Several months ago there was a brief thread about "autopoesis." A term
coined by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in "The tree of knowledge:
The biological roots of human understanding." I was a bit critical of the
usage, so I got a copy of the book and re-read it. I'm even more critical
now.
The concept, as they present it, sounds very much like cellular homeostasis.
It is the tendency for cells to remain in balance, all things being equal.
The book takes this concept and, by rather torturous logic, extends it to
language and ethics. I had a hard time following the idea and I'm at a loss
as to why this has become one of those ideas that "new age"
environmentalists have latched onto.
The most disappointing part of the book was the resurrection of "group
selection" as a mechanism to explain how the concept might work in
evolution. Group selection has been a pretty much discredited concept for
over 20 years. Basically the idea that somehow "groups" of organisms can
selectively benefit from certain behaviors. The idea was proposed by a
Scottish biologist, Wynne-Edwards, but was quickly refuted by geneticists
and evolutionary biologists.
Even in their book, Maturana and Varela are careful to point out that
autopoesis should, probably, only be applied to cells. As such it has very
little value in ecology, to my mind at any rate.
The idea was to show that communities, ecosystems, were more than the sum of
their parts. In fact it would seem that they are somewhat less.
Anyway, if you want to read it and disagree or agree, I'd be happy to see
it. I found the book confounding and very difficult to understand. The
authors claim that it has been translated into several languages and is used
in many college courses. Well, be that as it may, I'm still not impressed.
Steven
In the final analysis one should think only
of one single science: the science of man,
or, more exactly expressed, social science,
of which our own existence constitutes at
once the principle and the purpose and in
which the rational study of the external
world naturally comes to merge, for this
double reason that the science of nature is
a necessary constituent of and a basic
preamble to social science.
Auguste Comte
Discourses, 1884
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