Re: [life] MR as ontological; 3 kinds of life

["Dan Fiscus" <***>]

John,

Good stuff!

Referring to the subset of your post below and especially where you
say '"life form" in terms of a realized system that magnifies it - i.e.,
an organism' and then 'along the continuum from MR to organism,
there are many additional steps, all of which add up to getting a
FULLY realized life form', I would say I agree fully, except for
differing in the demarcation of the origin of life in that "contiuum"
of "steps" (a nicely paradoxical way of saying it). I put the real
event at a step prior to organisms, namely a coupled complementary
process much more "analogous" to an ecosystemic set of autotrophic
and heterotrophic functions operating interdependently. This is HT
Odum's hypothetical origin and it fits everything I know of life,
ecology, systems, etc. and so I have adopted it as my own view and
seek to develop it. One reason I start here is that the ecosystemic
process could plausibly generate cells and organisms.

To compromise, find the point of overlap of ecosystemic and
organismic views of life, we might meet in the middle and try to
describe some other intermediate step at which point the ecosystemic
(whole life system, functionally closed in coupling of autotrophic
"composing" and heterotrophic "decomposing" functions as well as
autotrophic energy "pump up" and heterotrophic energy dissipate
functions) and the organismic (part or life function sub-system,
spatially closed, "miniaturized and encapsulated" as Odum said)
aspects reach a synergy such that the part-whole relation is
self-sustaining and self-evolving within the likewise self-sustaining
life-environment relation. This would in essence be the original
entanglement of bottom-up (molecular or organismic) and
top-down (global or ecosystemic) causality.

This would then suggest a third category of life to add to your
life itself (life principle, holds everywhere, in everything), life form
(a fully formed organism), and this would be life process or maybe
life function, or life system, or perhaps life-environment relation.
Whatever we call it, it is the bridge between organisms and physical
environment, it is implied in that "missing link" period you mention,
it unifies life and non-life. I think it the arena in which the general
"life itself" life principle is/was channelled and magnified into,
precipitates out into, fully formed life forms. Since it is still
operational (essentially ecology, inter-operation of organisms or life
forms in webs of interdependency and mutual causation), this
network amplification process is worthy of treatment in its own
right, here and now. I.e., I don't suggest it relevant only at the origin.
Instead, I suggest it a more fundamental form of life than organismic
life.

I also have thoughts that organismic life is not really closed to
efficient cause (neither autotrophic nor heterotrophic organisms are
really able to self-build in isolation; takes a minimum of two kinds of
organisms to do so, to get efficient cause closure) whereas ecosystemic
or life system life is. And also some quotes from both Rashevsky and
Ulanowicz that speak to these topics and jive with these views. But I'll
save these for another post...

Some thoughts...

Dan



John Kineman wrote:

snip

> Now, if having and internal MR is the CRITICAL factor that makes living
> systems alive, AND it is general to all natural systems making them
> complex, then what is the distinction between complex and living? I
> think logic will require this to be only a matter of degree, otherwise
> the whole theory breaks down. So you can see how I get to saying that we
> can say nature fundamentally and ontologically involves the critical
> property of life, i.e., internal MR. Perhaps it can be stated this way:
> the novel factor or principle that makes the critical difference between
> a living system and a non living one is embedded in nature. So, calling
> this fundamental property "life" is really just a labeling issue at this
> point (aside from the hackles it raises). It is clearly the case in
> Rosen's theory that the most critical property of life is also existent
> in all natural systems. Thus I rever to "life itself" as this principle,
> vs. "life form" in terms of a realized system that magnifies it - i.e.,
> an organism. Anyway, I think Rosen's statements that preserve some
> difference between complexity and life are simply because along the
> continuum from MR to organism, there are many additional steps, all of
> which add up to getting a FULLY realized life form.
>
> Furthermore, we have to recognize that the MR includes a formal system
> component, which has no other interpretation than something that can be
> considered psychological, epistemic, mental, abstract, e.g., whatever
> words we want to use for non-material. It is thus a radical proposition.