46. Three General Systems Principles and Their Derivation: Insights from the Philosophy of Science Applied to Systems Concepts

Von Bertalanffy argued that the phenomenological “systemic isomorphisms” signify the existence of general [systems] principles that would form the foundation of a GST [24, p. 33]). In contrast, Troncale’s “Systems Processes Theory” (SPT) [9‐11] replaces the inference to general principles by proposing the existence of “isomorphies” as pre-existing abstract entities that are the causal precursors of the empirical ‘system patterns’ that recur isomorphically across kinds of systems [27, p. 17]. This postulation of abstract entities that have causal powers suggests SPT is a form of quasi-idealism akin to Platonism and hence not fully consistent with Naturalism. Although SPT is scientific, it is not quantitative but grounded in qualitative “linkage propositions” that denote causal relations between the abstract “isomorphies” [11] (e.g., “‘feedback loops’ are a partial cause of ‘cycles’, and “‘symmetry’ inhibits ‘oscillation coherence’”). SPT has valuable explanatory dimensions, but it does not predict isomorphies or explain their variety, instead bringing them into the theory as abstract fundamentals proposed on the basis of a list of empirically observed kinds [58, p. 16] of optimized design patterns [27, p. 17]. The absence of general principles entailing both isomorphies and their variety precludes SPT from being truly general. For example, SPT currently has no basis for showing that a systems model built on SPT is complete, in contrast with the way that, for example, Newtonian mechanics applied to solar system models led to the discovery of previously unobserved planets.