Transformation theory

1. The fundamental premise of transformation theory is that living processes are ubiquitous and universal. It maintains that psychological and cultural processes are an extension of and are isomorphic with biological, physical, and chemical processes. The single process that forms the keystone of the theory and that unites the behaviour of all things is the process of growth. The drive of both the physiological and the psychological process of living is to assimilate external materials and to reformulate them into extensions of the self. The cell does this by ingesting its environment and transforming it into cells that match its own genetic pattern; the human does it by mentally absorbing his cultural environment affecting it in ways that conform to his own culturally acquired mental patterns.

2. Physical, biological, psychological and social systems act in the direction of development of higher levels of, and more widespread, interrelationships, evolving more organized behaviour and becoming more integrated through the incorporation of diversity. These interrelationships grow through a progression of different forms of linking behaviour which, having been successful in a particular subsystem, are repeated at the next highest level. As information handling capabilities evolve, each higher level of growth can contain (or bind) more data, and less energy is lost in growth transactions.