The primary limit of the word ‘system’ is its invocation of ‘arrangement’ (inherent in the Greek prefix ‘sys’). This, as we have just seen, relates to the way in which we have culturally been trained to explain and study our world in terms of parts and wholes and the way they ‘work’ together. The connotations of this systemic functional arrangement are mechanistic; which does not lend itself to an understanding of the messy contextual and mutual learning/evolution of the living world.
