Complex emergence and the living organization: an epistemological framework for biology

Abstract

In this article an epistemological framework is proposed in order to integrate the emergentist thought with systemic studies on biological autonomy, which are focused on the role of organization. Particular attention will be paid to the role of the observer's activity, especially: (a) the different operations he performs in order to identify the pertinent elements at each descriptive level, and (b) the relationships between the different models he builds from them. According to the approach sustained here, organization will be considered as the result of a specific operation of identification of the relational properties of the functional components of a system, which do not necessarily coincide with the intrinsic properties of its structural constituents. Also, an epistemological notion of emergence-that of "complex emergence"-will be introduced, which can be defined as the insufficiency, even in principle, of a single descriptive modality to provide a complete description of certain classes of systems.This integrative framework will allow us to deal with two issues in biological and emergentist studies: (1) distinguishing the autonomy proper of living systems from some physical processes like those of structural stability and pattern generation, and (2) 2 reconsidering the notion of downward causation not as a direct or indirect influence of the whole on its parts, but instead as an epistemological problem of interaction between descriptive domains in which the concept of organization proposed and the observational operations related to it play a crucial role.Keywords: autopoiesis; biological autonomy; complex emergence; downward causation; organization; pattern generation. "We are inheritors of categorized knowledge; therefore we inherit a world view that consists of parts strung together, rather than of wholes regarded through different sets of filters" (S. Beer, 1980) IntroductionThe biological processes of realization of a living unity that exhibits a certain degree of autonomy with respect to its environment are characterized by the production of a stableshape. An operation of self-distinction from the medium due to the generation of a physical boundary (Varela et al. 1974;Maturana and Varela, 1980) gives rise to a separation between the internal and the external environment of the organism.These, however, do not constitute the only phenomena of production of higher-level patterns-stable in time and with respect to external perturbations-that we can identify in the natural world. Similar properties are also exhibited by some physico-chemical systems like the processes of molecular self-assembly, Benard's cells and chemical clocks, explained by the thermodynamics of dissipative structures (Nicolis and Prigogine 1977;Prigogine and Stengers 1979). Similar results can be obtained also in the computational domain through appropriate simulations. For this reason, the very notions of pattern and of structural stability, although they constitute a relevant aspect 3 of the biological phenomenology, cannot ...

What makes biological organisation teleological?

“…According to this interpretation, dissipative structures can be described as situations in which, given a set of external constraints, a set of basic components and suitable initial conditions, collective dynamics emerge and exhibit a specific phenomenology. In turn, these dynamics can be characterised through an attractor that, as such, plays no causal role on the very dynamics: an understanding of self-organising phenomena in terms of self-determination would be, in this sense, a projection of the observer (Bich, 2012b).…”

Emergent Processes as Generation of Discontinuities

“…Also, the entities that are relevant in it are the result of a specific operation. They are, in fact, characterized as the material, or structural parts 10,11 through their intrinsic properties -that is -those properties that are independent of their relational context: describing them in isolation or in interaction does not make any difference. Then the higher hierarchical level under investigation can be conceptually built from these basic bricks.…”

“…30 In order to account for the creativity of nature and the properties of complex systems a different path is to be followed. The alternative consists in abandoning the idea of a fundamental level of description, and in focusing on the modalities of access to the natural world 25,11 . It means rejecting the theoretical procedure that starts from the bottom of a hierarchy, ascribes to it an ontological primary status, and then builds all the others levels from it.…”

“…Depending on the descriptive purposes of the observer and the properties of the chosen domain of investigation, this operation is the distinction of those entities which are relevant on that domain, a distinction that is made with respect to the context these entities realize and that at the same time makes them possible. They are the "functional components" of the object of study, which are characterized through their relational properties 11 and require what can be labeled as a mesoscopic approach to function. They constitute meta-structures 31 that need to be characterized top-down and that give rise to a distinct domain of description with respect to the one established by the aggregation of material parts.…”

“…Examples are the models of the origin of life and of the processes of speciation. In previous articles 10,11 the synchronic perspective has been developed, while the purpose here is to analyse what idea of process is entailed by the definition of emergence given above. Our analysis is theoretical and epistemological, rather than metaphysical.…”