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ever-mounting, self-ordering complexity. In all these steps, the fate
of a given unit would be determined by its response to the specific
conditions prevailing at the site in which it has come to lie, those
conditions varying locally as functions of the total configuration of
the system — its 'field pattern', for short ” (SL p. 32).
Does this version of self-organisation resolve the problem of the
non-specificity of proteins better? Weiss' analysis is very interesting
but like all the theories of self-organisation, his theory contains a
contradiction: it includes the action of external constraints without
it being explicitly accepted. In the example of the beach, the shape
and size of the structure created depend on the position of the
water's edge and the road. If these constraints were to change posi-
tion or nature, not only would the general shape of the beach
change but also the way it is structured internally. Depending
whether the road is a small lane or a motorway with car parks
arranged to allow access by huge crowds, the beach will be more or
less visited and therefore there will be more or less restaurants. It
is the same with cell populations. The morphogenetic field can only
exist in as far as cells have a relationship with the environment
which lays down a structuring polarity for the system. If the cells
were independent of it, the field would have no reason to occur.
These examples once again illustrate a phenomenon of hetero-
organisation and not of self-organisation. Organisation does not
emerge spontaneously from the local interactions of the basic con-
stituents (bathers, cells) but ensues from the action of environmen-
tal constraints. Finally, like all adherents to self-organisation, Weiss
never challenges the deterministic mode of functioning of genes and
proteins. He simply thinks that their influence is delimited by the
emergent properties of living beings (macro-determinism).
5.3.7 Self-organisation according to Kirschner,
Gerhardt and Mitchison
Other biologists have tried to apply the concept of self-organisation
to molecular biology, including Marc Kirschner, John Gerhardt and
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