1、一般系统- general systems.
2、人类社会-human society
3、人类文明-human civilization
4、复杂人类社会结构的特定类型specific types of complex human social formation
5、每一社会组织的多样性varieties of each type of social formation
第一层次是对所有开放、演化与复杂系统都适用的特征和原理，包括达尔文的进化论(Darwin’s principles of evolution)、Lamarck的复杂性递增假说、baer法则以及Ashby的必要多样性定律，作为这一层次的关键词，Hodgson选取了变化（Variety）、复制（replication）、选择(Selection) 、路径依赖(path dependence)、资源稀缺(resource scarcity)、负熵、自组织与耗散系统.
简单解释一下其中的名词：
Lamarck是法国生物学，最为著名是获得性状遗传（inheritance of acquired traits）理论， 在这个理论中Lamarck认为生物在应对环境中形成的一些性状，可以通过繁殖，遗传保留下来，他的思想概括为：
……a change in the environment causes changes in the needs of organisms living in that environment, which in turn causes changes in their behavior. Altered behavior leads to greater or lesser use of a given structure or organ; use would cause the structure to increase in size over several generations, whereas disuse would cause it to shrink or even disappear
与达尔文主义（自然选择）一味强调环境在生物进化中的主导地位不同，Lamarck认为遗传在生物进化机制中的作用更为重要，但他们的结论却是相似的：在漫长的岁月中，谱系的适应性变化，最终被环境变化所驱动（adaptive change in lineages, ultimately driven by environmental change, over long periods of time）
Lamarck与现代演化理论的不同之处在于，他认为演化是一个复杂性递增且趋于完善的过程，并不是出于偶然的机会（Nature, in producing in succession every species of animal, and beginning with the least perfect or simplest to end her work with the most perfect, has gradually complicated their structure."）
[2]baer法则
贝尔法则（Baer’s law） 是脊椎动物胚胎发育的一种规律。由生物学家冯·贝尔（Karl Ernst von Baer）于1828年提出，故名。贝尔长期从事脊椎动物胚胎发育的研究。当他比较了不同脊椎动物的胚胎发育时，得出了以下重要结论：
（1）每一较大动物类群的共同性状比专门性状形成得较早；
（2）先出现最共同的性状，然后出现较专门的性状，最后才出现最专门的性状；
（3）不同纲动物的胚胎最初是相似的，在以后的发育中才逐步分歧。就是说，不同纲脊椎动物的早期胚胎是极其相似的，在胚胎发育过程中，门的性状最先出现，随后才依次出现目、科、属、种的性状。这种规律被称为贝尔法则。达尔文很重视贝尔的上述发现。并把它看作是生物进化的胚胎学证据。
Ashby的必要多样性定律：一个复杂的系统必须有一个复杂的控制机构，简单的控制机构不能有效地控制复杂的系统"，包括两层含义：
(1) the amount of appropriate selection that can be performed is limited by the amount of information available.——在决策中更多的信息可能被浪费，但信息不足的结果是武断决策。
(2) for appropriate regulation the variety in the regulator must be equal to or greater than the variety in the system being regulated. Or, the greater the variety within a system, the greater its ability to reduce variety in its environment through regulation. Only variety (in the regulator) can destroy variety (in the system being regulated).
The 'negentropy', or 'negative entropy' comes from Schrödinger's book,《 What is Life?》 in which he writes,
"It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of 'equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic....What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy."（使生物体避免迅速衰落至惰性的均衡状态的力量，看起来高深莫测……生物体依靠负熵维生）
In a footnote, later, however, Schrödinger explains that by 'negative entropy', he really means free energy. Many subsequent authors have taken negentropy as being simply entropy with a negative sign, as they feel it simply is erroneous to refer to 'negentropy' as free energy.
Despite that, the term continues to be used by biologists to the present day, beginning with one of the most authoritative among them:
"It is common knowledge that the ultimate source of all our energy and negative entropy is the radiation of the sun."
The reason 'negentropy' continues to be used is that 'entropy with a negative sign' simply does not capture what is intended by the original term. Schrödinger uses it to identify the remarkable ability of the living system, not only to avoid the effects of entropy production - as dictated by the second law - but to do just the opposite, to increase organization, which intuitively, seems like the converse of entropy. Szent-Györgi, on the other hand, alludes to both the notions of free energy and of organization in his use of the term. Both scientists have the right intuition - energy and organization are inextricably bound up with each other.( 按Schrödinger的理解，负熵不仅使一个充满生机的系统避免熵的效应，相反增加了组织性，这与熵正好相反，按照热力学第二定律，熵意味着孤立系统倾向于增加混乱程度。作者认为自由能量和组织是紧密相连的)
Something is self-organizing if, left to itself, it tends to become more organized. This is an unusual, indeed quite counter-intuitive property: we expect that, left to themselves, things get messy, and that when we encounter a very high degree of order, or an increase in order, something, someone, or at least some peculiar thing, is responsible. (This is the heart of the Argument from Design.) But we now know of many instances where this expectation is simply wrong, of things which can start in a highly random state and, without being shaped from the outside, become more and more organized. Thus self-organization is one of the most interesting concepts in modern science --- if also one of the most nebulous, because the ideas of organization, pattern, order and so forth are, as used normally, quite vague.
自组织是《复杂》一书中经常提到的一个词。
[6]Dissipative structures（
耗散结构）
耗散结构(dissipative structures)是指在一个开放系统在远离平衡态的非线性区所形成的一种宏观的,动态有序的结构,这种结构需要系统不断地与外界交换物质,信息与能量才能维持自身於一种流变整体(flowing wholeness)的稳态,因此称之为耗散结构(Prigogine & Stengers,1984).要形成耗散结构则开放系统必须达到远离平衡态的非线性区,系统内部某个参量的变化也达到一定的阀值(bias),才有可能通过涨落(fluctuation),产生非平衡相变,使系统由原来的非耗散结构跃迁为耗散结构,因为具耗散结构的系统可由系统内部产生自我组织的运作,因此耗散结构论又称为非平衡系统的自组织(self-organizing)理论;形成与维持耗散结构的条件有四项:
1.开放性
任一耗散结构,只有在开放的条件下,不断地与外界交换物质与能量才能维持自身於一定的动态稳定状态,可以说「开放」是耗散结构得以存在的基础.这种交换与热力学第二定律有关:热量传递的方向总是从高温物体传向低温的物体,功可以全部转变为热,而热量却不可能通过循环过程全部转变为功,不可逆过程带来熵增,熵增使能量的「品质」衰退或降低(能贬值).
2.非平衡
开放是耗散结构存在的基础,内部有物质与能量运动的系统若具有开放的条件,但处於热力学平衡态或线性近平衡态,仍将使系统趋於无序,无组织,这是因为熵降低系统的有序度,组织度,而热力学平衡态或线性近平衡态系统的总熵必然不断增加;唯有非平衡(远离平衡,或不稳定)系统可以透过能交换物质与信息使熵交换变化量为负,抵销系统内部必然增加的混乱度,让系统整体得以保持在稳定的低熵状态,促使系统维持或发展耗散结构.
3.涨落
开放与非平衡是形成耗散结构的条件,但唯有通过系统内部的涨落才可能使开放与非平衡两条件发挥作用;涨落是指系统中某个变量的行为对稳定性的偏离,它与系统的功能及结构之间相互影响,相互制约,可以发挥两种作用:对平衡结构和近平衡结构而言,涨落带来干扰会很快地衰减以致消失,不太可能促使此两者结构跳到另一种动态的稳态;对於远离平衡态的开放系统而言,涨落所造成的偏离是触发非平衡相变的契机,非平衡相变是指系统处於不稳态,系统内部随机的涨落迅速地被放大,而使系统跃迁到新的有序状态.
4.非线性
任何称之为系统的存在与发展必须有内部相互联系的力量,这种相互联系机制就是来自於非线性作用.上述三项条件是形成耗散结构之必要条件,而非线性的交互作用是形成耗散结构的充分条件:当开放系统内部各元素之间与子系统之间存在著不绝对独立,均匀与对称关系时,才可能发生协同,竞争,调节,消长等现象,系统也才有涌现整体性,结构性,层次性的可能,并更进一步地开始具备继续演化的能力.非线性机制的运作若以非线性微分方程呈现,可以在非线性方程中看到多个定态解,并且存在著分支的现象,这种不确定性说明了系统形成新的有序状态的各种可能性空间与过程.
在第一层次，Hodgson将一般系统作为分析范围，从生物世界和物理世界抽象出关键概念，以熵、组织、演化、信息等术语来论述系统的变化——包括从无序到有序的相互转化、生命演变的层次问题、生命演化与环境交互、组织与能量的联系等等。每一个个体，不管是生物体还是无机体，都可视为一个小的系统，许多的个体组成大的系统，进而组成巨型系统，维持系统（或将个体形成组织）需要能量，熵使得系统趋于混乱，还原为个体。生命系统似乎要复杂的多，在《复杂》一书中，桑塔费的科学家相信生命源于“自组织系统”，而不是通过将一些简单的无机物放入特定容器来“撞大运”。
在结束这一部分的叙述前，系统（system）的定义不容遗漏,《美国传统词典》的解释是：A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. 在找到更好的定义前，我将采取这个说法。