Abstract
Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in academic the dialogue over the concept of ?Open Systems' (especially in non-mainstream approaches) many of which have recently been influenced by Critical Realism (Mearman, 2004: 2). Victoria Chick (Chick, 2004: 4) defines a system as "a network, a structure with connections within which agents act mostly in ways which reproduce and reinforce the system, but sometimes in ways which lead the system to evolve". Thus, an ?Open System' refers to a perpetually evolving structure with connections many of which are with the outside world.
