James Grier Miller : Living Systems (1978) General systems theory is a set of related definitions, assumptions, and propositions which deal with reality as an integrated hierarchy of organizations of matter and energy. General living systems theory is concerned with a special subset of all systems, the living ones. Even more basic to this presentation than the concept of "system" are the concepts of "space," "time," "matter," "energy," and "information," because the living systems which I shall discuss exist in space and are made of matter and energy organized by information. 1. Space and time [^] In the most general mathematical sense, a space is a set of elements which conform to certain postulates. Physical space is the extension surrounding a point. My presentation of a general theory of living systems will employ two sorts of spaces in which they may exist, physical or geographical space and conceptual or abstracted spaces. 1.1 Physical or geographical space 1.2 Conceptual or abstracted spaces 1.3 Time. 2. 3.
DevLog Scriptographer.org - Новости Autopoiesis and how hyper-connectivity is literally bringing the networks to life - Trends in the Living Networks When I started writing my book Living Networks in early 2002 I thought that it was important to demonstrate that the concept of ‘living networks’ was not just a metaphor, but a reality: we, together with the networks that connect us, are literally a new life form. To show this I drew on the literature on autopoiesis, which was proposed as a new way of understanding the nature of life, and wrote a lengthy introduction to the book. My editor, very rightly, thought it was the wrong way to begin the book, and the introduction never saw the light of day. This morning when someone mentioned living networks to me I remembered that this was a literal phrase that I had never explained, so here is the introduction, seen for the first time. Introduction: How Connectivity is Bringing Our World to Life: We who are privileged to be alive today are participating in the birth of a new lifeform: the global networks. In some ways we have been moving towards this point for millenia. So what is life?
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AUTOPOIESIS, CULTURE , AND SOCIETY Humberto Mariotti The concept of autopoiesis has long surpassed the realm of biology. It has been used in areas so diverse as sociology, psychotherapy, management, anthropology, organizational culture, and many others. This circumstance transformed it in a very important and useful instrument for the investigation of reality. Years ago, Chilean scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela proposed the following question: to what extent human social phenomenology could be seen as a biological phenomenology? The purpose of this article is to look for an answer to this question. Autopoiesis Poiesis is a Greek term that means production. In Maturana’s viewpoint, the term "autopoiesis" expresses what he called "the center of the constitutive dynamics of living systems". Maturana and Varela proposed an instructive metaphor that is worthwhile to recall here. Structure, organization, and structural determinism As stated by Maturana and Varela, living beings are structure-determined systems.
Opposing views on tensegrity as a structural framework for understanding cell mechanics -- Ingber et al. 89 (4): 1663 -- Journal of Applied Physiology Donald E. Ingber: Important new theories in science often ignite heated debates. If they do not, they are probably of little significance. The tensegrity model states that cells, tissues, and other biological structures at smaller and larger size scales in the hierarchy of life gain their shape stability and their ability to exhibit integrated mechanical behavior through use of the structural principles of tensegrity architecture (5, 20, 22-24). In 1948, Fuller's student, Kenneth Snelson, constructed the first “stick-and-string” tensegrity sculpture, which thrilled Fuller because it visibly communicated the essence of this novel form of shape stability to those who could not “see” it in more complex structures (e.g., geodesic domes with rigid struts; see Fig. 5 in Ref.5). Fig. 1. A hierarchical tensegrity model of a nucleated cell composed of sticks and elastic string when unanchored and round (top) vs. attached and spread on a rigid adhesive substrate (bottom). Fig. 2. Fig. 3.