Table Of ContentPRINCIPLES OF
QUANTITATIVE LIVING
SYSTEMS SCIENCE
International Federation for Systems Research
International Series on Systems Science and Engineering
Series Editor: George J. Klir
State University of New York at Binghamton
Editorial Board
Gerrit Broekstra Ivan M. Havel
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Charles University, Prague,
The Netherlands Czech Republic
John L. Casti Manfred Peschel
Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico Academy of Sciences, Berlin, Germany
Brian Gaines Franz Pichler
University of Calgary, Canada University of Linz, Austria
Volume 7 FACETS OF SYSTEMS SCIENCE
George J. Klir
Volume 8 THE ALTERNATIVE MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF
LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS
Vilém Novák
Volume 9 CHAOTIC LOGIC: Language, Thought, and Reality from the
Perspective of Complex Systems Science
Ben Goertzel
Volume 10 THE FOUNDATIONS OF FUZZY CONTROL
Harold W. Lewis, III
Volume 11 FROM COMPLEXITY TO CREATIVITY: Explorations in
Evolutionary, Autopoietic, and Cognitive Dynamics
Ben Goertzel
Volume 12 GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY: A Mathematical Approach
Yi Lin
Volume 13 PRINCIPLES OF QUANTITATIVE LIVING SYSTEMS
SCIENCE
James R. Simms
IFSR was established “to stimulate all activities associated with the scientific study of systems and
to coordinate such activities at international level.” The aim of this series is to stimulate publication
of high-quality monographs and textbooks on various topics of systems science and engineering. This
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Volumes 1–6 were published by Pergainon Press.
PRINCIPLES OF
QUANTITATIVE LIVING
SYSTEMS SCIENCE
JAMES R. SIMMS
Simms Industries, lnc.
Fulton, Maryland
Foreword by
James Grier Miller
and
Jessie L. Miller
Kluwer Academic Publishers
New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow
eBook ISBN: 0-306-46966-9
Print ISBN: 0-306-45979-5
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To my children and grandchildren:
Suzanne, Terry, Patrick, Cassandra, and Kara
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Foreword
In 1978, when the book Living Systems was published, it contained the prediction
that the sciences that were concerned with the biological and social sciences
would, in the future, be stated as rigorously as the “hard sciences” that study such
nonliving phenomena as temperature, distance, and the interaction of chemical
elements. Principles of Quantitative Living Systems Science, the first of a planned
series of three books, begins an attempt to fulfill that prediction.
The view that living things are similar to other parts of the physical world,
differing only in their complexity, was explicitly stated in the early years of the
twentieth century by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy. His ideas could not be
published until the end of the war in Europe in the 1940s. Von Bertalanffy was
strongly opposed to vitalism, the theory current among biologists at the time that
life could only be explained by recourse to a “vital principle” or God. He con-
sidered living things to be a part of the natural order, “systems” like atoms and
molecules and planetary systems. Systems were described as being made up of a
number of interrelated and interdependent parts, but because of the interrelations,
the total system became more than the sum of those parts.
These ideas led to the development of systems movements, in both Europe
and the United States, that included not only biologists but scientists in other
fields as well. Systems societies were formed on both continents. In the United
States, a group of professors at the Center for the Behavioral Sciences in Palo
Alto, California, started a group that, in time and after several name changes,
became the International Society for Systems Sciences. At the University of
Chicago, a discussion group made up of several of the founding members and
others, including von Bertalanffy himself, who spent a year there, met to discuss
systems ideas as they applied to the several fields they represented. Living Sys-
tems included a number of concepts that were developed in those meetings.
The theory described in that book sees living systems as evolving in levels-
cell, organ, organism, group, organization, community, society, and supranation-
al system—each composed of systems at the level below, organized into twenty
subsystems, some of which process matter-energy (matter and energy) and some
information. In later work, we added the community between the organization
and the society as an additional level. Each subsystem is represented by structur-
vii
viii Foreward
al components and carries out specific matter-energy or information processes for
the system of which it is a part. Living systems remain in steady states by inputs
and outputs of matter, energy, and information from and to the environment.
James Simms approaches the study of living systems from a background in
physics and systems engineering and experience in designing systems for the
United States military, including one to allow ships to sense the approach of
incoming missiles and evade them. This is now in use on U.S. Navy ships. He
begins his analysis of living systems with a description of the evolution of the
quantitative physical sciences and the measurements used in each and applies this
model to develop fundamental concepts and measurements for a quantitative liv-
ing systems science.
Mr. Simms’ book, although it is based on living systems theory, is not a
restatement of that theory, nor is it simply an application of its concepts. Instead
it extends living systems theory by analyzing the fundamental role of energy in
the behavior of living things. In his theory, living systems can behave only to the
extent that they have available energy which they are able to direct. Therefore, a
specific behavior can be quantified by the energy it uses. The capacity to direct
energy is a fundamental behavioral characteristic of any living system and is a
function of the system’s structure and organization. By searching the available lit-
erature in the life sciences, he demonstrates that measurements are available that
make it possible to quantify behavior of many kinds in both plant and animal
organisms.
Information, however, is not neglected in Simms’ work, since behavior is
determined by one of several sorts of information. A muscle, for example, twitch-
es only when neural information is transmitted to it. Communication from anoth-
er individual in the form of sensory information can cause coordinated muscle
contraction like running away from a threat. He shows that information, like ener-
gy, can be measured and expressed in an equation that embodies the system’s
capacity to direct energy, the amount of available energy, and information.
It is our opinion that this book represents an important step in the develop-
ment of a quantitative living systems science. As Simms shows, the concepts of
available energy and the capacity to direct energy, as well as the causative rela-
tionship between information and behavior, are useful in the analysis of behavior.
The systems with which this first book of the series is concerned are mainly at the
level of the cell and the animal organ and organism. They include such systems
as neurons, motor units, the leg muscle of Rana pipiens, and the hearts, respira-
tory organs, and digestive tracts of various species. It will be interesting to see
how the science is applied in later volumes to the more complex behavior of
human beings, groups, and higher-level systems.
James Grier Miller
Jessie L. Miller
La Jolla, California
Preface
Principles of Quantitative Living Systems Science is the culmination of over three
decades of research by the author. The concept for this research was formulated
while I worked as a systems engineer on the Titan International Continental Bal-
listic Missile (ICBM). My job included analysis of the accuracy of the Titan
ICBM for the purpose of improving its destructive capability. It was readily
apparent that technology provided a means of destroying civilization. The
thought of a war being fought with ICBMs had a major impact on me–especial-
ly after having been involved in amphibious operations in the Pacific during
World War II and seeing firsthand the horrors of war.
It was easy to rationalize working on ICBMs by understanding that techni-
cal people designing and making weapons do not cause wars or start wars–polit-
ical leaders do! However, this knowledge does nothing to solve the problem of
the potential destruction of civilization. Being trained in the quantitative physical
sciences and knowing that our civilization is based, in large part, on the technical
innovations of man, I thought the solution to the destruction problem lay in the
development of a quantitative political science. This science was to have analyt-
ical and predictive properties equivalent to those of the quantitative (hard) sci-
ences. This political science was to bring discipline to social innovation in the
way that the physical sciences bring discipline to technical innovation. In my
naiveté, I thought the task would not be too difficult and could be finished with-
in just a few years. I did not realize then that the physical sciences have evolved
over many thousands of years!
A major hypothesis of my research is that fundamental measures and prin-
ciples can be discovered for a quantitative political science which are equivalent
to those of the physical sciences. This hypothesis has proven to be true. The
approach to proving the hypothesis was to determine the way the physical sci-
ences evolved and the characteristics associated with the fundamental principles
of these sciences. Thus, the evolution and characteristics of the physical (nonliv-
ing systems) sciences provided a model for the development of the fundamental
principles for a quantitative living systems science.
Inasmuch as the physical sciences are based on measures of the fundamen-
tal parameters of the science and relationships among these parameters, the
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