Coherence: bridging personal, social, and global health.

All nature is a continuum. The endless complexity of life is organized into patterns which repeat themselves—theme and variations—at each level of system. These similarities and differences are proper concerns for science. From the ceaseless streaming of protoplasm to the many-vectored activities of supranational systems, there are continuous flows through living systems as they maintain their highly organized steady states. Even more basic to this presentation than the concept of “system” are the concepts of “space,” “time,” “matter,” “energy,” and “information,” because the living systems exist in space and are made of matter and energy organized by information. — James Grier Miller, Living Systems, 1978