International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

The french philosopher E. MORIN (1999a, p. 99-101) proposes the following seven principles as guidelines for an integrative way of thinking:

1. The systemic organizative principle, which unifies the knowledge of the parts with the knowledge of the whole.

According to B. PASCAL (1623-1662) it is "impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole or to know the whole without knowing in particular the parts"

2. The holographic principle according to which "not only the part is within the whole, but also the whole is "inscripted" in the part": The holographic principle implies the concept of emergence

3. The principle of the retroactive loop or feedback: the cause affects the effect, but the effect may well also affect the cause. This principle leads to the homeostasis concept

4. The principle of recursive loop, which explains that a system reproduces itself without losing its identity. This is the basic concept of autopoiesis

5. The principle of autonomy and dependence that states that a system is able to maintain its capacity to sustain itself as a well defined entity only if it obtains the needed inputs from its environment

6. The dialogical principle (also called antagonistic) that states the complementary of somehow opposed notions, as for example life and death, or in physics wave and corpuscle

7. The principle of reconstruction of knowledge, i.e. the recurrent reconstruction within a cultural frame of existing knowledge by the individuals

While this is a quite general overview of complexity, other viewpoints are also significant, and in no way contradictory, as for example SABELLI's priority of the simple and supremacy of the complex, or J. MILLER's taxonomy of living systems

→ Frames of reference; Reconstructability analysis