In this Chapter I will be using some terms that I will describe briefly now.
Holism implies that we look at something in its entirety, and not just at one aspect of it. Emergence describes how from within, something new may emerge; (i.e. be created) with minimum (or no) external influence.
(We will describe holism, emergence and the uncertainty that inevitably accompanies emergence – in the natural world at least – in the Chapters entitled Systems Theory and Universal Theory of Change in Section Three in far more detail).
Also, in the Chapter on Systems Theory we will describe how living systems are open.
For now, when I say open I mean that they are continually interacting with their environment, i.e. their sense of aliveness depends on their openness. But their openness also makes the measuring (or the estimating, or the predicting) of anything within them, or about them, very challenging and full of uncertainty.
And we will also look at closed systems, and how in measurement, (for example in a laboratory) they remain closed, meaning that anything that will interfere with measurement is deliberately left outside, enabling much more certainty in predicting how they will behave under different conditions.
The quality of predictability that we associate with closed-ness will be important when reading this Chapter.