Re: machine, organism, life

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Judith,

You ask hard questions and I can't answer most of them,
but I'll reply to two small points now, more later...

Judith Rosen wrote:
> Is there an ecosystem if there are no living organisms in it (like on the
> moon)? If yes, is there life in that ecosystem?

No - and I agree: there's no life if no living organisms. But I would
not call this an ecosystem, more like an environment. This part is
fairly simple for us and most people to agree on, I think.

Here's crucial other side of the same issue though, the complement
or opposite view: even if there is a single functional type of organism,
even gazillions of them, like 1) just plants or green algae or 2) just
animals or heterotrophic bacteria - there is also not any life in the
sense of a full system capable of open-ended evolution into the
indefinite future. For a short time you'd have living organisms, but
eventually they'd have to die as they are incomplete on their own.
It would be like a fish out of water - it could live a short time only.
Without two complementary functional types of organisms, an
environment with just organisms cannot be an ecosystem with the
crucial life aspect of open-ended, open-future evolution. In my
view...

snip

>  complex organization in a given system (which my father called "organisms")
> is hardly the same set of principles which have led to what you described
> as:  "the rigid identification that has held up life science progress and
> also helps fuel our self-destruction as a species." I would say that the
> Cartesian/Newtonian paradigm has done that, and Rosennean principles are a
> radical switch from that particle-based paradigm to an organization-based
> one.
>
> Incidentally, it is not accurate to say my father "rigidly identifies life
> with cells or organisms" because he was actually identifying life with
> complexity
snip

I did not mean to say or imply that your father had the "rigid"
identification of life = cells/organisms, and I more agree with
your statements that his focus on life = complexity is radical
and revolutionary and exactly what we (science and humans)
need to study, learn, implement. I just think it very odd and a
paradox that he did use the term organism as synonymous
with life while it seems to me that his metabolism-repair and
other work suggests a life system that is not organismic at all
but is more like a community or network of at least two
fundamentally different organism types as mentioned above.
The rigid part is indeed in the Newtonian paradigm and even
the Darwinian paradigm, both of which are still rigidly
entrenched as an orthodoxy with defenses, taboos and
ostracism for alternative views like Robert Rosen's.

Thanks for questions...I'll try to reply to more of them in a few
days...heading out of town...

Dan