Description
1. Systems which interact with their environment, through the exchanges of matter, energy and information.
2. Such systems also have the following properties: (a) their entropy tends to decrease, namely they acquire negative entropy; (b) there is organization, counterbalancing the tendency toward de-organization and operating toward the achievement of higher levels of orderliness and heterogeneity; and (c) inflow and outflow balance each other under steady state dynamics, such that the system continues to maintain its on-going rates of change.
3. Additionally, open systems show self-regulation and self-adaptation; equifinality, namely as part of their self-regulation they tend to achieve and maintain a steady state around a particular level (or goal); major feedback functions and differentiation and elaboration, with diffused global patterns being replaced by more specialized functions.