The First Eight Systems¹

In his four-volume masterwork The Dramatic Universe, written between 1956 and 1961 (Bennett, 1956-61; Bennett 1993), Bennett worked to find a way to identify and understand the underlying pattern and structure of a particular thing—be it an object, action, relationship, situation, process, or whatever—by turning to the experienced quality of number. Thus Bennett contended that the qualitative significance of oneness could be drawn upon to indicate the particular whole in which one is concerned, while the qualitative meaning of twoness could be used to indicate the various differences, polarities, and complementarities present in the whole. Yet again, he contended that threeness could help to define relationship and process, while four-ness could help define activity; fiveness, significance; sixness, event; seveness, transformation; and so forth. The central assumption of Systematics is that there is something inherent in number itself that is fundamental to the way the world is and the way we can understand it. As Bennett’s colleague Anthony Blake explains, “If we are able to penetrate more deeply into the nature of number, then we must become able to see reality more clearly” (Blake 1991, 2).

Bennett used the word system to designate the underlying pattern that a specific number represents. Further, by using the Greek word for the particular number followed by the suffix –ad, he gave each system a name. Thus the monad represents one-ness; the dyad, twoness; the triad, threeness; the tetrad,fourness, and so forth. Bennett argued that each of these systems would offer varying but equally accurate perspectives on the particular thing in which the researcher is interested. In this way, he or she might gain a more comprehensive and integrated understanding of the thing and be better able to appreciate and to work with it.

¹Threeness, the Triad and Christopher Alexander (D. Seamon)