Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite Smolin's caution, and for all his hopes, I claim there is a serious elision
here. Analyses of nonlinear dynamical systems clearly demonstrate the ease
with which complexity can be generated, but such arguments fail to recognize
a crucial distinction - a distinction that Warren Weaver described in 1948 as a
distinction between disorganized and organized complexity - a distinction that
we might characterize as a difference between the generation (or emergence) of
complexity and its organization (Weaver, 1948). In the words of John Mattick
(2004), 'The problem is not how to generate complexity - that is easy - but
rather how to control it to specify ordered [and, I would add, robust] trajectories
that lead to highly organized and complex organisms'. (pp. 317-8) This is an
absolutely crucial point for biology, and possibly even for ecology.
Let me start with ecosystems, which Bak viewed as ideal candidates for SOC.
Encouraged by the presence of power law distributions in the size of extinctions,
Bak argued that SOC offered a way of making sense of ecosystem development
without invoking the guiding hand of God, man, or even, for that matter, of
natural selection. If we can judge by the frequency of references to SOC in the
literature of theoretical ecology today, the influence of his arguments has been
enormous.
The difficulty is that power law distributions are everywhere; furthermore,
they do not in themselves indicate any particular mechanism of organization
(any number of mechanisms can give rise to the same power law), so, in spite
of the evident attractiveness of these models, the actual relevance of SOC to
ecosystems remains to be determined. I myself am rather skeptical, if only
because of their exclusion of so much that seems intuitively crucial. Theoretical
ecologist Simon Levin has been particularly active in exploring the role of
evolution in ecosystem dynamics. But Levin also - perhaps unwittingly - offers
another way of improving on the physicists' notion of self-organization that
I believe warrants our attention.
Looking down at his desk, he observes: 'The contents of my desk may
not seem to have much to do with ecosystems, but take another look. My
office is indeed a self-organized system, with me at the center. It has more the
element of design than do ecological systems, yet it still reflects a huge dose
of chance and historical influence'. (p. 158). Now, this might be something of
a pun, for Levin is the self who is organizing (or not, as the case may be) his
desk. However, it is far from customary to include that supremely intentional
agent, the human self, in our conception of a self-organized system, so perhaps
he should have written 'My office is indeed a myself-organized system'. It
should also be said that we tend overwhelmingly to exclude humans from our
conception of ecosystem altogether. But why is that? Why is it that, in every
conception of self-organization I have discussed, the self that is the source of
organization is, in contrast to the human self (or myself), without intentionality
or agency? Furthermore, such exclusion seems necessary, for otherwise, what
