Formal Treatment of Systems with a Hidden Organizing Structure, with Possible Applications to Physics

It is the purpose of this paper to study the concept of an "organizing structure". In the beginning, dynamic systems with a specific substructure are analysed, such that longterm modifications of the system structure (and possibly other effects) can be attributed to that substructure. This analysis follows the guidelines of general system theory and the proposed formalism is open to applications in various fields. In a second step, a possible application to quantum theory is discussed. It will be shown that this proposal is compatible with the present state of quantum theory, and that hidden variables can be regarded as a special case within the concept of a hidden organizing structure. Possible applications to a recently proposed extension (weak quantum theory) and to the study of anticipatory systems will be sketched.