"The concept of 'system' constitutes a new 'paradigm', or, as the present writer put it, a 'new philosophy of nature', contrasting the 'blind laws of nature' of the mechanistic world view and the world process as a Shakespearean tale told by an idiot, with an organismic outlook of 'world as a great organization'.

First, we must find out the 'nature of the beast.' This is systems ontology -- what is meant by system and how systems are realized at the various levels of the world of observation.

What is to be defined and described as a system is not a question with an obvious or trivial answer. It will be readily agreed that a galaxy, a dog, a cell, and an atom are 'systems'. But in what sense and what respects can we speak of an animal or human society, personality, language, mathematics, etc. as 'systems'?

We may first distinguish real systems, that is, entities perceived by or inferred from observation and existing independently of the observer. On the other hand, there are conceptual systems such as logic and mathematics which essentially are symbolic constructs (but, for example, also including music); with abstracted systems (science) as a subclass of the latter, i.e., conceptual systems corresponding with reality. However, the distinction is by no means as sharp as it would appear." - Bertalanffy

Slots and Values
ref	p164-5
source	Unnamed