Part 3 showed how matter, in fact all existence, can be seen as a web of relationships. Systems Theory is a relatively recent term given to the scientific perspective that sees all living things and their surrounding environments as a completely interconnected web of relationships.
In Systems Theory there is an emphasis on principles of organization and connectivity, as opposed to the old Cartesian model of separate building blocks. For example, a tree is seen not as an individual structure of roots, leaves, trunk, and bark; but rather as multiple sets of relations: tree and earth, tree and air, tree and water, tree and light, tree and animals that live in it or feed from it, tree and the parasitic or symbiotic fungi and mosses that grow on it, and so on. Furthermore, the process of the tree going through its seasonal changes is seen as an annual “breath” or exchange of tree and its surroundings (again: air, earth, related animals & plants, etc.).
Thus a tree is a place of convergence for many interconnections- air, water, sunlight, other plants & animals, etc. It is a member of a larger living system, a forest perhaps, producing millions of fruits or seeds over its lifetime as a single tree, production that may result in only a few more trees growing to maturity. The rest of the fruits become food for other living things. Expand this idea across all planetary environments and one begins to see the reality of the earth as a single living organism. Everything directly or indirectly depends on everything else.
Systems Theory also provides us with a clue to the answer to the question, “What is Life?” Part of that answer is possibly, “Life is self-organizing”, and in three ways:
1. Self-maintaining – An individual living thing, though dependent upon and completely interconnected into its environment, is not determined by it. Each individual species has an internal DNA history that causes it to “remember” what it was eons ago, giving it certain characteristics that it keeps, even though its surroundings or survival needs may have changed. An example might be the lingering existence of the useless human appendix attached to the large intestine, or the fact that certain grasses turn yellow each year for no apparent reason.
2. Self-renewing – All living things constantly replace their cells. For example, you replace your entire stomach lining and pancreas every 24 hours! And most of the dust in our houses is composed of dead skin cells we have sloughed off. Though individual cells are replaced, their probability patterns are stable, and thus we recognize each other each day. However, the patterns do change slowly over time (aging). Life expresses continual structural change, but in relatively stable patterns.
3. Self-transcending – Life has an inherent tendency to reach out and create new forms and patterns. So thinking about evolution only as a process of adaptating to or confronting its “separate” environment is outdated and inadequate. The emphasis changes instead to creativity. This implies that living matter and its probability patterns are moving and changing not primarily for adaptive survival, but for their creative sake. Hence the incredible variety and often startling extremes we see in nature (think of the platypus, the octopus, the seahorse, the walking stick)...and the vast array of ideas in human minds...the artist, the poet, the inventor, the metaphysician.
Every living organism has the potential to surprise itself, to recreate itself, eventually bringing forth such qualities as beauty, wisdom, etc. And the human living organism has evolved to a place of self-reflectivity, which has changed the larger living earth organism profoundly.
The entire environment evolves by creatively adapting itself. So which adapts to which? Each to the other. All organisms co-evolve. There is no evolving in isolation. Evolution is an ongoing dance, a conversation. Organisms don’t evolve on the planet but with the planet. And now we are back to the original idea in Part 1, seeing the earth as a single living organism.
This 4-Part blog series 'The World' was inspired by the movie Mindwalk.
In Systems Theory there is an emphasis on principles of organization and connectivity, as opposed to the old Cartesian model of separate building blocks. For example, a tree is seen not as an individual structure of roots, leaves, trunk, and bark; but rather as multiple sets of relations: tree and earth, tree and air, tree and water, tree and light, tree and animals that live in it or feed from it, tree and the parasitic or symbiotic fungi and mosses that grow on it, and so on. Furthermore, the process of the tree going through its seasonal changes is seen as an annual “breath” or exchange of tree and its surroundings (again: air, earth, related animals & plants, etc.).
Thus a tree is a place of convergence for many interconnections- air, water, sunlight, other plants & animals, etc. It is a member of a larger living system, a forest perhaps, producing millions of fruits or seeds over its lifetime as a single tree, production that may result in only a few more trees growing to maturity. The rest of the fruits become food for other living things. Expand this idea across all planetary environments and one begins to see the reality of the earth as a single living organism. Everything directly or indirectly depends on everything else.
Systems Theory also provides us with a clue to the answer to the question, “What is Life?” Part of that answer is possibly, “Life is self-organizing”, and in three ways:
1. Self-maintaining – An individual living thing, though dependent upon and completely interconnected into its environment, is not determined by it. Each individual species has an internal DNA history that causes it to “remember” what it was eons ago, giving it certain characteristics that it keeps, even though its surroundings or survival needs may have changed. An example might be the lingering existence of the useless human appendix attached to the large intestine, or the fact that certain grasses turn yellow each year for no apparent reason.
2. Self-renewing – All living things constantly replace their cells. For example, you replace your entire stomach lining and pancreas every 24 hours! And most of the dust in our houses is composed of dead skin cells we have sloughed off. Though individual cells are replaced, their probability patterns are stable, and thus we recognize each other each day. However, the patterns do change slowly over time (aging). Life expresses continual structural change, but in relatively stable patterns.
3. Self-transcending – Life has an inherent tendency to reach out and create new forms and patterns. So thinking about evolution only as a process of adaptating to or confronting its “separate” environment is outdated and inadequate. The emphasis changes instead to creativity. This implies that living matter and its probability patterns are moving and changing not primarily for adaptive survival, but for their creative sake. Hence the incredible variety and often startling extremes we see in nature (think of the platypus, the octopus, the seahorse, the walking stick)...and the vast array of ideas in human minds...the artist, the poet, the inventor, the metaphysician.
Every living organism has the potential to surprise itself, to recreate itself, eventually bringing forth such qualities as beauty, wisdom, etc. And the human living organism has evolved to a place of self-reflectivity, which has changed the larger living earth organism profoundly.
The entire environment evolves by creatively adapting itself. So which adapts to which? Each to the other. All organisms co-evolve. There is no evolving in isolation. Evolution is an ongoing dance, a conversation. Organisms don’t evolve on the planet but with the planet. And now we are back to the original idea in Part 1, seeing the earth as a single living organism.
This 4-Part blog series 'The World' was inspired by the movie Mindwalk.
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