System Description Person (Human Being)

This document describes a Person (Human Being) as an Autonomous Living System to bring together a number of concepts into a single focus.

This system description explores the Person as a System-of-Interest and uses a system model to integrate a number of disciplines into a coherent picture of a person.

By taking a whole system approach to a person, we can then understand the expected behaviors and performance of a person in various social system contexts.

This system description is a synthesis of a number of authors and academic disciplines. These are:

PDF:: System Description: Person (Human Being), Version 2.4, 04-April-2023

This System Description highlights the Person as a system as seen from the context of the Systems View of Life. The following picture highlights the types of living systems and their environments.

The Systems View of Life, Fritjof Capra, Key Capra Course Topics and Systems

This system description addresses the biological and cognitive aspects and well as the system properties of a person as a system.

This description highlights the systemic properties of a person that are critical to the effective understanding of a social system. This document uses the underlying model of a system as the basis for the description.

The System Description includes the following sections representing views of the system-of-interest:

  • System Name and Class
  • System Purpose
  • System Properties
  • System Stakeholders and their concerns
  • System Environment (Context)
  • System Structure (Pattern of Organization)
  • System Behavior (Structural Changes)
  • Correspondences
  • Decisions and Rationale
  • References

System concepts are being applied to this system-of-interest within this System Description.

Why describe a Person (Human Being) as an Autonomous Living System?

All of our human activity on the planet is due to people. Understanding a person as a system, gives us the ability to understand the needs and capabilities of a person and their resultant impact on the planet. This means understanding how a person:

  • develops throughout their life time
  • learns and changes
  • maintains their health
  • behaves in a social system.
  • establishes their values and beliefs (worldview)
  • obtains the services necessary to sustain life.

Concepts and related systems and system elements

The following related topics will be included in this document:

  • Approaches to learning..
  • Approaches to communication
  • Approaches to personal change