I argue that systems are heuristics; that they do not exist except as theoretical constructs that facilitate the conceptualization of perceivable phenomena as composite wholes. Different types of systems offer different ways of conceptualizing. While this might imply that a person should be able to interpret any particular phenomena through each of the different systems-heuristics, I find this is seldom the case: reality continually resists.

This raises a conundrum: does the resistance arise from reality or from the preceding historical conceptualization of reality - and is there any way to tell these apart? [aside]

Clear and concise answers are not readily forthcoming. At best, it seems to me that the process of conceptualization is a process of negotiation rather than one of interpretation. [TBD]  To use my paradigmatic examples, it seems much more reasonable to interpret an organism as autopoietic and an ecosystem as sympoietic than to do the reverse. Yet this confounds a central motivaton: to disrupt the complacency with which we accept that what is is.

I describe sympoietic systems in order to provide a different heuristic, to facilitate a different way of thinking, to facilitate different ways of doing things. Yet the heuristic itself was created to match my sense of the world. Am I providing something different or just attempting to confirm what I find most comforting? Even further, am I just attempting to inculcate my own views through the popular trend toward plurality and multi-perspectival approaches?

In this web-presentation I describe a variety of different phenomena using theoretical and empirical descriptions. These descriptions match conceputalization through three different heuristics: self-organizing systems, autopoietic systems and sympoietic systems. Some descriptions are more involved, some are quite short; most have yet to be added...! :)