Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

From chemistry to life: autopoiesisSubsequently a multitude of such processes were discovered in physical and biologicalsystems. In biochemical systems, such as enzymes, when exposed to energy flows, differentcatalytic reactions were found to combine to form complex networks that sometimes containclosed loops. Such catalytic cycles tend to interlock to form closed loops in which theenzymes produced in one cycle act as catalysts in the subsequent cycle. These ‘hypercycles’turn out to be not only remarkable stable, but also capable of self-replicating and ofcorrecting replication errors, which meant that they can conserve and transmit complexinformation. One of the most striking lifelike properties of hypercycles is that they canevolve by passing through instabilities and creating successively higher levels of organizationthat are characterized by increasing diversity and richness of components and structures.Thus a Darwinian process of selection and retention may be at play even at the molecularlevel 22 . Jantsch noted that the far-from- equilibrium transition to a new dynamic system staterenews the capacity for entropy production - a process that he viewed as life in a broadsense 23 .This step from non-living to living systems was made by Humberto Maturana andhis former student Francisco Varela during the early 1970s. Maturana’s central insight wasthat the nervous system operates as a closed network of interactions, in which every changeof the interactive relations between certain components always results in a change of theinteractive relations of the same or of other components. He hypothesized that the circularorganization of the nervous system is the basic organization of all living systems. Livingsystems are organized in a closed causal circular process that allows for evolutionary changein the way the circularity is maintained, but not for the loss of the circularity itself. This alsoimplied that the components that specify the circular organization must also be producedand maintained by it.They coined the term autopoietic system. An autopoietic system is a network ofproduction processes in which the function of each component is to participate in theproduction or transformation of other components in the network. In this way, the networkcontinually ‘makes itself’. The product of the system’s operation is its own organization. Thisis the self-generating property. The second property consists in the fact that this productionincludes the creation of a boundary - for instance the membrane of a cell - that specifies thedomain of the network’s operations and defines the system as a unit 24 . Autopoietic systemsare self-bounded, and the boundary is an integral part of the network. The final property is selfperpetuating,which denotes the fact that all components are continually replaced by thesystem’s processes of transformation.Autopoietic systems are organizationally closed in the sense that its order and behaviorare not imposed by the environment but are established by the system itself. In other words,living systems are autonomous. This does not mean they are isolated from theirenvironment. On the contrary, they interact with the environment through a continualexchange of energy and matter. Here the dissipative feature of open systems is applicable.Living systems are structurally open for matter and energy, which flow continually through thesystem, but the system maintains a stable form, and it does so autonomously through selforganization25 .22 Capra (1996), p.95.23 Jantsch (1980), p.42.24 Capra (1996), p.98.25 Capra, (1996), p.267.129