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The World Is a System
《世界是一个系统》
For thousands of years, there have been various kinds of understandings about the world where we live. The world may be best presented, however, as a system including cosmology, geography, society, human beings, thinking mode and so on. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation and Einstein's Relativity have merely laid a foundation for us to grasp the essence of the system.
对于我们所生存的这个世界，千百年来有着各种认识；然而，归根到底，它是一种系统。这系统包括了天体、地理、社会、人体、思维等等。牛顿发现的万有引力，爱因斯坦创立的相对论，使人类对这个大系统有了最基本的理解，但还仅仅是个基础。
Everything exists in a complex system consisting of macro-cosmos and micro-cosmos, and there are everlasting interactions among different systems at various levels. The best realization comes of a systematic approach.
一切事物都是复杂的系统集合，有宏观亦有微观。各系统之间、各层次内部，又发生着永无休止的相互影响。只有从系统的角度，才能真正认识事物、把握事物。
The intrinsic quality of substance is ever unvarying; it has neither increased nor reduced. What has actually been altered is merely its forms: this is the so-called the "law of conservation of matter". Matter is bound to be manifested in diversified ways.
物质的本质其实是同一的；任何物质的属性，既不会增加也不会减少，所不同的是其形式进行了转化，所谓"万变不离其宗"。世界上的千变万化，原来都是实质内容的不同形式。
Categorization of the world into academic disciplines have blurred its originality, for no purpose other than easy understanding. In Ancient Greece, there was no such thing as different branches of learning except "philosophy", which was believed to embrace all human knowledge of the world. Similarly, in China the disciplines did not occur until "On the Theme of the Six Scholarships" was written by Sima Tan (?—BC. 110) in the Han Dynasty. Knowledge of any kind is, after all, designed and produced by man, who may fail to reveal the totality of the world. In this way, scholarship is always vulnerable when confronted with newly revealed truth.
人们对于世界的认识，所以要分门别类，是出于理解的便利，而非事物本身的面目。在古希腊，最初并没有"分科"的学问，而只有唯一的"学问"——哲学，因为那里概括了人类对世界的所有认识。在中国，对学问的分类，也是到了汉代司马谈的《论六家要旨》才出现的。所以，"学问"是认为的，是人做出来的；而人的认识系统与客观世界的系统之间永远有着差距。在这个意义上讲，学问应当永远让位于真相。
No matter how complicated a human is as a system, it is a limited one compared with the unlimited world that he tries to understand. In handling the overwhelming information that human beings are confronted, highly efficient approaches have thus been developed. In terms of biological structure and functions, the sensory organs of human beings are in fact no more developed than other highly evolved creatures, and yet humans can catch more of the essence of the world, mainly due to their abstract thinking capacity and their language systems.
人无论多么复杂，都是一个有限系统，而认识的对象——世界，却是一个无线系统，这就要求人在信息处理方面要具有以简奴繁、以有限形式去容纳无限内容的能力。在生理结构和功能上，人的感觉器官并不比其他高等生物更敏锐，但却可以在本质上认识无限的物质世界，这主要要得益于人的抽象思维能力和与之配套的语言系统。
What is so-called "prediction" or "knowing the rest by analogy" is essentially generated by systematic analysis. Taking chemistry as an example, some gaps in the Periodic Table discovered by the Russian chemist Mendeleyev predicted several new chemical elements; three of which were found by other chemists fifteen years later. Similarly, the theoretical physicist Diac revealed that there were no electronic "bubbles" in a vacuum during his research into the nature of electrons, and then predicted that something called positron might exist. In physics, many basic particles are found by way of repeated experiments based on a symmetrical theory, thus bridging the gap between the subjective and objective world.
人的所谓"预知"或"触类旁通"，其实都是系统功能的作用。俄国化学家门德列捷夫，在发明了化学元素周期表后，从该表中的几个空洞，预测了新元素的存在。果然，十五年后，其他科学家发现了与预测相符的三种元素。理论物理学家狄拉克研究电子的性质，认为"真空"正如充满电子的海洋，那里其实没有电子的"泡泡"，却预测了正子的存在。在物理学上，许多基本粒子的发现，都是先用对称理论预测，然后通过复杂试验找寻出来的，从而弥补了主观与客观间的差距。
The core of a system is the structure which determines its nature and functions. Diamond and graphite, for example, are both solely made of carbons. However, their different arrangements of carbonaceous atoms result in the hardest and softest substance in the world. The same principle applies to our perceptual and knowledge systems, where the same amount of information may cause different effects. In this way, one could say that learning "parts" sometimes may not be as effective as mastering a "system" or a "structure".
系统的核心是结构；不同的结构决定了不同的性质与功能。金刚石和石墨，都是由碳元素组成的单质，但由于其碳原子排列顺序的不同，形成了世界上最硬和最软的物质。人的认识体系、知识结构也是如此。同样的信息量在不同人身上会产生不同的效果。所以，学习"系统"，搭建"结构"，有时比学习"零件"更重要。
A system can be closed or open. An egg, for instance, could be a closed system when the temperature is even inside the eggshell. As soon as a hen starts incubating, however, the system is opening up as her body temperature has been conducted into the egg. The biological nature of life and its renewal in fact depend on sustainable exchange of energy between a body and its environment.
系统可以是封闭或开放的。一个鸡蛋，若蛋温与外界温度相同，便是一个封闭系统；若母鸡坐在上面孵蛋，母鸡体温输入蛋内，则成为一开放系统。生命现象的根本特征，在于生物体能够与外界环境保持相对稳定的物质能量交换，以维持不断的自我更新与发展。
Also, there are layers of systems where a superior one can receive information from an inferior one and vice versa. "Playing the lute to a cow" (meaning appealing to an unappreciated audience), for instance, receives no response since the receptive code in a cow's nervous system is inferior than the music code in humans, which can transmit and receive complicated signals with its sophisticated linguistic system.
同时，系统又有高低之分。高级系统可以获得由低级系统传出的信息，而低级系统却不能接收高级系统发出的信息。"对牛弹琴"所以不起作用，是因为牛的神经系统中的编码低于音乐的编码，而入的语言符号系统却能接收或反映极其复杂的系统属性。
Really, the world is not so much flat, as it is a multilevel, multi-dimensional open system.
所以，世界不但是平的，而且更是多层次、立体化和开放性的系统。
