Organismic Systems Theory

Organismic systems theory is the tradition in theoretical biology that treats the organism not as a machine or a collection of mechanisms but as an integrated, self-organizing system whose properties emerge from the organization of its parts. The tradition includes the work of Robert Rosen, Paul Weiss, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and Joseph Henry Woodger, and it represents an alternative to the mechanistic and reductionist programs that dominated twentieth-century biology.

The core claim of organismic systems theory is that biological organization is sui generis — a category of its own, not reducible to physics or chemistry, though compatible with both. This is not vitalism. The claim is not that living systems contain a special substance or force. The claim is that living systems have a special organization: a pattern of processes that maintains itself through self-reference and operational closure.

Organismic systems theory is the direct ancestor of contemporary systems biology, autopoiesis theory, and the study of complex systems. But unlike much of contemporary systems biology, which uses computational models to simulate detailed mechanisms, organismic systems theory insists that the organizational level is primary and the mechanistic level is secondary. You cannot understand a living system by cataloguing its mechanisms. You must understand the organization that makes those mechanisms into a living whole.