Osteopathy for an IT professional

If you think in systems, here's the shortest path to what osteopathy actually is.

One idea: General System Theory

General System Theory (Ludwig von Bertalanffy) is a universal way of thinking about systems: a system is a set of interconnected parts whose relationships — as much as the parts themselves — determine how the whole behaves. Bertalanffy set out this framework in An Outline of General System Theory (1950) and later in General System Theory (1968).

Two applications of the same idea

From this angle, both cybernetics and osteopathy are particular applications of General System Theory:

• Cybernetics (Norbert Wiener) applies systems thinking to control, communication, regulation and feedback — see Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948).
• Osteopathy applies systems thinking to the human body through hands-on assessment and treatment: the body as a unit, capable of self-regulation, with structure and function bound together.

A cybernetic engineer studies how information and feedback regulate a system. An osteopath studies how the body's structures and functions interact within one living system. In both, the central idea is the same:

A problem in one component often can't be understood — or fixed — without considering its relationships with the whole system.

This is a conceptual metaphor, not a claim of historical or scientific derivation. Cybernetics is systems theory expressed through control and information; osteopathy is systems theory expressed through the hands.

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