Re: Fw: Rosennean definition of "life"

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

Hi Dan,

Sorry for the delay in responding. Attempting to fractionate the
life-ecosystem relation is a delicate problem. I've been chewing on this for
some time, and am still not really satisfied with my responses, but here
they are.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Dan
> Fiscus
> Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 1:40 PM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Fw: Rosennean definition of "life"
>
>
> Tim,
>
> Good and challenging questions...a few replies:
>
> Tim Gwinn wrote:
>
--snip---

> > The point is that one system's context-dependence on some
> larger system does
> > not mean the properties of the first system convey to the larger system.
>
> But the life-environment relation does convey in part to the larger
> system or context, and I think the life-environment relation is better
> seen or modeled or considered fully in the ecosystem than the
> organism. Thus my other thought experiment about how to colonize
> some new context (another planet). Just as no organism could start
> a living self-sustaining colony off-earth, no fork could generate a
> new patch of context in which it would have meaning.
>
> If a fork loses its last parcel of context - admissable environment - in
> which fork has meaning, exists, etc. then the fork, its context, and the
> relationship between the two have all ceased to exist. Part of what life
> does is to not let its context disappear - it can 1) disperse to new
> context terrain, 2) evolve to better exist in new contexts that emerge
> and 3) alter the context itself so that it is better for life. In this 3rd
> stage the life and
> the context are inter-dependent, not merely life being context
> dependent. There is also a paradox here as well as in other areas of this
> issue - to be least context dependent (able to move, colonize, evolve,
> get to next contexts) life is super context dependent (able to mesh so
> intimately with its local environment, but by extension with *any*
> environment. This is "to be at home" where one is and to be able to
> become "native" to any new place one can get.

I see organisms in ecosystem as a set of complex systems inside another
complex system (where each set member is a population of a particular
species).The members of this set are causal agents of the larger system. But
also, the larger system affects the smaller sets.

Each species performs some kinds of alterations on its environment - they
"metabolize" their surroundings in some way(s) that are particular to their
species and surroundings. These alterations are part of the dynamics of the
larger ecosystem.

In turn, the dynamics of the ecosystem place selectional pressure on the set
of species. It seems to me that in order for an ecosystem to have any degree
of stability (and therefore, is also a situation in which the inhabiting
species can persist indefinitely) that the organisms must have a _limited_
adaptational ability. With any change in the species, there is a
correspondig change in the dynamics of the ecosystem. If organisms altered
too readily, then the dynamics of the ecosystem are thereby altered, which
the organisms further adapt to, which changes the ecosystem dynamics, etc.,
endlessly, such that a relatively stable ecosystem never occurs. So, my
thinking is that organisms do not proactively work to keep their ecosystem -
their context - stable, but that this stability is a byproduct of the
limited ability of organisms to alter and evolve. Perhaps, it is more that
organisms have a limited ability to alter and evolve the particular way they
"metabolize" their surroundings.


> The other angle on the paradox that relates to Rosen's closure idea is
> that if we ask "why life?" the closure answer would be "because life".
> And this is good and life does in fact require life for continuation,
> but only back to the origin, and life requires also more than just life,
> it also requires non-life as in solar energy, inorganic CO2, N, etc. At
> the origin when we ask "why life?" the answer is in general "because
> non-life" meaning that life emerged or was created by the non-living
> environment (which for the pan-theists can also be "God"). And if we
> imagine that some sort of self-reference in the form of closed loops
> of causation are involved at the origin of life, then even then we can
> also say that life created life itself. So at all points in time and space
> we could say, paradoxically
>
> 1. Life is created by life.
> 2. Life is created by non-life.


These (CO2, sunlight, progenitors, etc.) are material causes of life. In the
case of life begetting life (reproduction), it would be formal cause as
well. But none of this answers "what makes an organism alive?". It seems to
me it only makes plausible the "setting of the stage".


>
> > I think there is something remarkable and beautiful and complex
> about the
> > way ecosystems operate and perpetuate themselves.  To me,
> ecosystems have a
> > unique property of their own that embodies all this. But I
> would not call it
> > "life". I think it is instead a property for which we currently lack an
> > adequate label.
>
> Maybe this lack comes from having ruled out life too early :-) I would
> use the term/concept for ecosystems as much as or more than for
> organisms. I think the original living ecosystem - producing molecular
> strings and decomposing them in cyclic fashion - generated genetics,
> metabolism, cells and organisms after operating and evolving for some
> time, maybe eons. This was HT Odum's view too, at least in his book
> Environment, Power and Society.


As in my comment above, I can see how composer-decomposer chemical processes
could help to "set the stage" for life, by generating some of the complex
molecules found in organisms. But I don't see how this says anything more
than, say, Urey's experiments attempted to show that primordial organic
"goo" could be formed via lightning, etc. Both attempt to show how the raw
materials for life might be generated. But it seems that both then rely upon
probabilities in order for life to form _somehow_ from a sheer preponderance
of those raw materials. To me, it is that "somehow" which is central
question. But I am not familiar with Odum, so I do not know if he proposed
something different than this. The feeling I get is that this
composer-decomposer view is somewhat like von Neumann complexity, where
composer-decomposer interaction processes become more and more complicated
in their activities until some threshold is crossed such that organismic
life is the result. If so, its the identification and understanding of that
threshold that seems key.

Regards,
Tim