In regard to applications in studies of perception, systems theory can model complex intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, and human/nature interactions without reducing perceptual
phenomena to the level of individual stimuli. It capitalizes on the emergence of parallelisms in
different disciplinary interpretations of reality and consequently provides a platform for the integrated study of complexity in the human experience.
As a field inquiry concerned with the holistic and integrative exploration of phenomena
and events, systems theory pertains to both epistemological and ontological situations. But
rather than constitute either an epistemology or an ontology, it is more reminiscent of the Greek
notion of gnosiology concerned with the holistic and integrative exploration of phenomena and
events. There are aspects of the systems approach that are ontological and aspects that are epistemological, and aspects that are at once both and should not be circumscribed to either.