This book outlines a possible future theoretical perspective for systemics, its conceptual morphology and landscape while the Good-Old-Fashioned-Systemics (GOFS) era is still under way. The change from GOFS to future systemics can be represented, as shown in the book title, by the conceptual change from Collective Beings to Quasi-systems. With the current advancements, problems and approaches occurring in contemporary science, systemics are moving beyond the traditional frameworks used in the past. From Collective Beings to Coherent Quasi-Systems outlines a conceptual morphology and landscape for a new theoretical perspective for systemics introducing the concept of Quasi-systems. Advances in domains such as theoretical physics, philosophy of science, cell biology, neuroscience, experimental economics, network science and many others offer new concepts and technical tools to support the creation of a fully transdisciplinary General Theory of Change. This circumstance requires a deep reformulation of systemics, without forgetting the achievements of established conventions. The book is divided into two parts. Part I, examines classic systemic issues from new theoretical perspectives and approaches. A new general unified framework is introduced to help deal with topics such as dynamic structural coherence and Quasi-systems. This new theoretical framework is compared and contrasted with the traditional approaches. Part II focuses on the process of translation into social culture of the theoretical principles, models and approaches introduced in Part I. This translation is urgent in post-industrial societies where emergent processes and problems are still dealt with by using the classical or non-systemic knowledge of the industrial phase.

This book contains the proceedings of the Seventh National Conference of the Italian Systems Society. The title, Systemics of Incompleteness and Quasi-Systems, aims to underline the need for Systemics and Systems Science to deal with the concepts of incompleteness and quasiness. Classical models of Systemics are intended to represent comprehensive aspects of phenomena and processes. They consider the phenomena in their temporal and spatial completeness. In these cases, possible incompleteness in the modelling is assumed to have a provisional or practical nature, which is still under study, and because there is no theoretical reason why the modelling cannot be complete. In principle, this is a matter of non-complex phenomena, to be considered using the concepts of the First Systemics. When dealing with emergence, there are phenomena which must be modelled by systems having multiple models, depending on the aspects being taken into consideration. Here, incompleteness in the modelling is intrinsic, theoretically relating changes in properties, structures, and status of system. Rather than consider the same system parametrically changing over time, we consider sequences of systems coherently. We consider contexts and processes for which modelling is incomplete, being related to only some properties, as well as those for which such modelling is theoretically incomplete—as in the case of processes of emergence and for approaches considered by the Second Systemics. In this regard, we consider here the generic concept of quasi explicating such incompleteness. The concept of quasi is used in various disciplines including quasi-crystals, quasi-particles, quasi-electric fields, and quasi-periodicity. In general, the concept of quasiness for systems concerns their continuous structural changes which are always meta-stable, waiting for events to collapse over other configurations and possible forms of stability; whose equivalence depends on the type of phenomenon under study. Interest in the concept of quasiness is not related to its meaning of rough approximation, but because it indicates an incompleteness which is structurally sufficient to accommodate processes of emergence and sustain coherence or generate new, equivalent or non-equivalent, levels. The conference was devoted to identifying, discussing and understanding possible interrelationships of theoretical disciplinary improvements, recognised as having prospective fundamental roles for a new Quasi-Systemics. The latter should be able to deal with problems related to complexity in more general and realistic ways, when a system is not always a system and not always the same system. In this context, the inter-disciplinarity should consist, for instance, of a constructionist, incomplete, non-ideological, multiple, contradiction-tolerant, Systemics, always in progress, and in its turn, emergent.

This book presents the proceedings of the Eighth National Conference of the Italian Systems Society. The contributions underline the need for Systemics and Systems Science in order to address multiple, changing systems involving several coherent versions. The conference focused on identifying, discussing, and understanding possible interrelationships between fundamental theoretical advances in different disciplines. Given their scope, these proceedings represent a valuable asset for all researchers whose work involves multiple systems.

Philosophy in Reality offers a new vision of the relation between science and philosophy in the framework of a non-propositional logic of real processes, grounded in the physics of the real world. This logical system is based on the work of the Franco-Romanian thinker Stéphane Lupasco (1900-1988), previously presented by Joseph Brenner in the book Logic in Reality (Springer, 2008). The present book was inspired in part by the ancient Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching) and its scientific-philosophical discussion of change. The emphasis in Philosophy in Reality is on the recovery of dialectics and semantics from reductionist applications and their incorporation into a new synthetic paradigm for knowledge. Through an original re-interpretation of both classical and modern Western thought, this book addresses philosophical issues in scientific fields as well as long-standing conceptual problems such as the origin, nature and role of meaning, the unity of knowledge and the origin of morality. In a rigorous transdisciplinary manner, it discusses foundational and current issues in the physical sciences - mathematics, information, communication and systems theory and their implications for philosophy. The same framework is applied to problems of the origins of society, the transformation of reality by human subjects, and the emergence of a global, sustainable information society. In summary, Philosophy in Reality provides a wealth of new perspectives and references, supporting research by both philosophers and physical and social scientists concerned with the many facets of reality.

This book is dedicated to the consolidation and to the expansion of theoretic systems thinking as a necessary integration of the general reductionist and analytical attitude dominant in our culture. Reductionism and analytical approaches have produced significant results in many fields of contemporary knowledge giving a great contribution to relevant scientific discoveries and to their technological application, but their validity has been improperly universalized as the only and best methods of knowledge in every domain. It is nowadays clear that analytical or mereological approaches are inadequate to solve many problems and that we should introduce – or support the diffusion of - new concepts and different research attitudes. A good candidate to support such a shift is the well known theoretical approach based on the concept of “system” that no more considers the elementary constituents of an object, but the entity emerging from the relations and interactions among its elementary parts. It becomes possible to reconstruct several domains, both philosophical and scientific, from the systemic point of view, introducing fresh ideas in the research in view of a general rational vision of the world on more comprehensive basis. This book contributes to the diffusion and evolution of systemic thinking by focusing on two main objectives: developing and updating the systemic approach in disciplines currently using it and introducing the systemic perspective in humanistic disciplines, where the approach is not widely used. The Systemic Turn in Human and Natural Sciences: A Rock in the Pond is comprised of ten chapters. The chapter authors adopt a trans-disciplinary perspective, consisting in the recognition and harmonization of the special outlooks that together, within the general systemic paradigm, gives an ideal unity to the book.

This book presents the human, cultural, and scientific contributions of professor Eliano Pessa, who recently passed away. His research interests and activities were varied, some of which included quantum physics, cognitive science and psychology, systems science, artificial intelligence, and alpinism. They were never disciplinary-separated issues, but rather some coherent dimensions of his interests in life. He lived and not only practiced interdisciplinarity and multiple dimensions; he considered it unacceptable to do only one thing in life. The contributors in this volume consider, discuss, interpret, and represent the multiplicity and interdisciplinarity experienced, lived and applied by Pessa. The chapters are inspired by, rebuild, and retrace such networked interests lived by him from the personal, cultural, and scientific points of view of the authors. This is true interdisciplinarity and usage of non-equivalences, honoring the richness of Pessa's contributions.

This book argues for computer-aided collaborative country research based on the science of complex and dynamic systems. It provides an in-depth discussion of systems and computer science, concluding that proper understanding of a country is only possible if a genuinely interdisciplinary and truly international approach is taken; one that is based on complexity science and supported by computer science. Country studies should be carefully designed and collaboratively carried out, and a new generation of country students should pay more attention to the fast growing potential of digitized and electronically connected libraries. In this frenzied age of globalization, foreign policy makers may – to the benefit of a better world – profit from the radically new country studies pleaded for in the book. Its author emphasizes that reductionism and holism are not antagonistic but complementary, arguing that parts are always parts of a whole and a whole has always parts.