Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis, morphic resonance and emergent properties: Perspectives for the climate change. (2007)  Yvan Rytz 

 The holistic sciences ground their understandings about the world by two different ways. There is first a strong tradition of knowledge through a genuine observation of the phenomena. As Goethe’s science points out, it is through a deep process of encompassing the reality, for instance the patterns of plants growth, that we can develop a more complex and realistic picture of the whole, which is actually the structure of every thing. The whole and the parts are creating a dialogue together from which emerges the meaning in a constant hermeneutic process. The second way to explore the holistic sciences is through more representative – and in some extent abstract – models of reality. Mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, ecology or cognitive sciences have the potential to demonstrate and show the complexity of the relationships between all the parts and with their whole. This knowledge of the very high level of interrelatedness in every system and between the systems is really important, but nevertheless it stays the project of science, in the sense that it is a story, of course coherent, about the way we experience and bring meaning to the world. In this second essay of the MSc program, I want to explore the relationship between three very important notions in the fundamentals of the holistic sciences: emergence, autopoiesis and evolution processes. I think that those three components are working in a very close way to generate some of the crucial dynamics. As a link between those notions, I will also add the theory of morphic resonance from Rupert Sheldrake. This exploration has also an aim. I want to examine whether Gaïa, the regulatory system of the Earth, is a living organism or not. For me, the holistic sciences offer a kind of challenge to our western minds. The extreme reductionist paradigm we inherited is keen to present the world has a perfect clock, perhaps with some tricky even paradoxical aspects, but a clock which is predictable and behaving in knowable ways. But with the participation of complex theories, new biology or quantum mechanics the whole picture becomes more aware of its limitations but also of its promises, because it creates a science which will help the humans to be embedded in a healthier way within the Earth.  In fact, I believe that, usually, the scientific explanations we give about the are focussed on the processes rather than on the entity. To describe something, we need to use models or theories which emphasize on its usage or its inscription in a process or a context. Therefore, we don’t say what it is but how it is. My postulate is that nature implies creative and hermeneutic explanations. The evolution process is, for instance, an exploration of the possibilities. Indeed living beings are not merely the products of pure natural selection but rather the expression of a continuous hermeneutic process between the molecular components and the cells, the cells and the organism, the organism and the others (i.e. abiotic and biotic environment). There are some gaps in a linear evolutionary explanation, but there are nothing else than the signature of emergent properties.  The emergent properties sound sometimes like a magical word we use to explain everything without telling anything. This is probably true from a reductionist point of view, but from a holistic one, there is a recognition of qualitative changes. The emergence of properties when moving through scales are well known today. There are some examples: 

This non-exhaustive examples list shows us that creating a scale is at the same times creating steps in the way we encounter the world. Each one of these steps has developed its proper academic discipline to explain their specific properties. Every new step is made on transforming the previous whole on the next parts. I try to schematise like this:

Diagram 1

On the left side, the square brackets represent the level of scaling. The horizontal lines show the steps of the (human) separations of the phenomena. Everything is happening at the same time, at every scale, producing a stable and coherent reality around different attractors, creating a subtle order on the edge of chaos. The question is then whether it is possible to grasp a general overview of those complex interrelations between the parts and the whole between and within each one of these steps. I think it is not possible for a human mind to not create some models and proceed to some reductionist exercises to picture and understand the world. We will use perhaps forms of art, but nevertheless it will stay a reproductive model, as the scientific ones, but probably better assumed.

Thinking about emergent properties in a general linear process may give insights on some gaps existing within mainstream science theories. For instance the Big Bang. This theory is  based on the fact that we iterate back in time the different knowledge we have about the behaviours of particles and universal bodies in the present time and from far in space-time dimension observations. But, the appearance of the known universe may be an emergent property of some previous state, perhaps the Plank era and consequently the rules of behaviour of the matter may have changed

In other words, we know quite well that between the stages in figure above. the scientific “laws” cannot be applied uniformly. The laws of physics do not fit to explain the biological realms and the laws of biology are not able to explain fully the behaviours of the living beings. Since Plato, science has tried to find the hidden laws of nature, as if there will be an unifying theory of everything which can be discovered. I think that this linear world view isn’t correct. Every aspect of those stages (from the figure above) has its own forms and behaviours and together they create the morphogenetic field, in the meaning given by Rupert Sheldrake, which is influenced by the morphic resonance. The morphic field expresses a “field within and around a morphic unit which organizes its characteristic structure and pattern of activity. Morphic fields underlie the form and behaviour of holons or morphic units at all levels of complexity.” (Sheldrake, 2007).

The morphic resonance is “the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields”. (Sheldrake, 2007). The morphogentic field, thus, in that context, has to be understood as a morphic field stabilized through a morphic resonance. Therefore, the emergent properties are the expression of a change of morphogenetic fields stabilized through the process of habits coming from the influences of other morphogenetic fields.

 So, the emergent properties are the new habits of a dynamic and changing nature. If we look to the huge numbers of experiments done by the ancient bacteria, it also gives a good survey on how evolution is a constant research of new morphogenetic fields. They have invented  metabolism, photosynthesis or even in a more general way all the organelles, which together have sustained all multicellular organisms.

Diagram 2

So far, we have seen some relationships between evolution and the principle of emergent properties. I want now to raise the autopoietic process as being in some extent another way to express the previous idea of the scale stages. Autopoiesis is the term given by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana to express “an homeostatic (or rather a relationstatic) system which has its own organization (defining network of relations) as the fundamental variable which it maintains constant”. (Maturana & Varela, 1980 : 79).

For many scientists, autopoiesis offers a more accurate definition of what is life, because it doesn’t focus on the components (CHONPS, the most common elements of in living organisms) but rather on the structural processes, allowing therefore the possibility of non-carbon based forms of life.Thus, the autopoiesis is a constant process of self-realization, or dialogue through the different dynamics taking place within a boundary. The dynamics need the boundary and the boundary need the dynamics, as illustrate here:

Diagram 3

If we take the previous schema and add the possible autopoiesis aspect, we will have something like that:

 Diagram 4

 F. Varela, H. Maturana and R. Uribe (1974) have suggest six factors to assume whether a system may be seen as autopoietic or not. In order to explore some of the stages we have seen before with the question whether it is an autopoietic system or not, we will quote this long extract from that article:

“The following is a six-point key for determining whether or not a given unity is autopoietic:

1. Determine, through interactions, if the unity has identifiable boundaries. If the boundaries can be determined, proceed to 2. If not, the entity is indescribable and we can say nothing.
2. Determine if there are constitutive elements of the unity, that is, components of the unity. If these components can be described, proceed to 3. If not, the unity in an unanalyzable whole and therefore not an autopoietic system.
3. Determine if the unity is a mechanistic system, that is, the component properties are capable of satisfying certain relations that determine in the unity the interactions and transformations of these components. If this is the case, proceed to 4. If not, the unity is not an autopoietic system.
4. Determine if the components that constitute the boundaries of the unity constitute these boundaries through preferential neighbourhood relations and interactions between themselves, as determined by their properties in the space of their interactions. If this is not the case, you do not have an autopoietic unity because you are determining its boundaries, not the unity itself. If 4 is the case, however, proceed to 5.
5. Determine if the components of the boundaries of the unity are produced by the interactions of the components of the unity, either by the transformation of previously produced components, or by transformations and/or coupling of non-component elements that enter the unity through its boundaries. If not, you do not have an autopoietic unity; if yes, proceed to 6.
6. If all the other components of the unity are also produced by the interactions of its components as in 5, and if those which are not produced by the interactions of other components participate as necessary permanent constitutive components in the production of other components, you have an autopoietic unity in the space in which its components exist. If it not the case and there are components in the unity not produced by components of the unity as in 5, or if there are components of the unity which do not participate in the production of other components, you do not have an autopoietic unity.” (Varela, Maturana & Uribe, 1974: 192-193).

So let us see now how the emergent qualitative properties correspond or not to the autopoietic definition.

DIAGRAM

So, as an example of the morphic resonance, once autopoiesis has been developed it would imply that every further form of system in an evolutionary process should have an autopoiesis unity. The organ is a good example of the fact that such a level by itself would not be a whole at all. It is an intermediate between the whole (the organism) and its parts (the cells) from which the relations and processes create organs as components of a functional multicellular organism.

But there is a crucial precision which has to be done. Gaia is not a recent living system in the history of evolution. In fact, there is a really close relationship between the environment and the life. Maturana and Varela use the word structural coupling, which definition implies “a history of recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems” (Maturana & Varela, 1987: 75). This trajectory, structural coupling between living systems and the abiotic, created a coevolution. The next diagram shows a first attempt to create a ladder of the coevolution process.

 Diagram 6

This diagram shows the structural coupling between life and environment. In an autopoietic point of view, we can argue that the “life” part of the diagram represent the system construction of the unity. The environment is both external forcing and non-components elements that life have changed to create the membrane of the system and the processes of the homeostasis. I think that Gaia is in fact the great autopoietic system which contains all the other organisms as its components. In other words, Gaia is a kind of cell and its components are all uni- or multicellular organisms.

This understanding gives us also other insights on climate change, as most of the material human made systems are allopoietic, which means that the process that create a unity is separated from this unity. For instance, the assembly line machines that produce a car are not the car itself.

The industrial processes and externalisation of the manufacturing work is highly allopoietic. An allopoietic system is the antithesis of an autopoietic system. Thus the humans are transforming at the same time the boundary and the components of the Gaia system. The boundary by many aspects, amongst them we can underline a change in the chemical composition of the atmosphere (relasing of mass CO2) and by killing the ozone layer, particularly by huge release of methane which withdraw OH^- from the atmosphere. This latter, in addition of not being able to produce anymore enough of ozone molecules in the upper stratosphere, is also a pollution cleaner, as a real boundary maker. The components, as well, by land use changes and reduction of the biodiversity.

We have seen below the positive feedback loop of autopoiesis between dynamics and boundary. The dynamics create the boundary which allows the dynamics to happen which define the boundary, etc. The system, even if there is only a positive feedback, does reach a stable point because there is a defining relation between these two elements. But, with the climate change, we can see that the positive feedback loop can also being reversed. Indeed, these perturbations are severe. When a autopoietic system get into an unstable point, it will get into positive feedback loops which may destroy the very organization of the living.

Therefore, we can argue that the holistic sciences are somehow a crude awaken. Because at the same time we (re)discover fundamental systems which sustain the world, we discover how much we have disturbed them and laid down the foundations of a mass destruction.

Bibliography:

Bednarz, J. 1988. Autopoiesis: The Organizational Closure of Social Systems. Systems Research 5:57-64.

Lenton, T. M., H. J. Schellnhuber, and E. Szathmáry. 2004. Climbing the co-evolution ladder. Nature 431:913.

Luhmann, N. 1995. Social Systems. Stanford University Press, Stanford

Maturana, H., and F. J. Varela. 1980. Autopoiesis and cognition. The Realization of the Living. D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Boston, London. 

Margulis, L., and D. Sagan. 1995. What is Life? Simon & Schuster, New York, London.

Sahtouris, E. 1989. The Gaia Controversy: A case for the Earth as Living Planetin P. Bunyard, and E. Goldsmith, editor. Gaia and Evolution. Proceedings of the Second Annual Camelford Conference on the Implications of the Gaia Thesis. Wadebridge ecological center, Camelford.

Sheldrake, R. 1995. A New Science of Life. The hypothesis of morphic resonance. Park Street Press, Rochester. 

Solé, R., and B. Goodwin. 2000. Signs of life. How complexity pervades biology. Basic Books, New York.

Thompson, W. I., editor. 1991. Gaia – 2. The New science of becoming. Lindisfarne press, New York.

Varela, F., and H. Maturana. 1987. The tree of knowledge. The biological roots of human understanding. Shambhala, Boston.

Varela, F., H. Maturana, and R. Uribe. 1974. Autopoiesis: The Organization of Living Systems, its Caracterization and a Model. BioSystems 5:187-196.

Zeleny, M., editor. 1981. Autopoiesis: A Theory of Living Organization. North Holland, New York.

Internet ressources :

CALResCo (December 2007): www.calresco.org

Journal of autopoietic theory (December 2007) : http://autopoietic.net/

Autopoiesis and enaction – The observer web (December 2007) : http://www.enolagaia.com/AT.html

Rupert Sheldrake, 2007. His online glossary: http://www.sheldrake.org/Resources/glossary/