho, "Aleph", 2011)

"All the variables we can observe in an ecosystem-population densities, availability of nutrients, weather patterns, and so forth-always fluctuate. This is how ecosystems maintain themselves in a flexible state, ready to adapt to changing conditions. The web of life is a flexible, ever-fluctuating network. The more variables are kept fluctuating, the more dynamic is the system; the greater is its flexibility; and the greater is its ability to adapt to changing conditions." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)