system

Systems are the units that evolve. A system is an ordered >network of >elements with a boundary separating the system from the environment. In EE we focus on living systems, or more generally on dissipative systems that continuously transform free >energy into work/bounded energy to maintain non-equilibrium states with a lower level of >entropy than the environment. We try to explain how systems maintain their structure and processes through the exchange of matter-energy with the environment, how they grow and how they decay. The basic assumption of any evolutionary theory is that these processes are driven by variation of systems properties, selection of systems by limited availability of resources to reproduce their structures, and retention of properties that are relatively fit to cope with selection (>variation/selection/retention). As a result, every system carries >knowledge as a set of regularities that have evolved over time to cope with the selective forces. Every system can be analyzed as matter-energy structure and as knowledge, which is the fundamental ontological principle of >bimodality.

There is no a priori interpretation of "system". A system can be a firm, the world economy or Robinson Crusoe and his island. In its view of a system, EE aims at linking a natural science perspective with some ideas of systems theory in sociology and cybernetics, basic insights of institutional economics and biology.

In EE, the abstract concept of a system is specified as a population of >actors who are related with each other through >network relations. We try to understand how systems exist and change through the >actions of actors. These actions result into the accumulation of knowledge in the system that makes its continuing existence possible. The special perspective of economics is to understand every systemic process as >production. Basically, production means the generation of outputs with higher and lower entropy than the environment. In most general terms, the output with lower entropy creates the state of >order of the system.

Basic References

In evolutionary economics, the network approach to the system concept was recently elaborated in the book
Jason Potts: The New Evolutionary Microeconomics. Complexity, Competence and Adaptive Behavior, Cheltenham/Northhampton: Edward Elgar, 2000.

However, this book does include the material and energetic aspect of systems. In this regard, my early thinking has been strongly influenced by the classics:
Mario Bunge, Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Volume 4. Ontology II: A World of Systems. Dordrecht et al.: Reidel, 1979.
James Grier Miller, Living Systems, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.

In EE, the ground has been prepared for this merger between economics, natural science and cybernetics by:
Robert U. Ayres, Information, Entropy, and Progress. A New Evolutionary Paradigm, New York: AIP Press, 1994.

There is a very close relation between evolutionary theory and the theory of complex systems:
Sante Fé Institute
Resources on complex systems

Semantic Field
bimodality   evolution
knowledge   system   production
network   state space