I-IV -- Prefatory note -- Preface -- Table of Contents -- I. General -- Evolving complexity in social science -- Evolutionary modelling -- Can we apply synergetics to the human sciences? -- From crisp systems to fuzzy systems -- Systems and societies: The logic of sociocultural evolution -- Systems-theoretical approach to the concept of organization -- No system can be improved in all respects -- The plurality of systems, and the unity of the world -- Systems ideology in human and social sciences -- Systems theory and the evolution of science -- Emerging systems -- II. Semiotics -- Semiotic systems -- Inquiries into semiotic principles and systems -- Constructive contradictions -- III. Knowledge and cognition -- Gödelian aspects of nature and knowledge -- Cognitive systems theory -- IV. Culture -- Concept of the 'Second Reality' from the perspective of an empirical systems theory on the basis of radical constructivism -- Self-organization of culture -- V. Music -- Systemic organization and the development of the European musical language -- A systems theoretical approach to language and music -- VI. Language -- On the nature of tension in dialectal networks -- Hurst's indicators and text -- A note on language competences as dynamic systems -- Chaos, fractals and dissipative structures in language -- VII. Literature -- Fractopoi, chaosmos, or merely simplexity-complicity? -- A systems-oriented approach to literary studies -- VIII. In lieu of an EPILOGUE -- Systems and the human sciences -- Index of names -- Index of subjects -- The authors