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Judith,
I don't know if it's considered
relevent to this thread, but -- if I were going to attempt
to manifest an organism from 'scratch', --then I would/could probably
do it first via the manifestation of community/ecology.
David
Judith: What I'm trying to
point out here is the difference between life in the organismal sense and
what we find in ecosystems-- because there definitely IS a
difference and I don't think it can be explained via the
ecosystemic view/definition of life. I'd be interested to hear a
description for the underlying entailments of such a definition, if anyone has
one. If such a description exists, and holds logically (commutes), it would be
a very important discussion, indeed!
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 2:30
PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Description of
evolution, uroboros
Jamie,
I found it, assuming you meant uroboros. This
is a
great symbol and metaphor! But it also reminds me
of my single,
ongoing beef/gripe/difference with
Rosen. He talked of the unit of life
as organism, but
I see it better-depicted as community or
ecosystem.
As in his metabolism-repair model, and as in the
uroboros,
it is not the organism that eats itself and
gives itself infinite
(open-ended evolutionary) life.
But it is the community that does this -
when we add
in that animals eat plants and plants in turn
"eat"
animals, we get repair of metabolism, repair of
repair, and the
infinite, unfractionable loop/cycle.
Adding that plants also eat
environment (are
autotrophic, "self-feeders") we also
have
unfractionable integration of environment with life
that adds
with the repair of repair function.
This difference may help with
finding applications
for Rosen's theory. His work may fit better with
life in
its community/ecosystem scale of organization than
life's
organismal aspects.
Dan
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