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

["John Kineman" <***>]

Dan, thanks. Quick replies below:

Dan Fiscus wrote:

> 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.

That is a fine model. I knew HT personally and greatly respected his
work. I was very sad when he passed away.

There is no incompatibility here, however. I would simply say this is a
very critical stage in life getting organized into a recognizable and
distinct kind of system -- a life form. The other ontological arguments
are only to deal philosophically with where such original properties
could have come from in nature. It is an argumenta that only an
insufficient set of properties could have come from purely material
structures described mechanically, i.e., from dynamics alone. But that
is inconsequential after you start to get the organization and know for
a fact that these properties are present, regardless of where they came
from.

>
>
> 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.

Yes indeed. Again it refers to the development of a particular kind of
organization. The ontological argument is not to extend this more
primirively, but to deal with the relly subtle problem that mechanism
denies the effect of any kind of organization at all, except for
Platonic given laws, which themselves have no explanation. Hence
mechanism is not entailed with organization, so it can't produce any
novel organization. Instead, to get rid of that blindness, we consider
that states and their organization always must exist in a co-causal
relationship. A simple analogy in physics is the n-body orbital problem.
Above n=3 the dynamics become indescribable because, unlike dynamical
assumptions in the mathematics, the real system is responding to its
total organization, not just to each particle as dynamics would
describe. But perhaps this is a much more esoteric discussion than
anything HT would have been interested in, being concerned with the
practical science of ecosystems. Still, I find it has implications
beyond the network dynamics.

>
>
> 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.

yes, the necessary and sufficient organization of the system.

>
> 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.

Right. That is where the real work probably is, once one gets past the
basic philosophy and is happy with a world view to work inside of. I
plan to study more of Rosen's "metabolism-repair" systems in this
regard, as that is where he describes how this all comes to be organized
into an organism.

>
>
> 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...


That will be interesting. The closure argument seems a little too pat
for me too. It seems more likely to be a realtive matter, maybe with
some critical thresholds.

Do you think Ulanowicz would be interested in joining the discussion??
He is advising me on a project, so I can ask unless he is already aware
of the list.

Cheers,

John K.