Natural systems are the physical ontologies of the natural world. I can't attend the Conference Call 8/23/12 but if you understand this I'd like to engage, and have lots to offer. (3EFZ)
I'm a natural systems scientist, with some quite applicable findings for the earth sciences regarding how science can study "self-organizing" and so also "self-managing" systems of nature. The approach shows a way to connect scientific language with them, i.e. to enable the "abstract theory" of science to refer to the "actual things" of nature, rather than just to other abstractions. Scientific language as an information theory has never been able to do that, always needing "data" as the external reference that grounds the theory to reality. So there hasn't been a scientific way to have science refer to or study "things", just its own abstractions referring to data. (3E65)
The main advances are for the large class of natural systems that are cellular in design, having identifiable boundaries between inside and outside. For those natural systems there's a new method that allows them to be identified by an exhaustive search for their self-defining natural boundary. It permits traditional thermodynamic measures and analysis to be done on "the real thing", among other important new capabilities. It shows that our information objects (what we talk about as parts of nature in theory) and natural systems themselves, as objects of nature, are remarkably different in design and behavior. Being able to expose the difference opens the door to studying it. see: Systems Energy Assessment (SEA) http://www.synapse9.com/SEA (3E66)
Research Essays: http://www.synapse9.com/phpub.htm Blog: http://www.synapse9.com/signals Bio: http://www.synapse9.com/jlh-blurb.htm (3E67)