Linguistics, Semiotics, and Philosophy - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 189

that the Four Causes Doctrine cannot be extended to the contemporary biological
sciences and physics without updating. The addition of the fifth cause to the
Five Causes Doctrine may be viewed as a natural consequence of taking into
account of the modern theory of biological evolution, and a further modification
may be necessary in order to take cognizance of the quantum revolution of the
twentieth century. In what form this predicted modification of the Four Causes
Doctrine should take is not yet clear.

6.3.2 The Principle of Closure

When two entities, A and B, need each other for their own existence, so that without
A, B cannot exist or function, or vice versa, A and B can be said to exhibit or
embody the principle of closure .

Semantic Closure. The principle of closure defined above was inspired by, and
is a generalization of, the concept of “semantic closure” or “semiotic closure”
formulated by H. Pattee (1995, 2001) who characterized semantic closure as follows:
... that allows the realization of

von Neumann's quiescent symbolic description and dynamic material construction .

this complex interrelationship of strong and weak bonds ...

The Principle of Ontological and Epistemic Closure. Before the cell can read DNA,
an epistemic act, the cell must have been endowed with such a capability through
evolution, an ontological process. Before the human brain can know anything, an
epistemic act, it must have been endowed with the knowing capability through
biological evolution, an ontological act. These statements are consistent with the
pre-fit hypothesis of ligand-protein interactions, including enzymic catalysis (Sect.
7.1.3 ) , which in fact may provide the molecular rationale for their validity. As will
be discussed in Sect. 7.1.3 , the pre-fit hypothesis is rooted in the generalized
Franck-Condon principle imported from quantum physics and well supported by
recent experimental findings in molecular biology Kurakin (2009). It seems to me
that there is a real possibility that the pre-fit hypothesis can rationalize, in molecular
terms, Kant's Copernican Revolution in Philosophy (CRP) , namely, the claim that
objects conform to our knowledge rather than the other way around ( http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_Revolution_(metaphor ) . That is, our knowledge is
pre-fit to objects just as enzyme active sites are pre-fit to their substrates and
products (see Fig. 7.2 ). We may refer to this idea as the Copernican Revolution
(CRB) in Biology and suggest that CRB and CRP belong to the same category of
paradigm shifts and further that CRB underlies CRP.

The Diachronic and Synchronic Closure. Although humans can use a language
without knowing its past history which is related to the synchronicity emphasized
by Saussure (Culler 1991), a language cannot be effective as a means of communi-
cation among members of a community without its long history of development and
evolution ( diachronicity ). Biologists can describe all the physics, chemistry, and
biochemistry of the living cell ( synchronicity ), but it would be impossible for them