Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
in living systems is it possible to understand the mechanisms that figure in living
organisms. Vitalists and holists play an important function when they remind
mechanists of the shortfalls of the mechanistic accounts on offer. Ideas such as
negative feedback, self-organizing positive feedback, and cyclic organization are
critical for explaining the phenomena exhibited by living organisms. Moreover,
the importance of these modes of organization can be appreciated when the rele-
vance of notions such as being closed to efficient causation is taken into account
and it is appreciated that as organized systems, living systems are far from equi-
librium and require ways of channeling matter and energy extracted from their
environment to maintain themselves far from equilibrium. These critical features
are nicely captured in Moreno's conception of basic autonomy in which we
recognize living systems as so organized to metabolize inputs to extract matter
and energy and direct these to building and repairing themselves.
My contention is that recognizing organization does not require a rupture with
the tradition of mechanistic science. Mechanism has the resources to identify
and incorporate the forms of organization critical in living systems. Moreover,
attempts to focus on organization independently of the matter and energy of
actual systems are likely to fail, as the organization required to maintain auton-
omy is an organization that is suited to the matter and energy available to the
system. It is in this context that the notion of basic autonomy reveals its impor-
tance: it provides a framework for relating organization tightly to the matter
and energy of the system as the organization of interest is one which, given
the energy and material to be utilized, is able to be built and maintained by the
living system.
I have restricted myself in this paper to Moreno's notion of basic autonomy. As
the reference to
basic
suggests, there are additional levels of autonomy.
29
These
involve functions which can be performed within a system that further enhance
the system's ability to maintain itself. Some of these involve ways of interacting
with the environment. A basic autonomous system remains highly dependent
on the moment-to-moment conditions of its environment as it must continually
extract energy and raw materials from it and excrete waste into it. If energy
and material resources are not provided in high-enough concentration so that the
osmotic or pumping mechanisms in the membrane are able to bring them into the
system or if waste accumulates to such a degree that they overwhelm the ability
of the mechanisms to expel more waste, the viability of the system is undermined.
29
Other theorists, such as Collier and Hooker (1999), link the notion of autonomy to more active behaviors
of a system such as adapting to varied circumstances and anticipating the response of the environment to its
behavior. They maintain that autonomy, adaptivity, anticipation, and reproducibility are all required before
one has a living system. While, in fact, most real organisms are adaptive and do anticipate responses of the
environment to their actions, and these provide an extremely potent source for learning and hence further
development, I think it is conceptually important to focus initially on the basic autonomy and then consider
additions to it.
