ABSTRACT
As living systems, humans function during their existence to maintain and elaborate their structural and functional organization within the facilitating and constraining conditions of their contexts. In a larger sense, an individual’s temporary existence ends, but the evolution of societies as living systems continues as new individuals develop. Individuals are simultaneously living systems in their own right and subsystems of larger living systems, such as families and communities. Elaboration of the complexity and efficiency of living system functioning through componentization provides not only advantages but also dangers. A family is a living system of which family members are components. Frameworks for integrating that “part” knowledge will help reveal the meaning of being human. Recognizing information as being equally important but different from energy/material as basic phenomena of the universe has vast implications. The view of regulatory processes proposed herein has important implications.
