I also believe this kind of thinking can have very real practical applications. As a trivial example, say you look at a criminal organization and treat it as a

I also believe this kind of thinking can have very real practical applications. As a trivial example, say you look at a criminal organization and treat it as a living system. Then you can identify what kind of failure modes there exist in living systems in general and how these can be forced, and then use these insights to incapacitate the organization. Granted, I'd expect that most of these forced failures, say destroying or overloading their communications channels, will already be known to practicioners of the field. However, there may be some methods that are overlooked due to how sciences dealing with other kinds of living systems are seen as completely unrelated fields living in their own silos.