Generative Systems Theory

A Generative Ontology for Coherence, Collapse, and Repair

Abstract

Systems science has developed powerful descriptive frameworks for modelling complexity, yet it lacks a generative ontology that explains how systems produce coherence, drift, collapse, and repair. Classical systems theory maps relationships but does not identify the structural conditions that make systemic behaviour possible. While cybernetics explains regulation, it does not explain generativity, and complexity science describes emergent patterns but not the mechanisms that generate them. Resilience theory accounts for collapse and reorganisation, but not the substrate that makes downward collapse terminate at a mechanical floor where torsion expresses as violence. This paper identifies the substrate and the generative operators that govern systemic behaviour across biological, psychological, social, and institutional domains.

Generative Systems Theory begins with the substrate: the integrative field, the fold as the generator of identity, the law of cost, combinatorial expansion, the two outcome rule, and cross scale homology. Acting on this substrate are four generative operators of differentiation, integration, torsion, and repair, which form a continuous Double Figure Eight cycle. Together, they produce the invariant generative sequence through which boundaries generate tension, collapse moves downward, repair moves upward, and renewal emerges.