Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
sense, different from that of replication of resources. In fact, the ability required
by replication is essentially the same ability of a system which is aware of itself,
of its structure and of the processes it hosts. This awareness is based on a sort of
mirror of the global system (structures and activities) which has to be available to the
management office of the system. This awareness is the basis of a self knowledge,
and it is the same kind of awareness responsible for the ability of self maintenance.
For this reason, any function has to be associated with an information which is
an identification and description of it, in the context of the overall structure of the
system. Self knowledge is the basis for
autopoiesis
, a concept originally introduced
by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela [142], as the main
peculiarity of living organisms. A system which is capable of self maintenance, self
restoration, and self construction, has to possess some kind of self knowledge, and
for this reason the replication ability is based on the same mechanism which drives
self control, by means of the double register information/function which life realizes
by means of genes and proteins.
4.4
Main Informational Steps from LUCA to OVUM
In this section we will try to outline briefly the systemic logic driving some main
passages from protocells to complex forms of life.
Let us consider a prototypal cell able to perform the main function of life. For
it everything is minimal and this cell is able to survive and to produce offspring
very similar to it. This process requires matter and energy, which are taken from
the environment, and requires an incorporated knowledge, which is taken from the
heredity, represented by molecules coming from the mother cell along the repro-
ductive line to which the cell belongs. This is not only an individual process, but
it is a process which has to be considered in the context of a population to which
the cell belongs, and more precisely in the context of other populations which play
concurrently the same game. This aspect is based on an intrinsic conflict. In fact, a
population or a multi-population of individuals is a better guarantee that some in-
dividual could survive, but is also the reason for a competition among individuals
competing for the same resources, for maintaining their life. If a perfect cell could
exist (whatever “perfect” would mean), this cell would have a better life without any
conflict, but cells, as any biological entity, are arrival points in an endless process
of improvement, and a logic of populations seems to be necessary for implementing
evolutionary strategies. In a sense, individuals need to be organized in populations
because they are non “perfect”, but their belonging to populations can improve their
finalities. Of course, populations do not make sense without individuals, but at the
same time, individuals are products of a population, and even their finalities emerge
within the populations they belong to. It seems appropriate, in this context, the quo-
tation of a maxim, taken from an African tradition, which claims that “a child needs
a village for growing”.
The duality individuals/population is probably the deepest mechanism underly-
ing life phenomena, and is an internal force driving the aggregation/selection forces,
