ORIGIN OF SPECIES. INTRODUCTION. When on board HMS 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was ranch struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings ...

What is life? For four centuries, it has been believed that the only possible scientific approach to this question proceeds from the Cartesian metaphor -- organism as machine. Therefore, organisms are to be studied and characterized the same way "machines" are; the same way any inorganic system is. Robert Rosen argues that such a view is neither necessary nor sufficient to answer the question. He asserts that life is not a specialization of mechanism, but rather a sweeping generalization of it. (...) Above all, Rosen argues that renouncing mechanism does not mean abandoning science. A radical alternative is proposed, drawn equally from experience in biology, physics, and mathematics; an alternative which draws attention to a new class of complex systems, which are radically different from mechanism. (shrink)

... Difficulty of distinguishing between Varieties and Species — Origin of Domestic ... and Origin— Principle of Selection anciently followed, its Effects— ...

Change and necessity is a statement of Darwinian natural selection as a process driven by chance necessity, devoid of purpose or intent.

A simple molecular system is described consisting of the reciprocal linkage between an autocatalytic cycle and a self-assembling encapsulation process where the molecular constituents for the capsule are products of the autocatalysis. In a molecular environment sufficiently rich in the substrates, capsule growth will also occur with high predictability. Growth to closure will be most probable in the vicinity of the most prolific autocatalysis and will thus tend to spontaneously enclose supportive catalysts within the capsule interior. If subsequently disrupted in (...) the presence of new substrates, the released components will initiate production of additional catalytic and capsule components that will spontaneously re-assemble into one or more autocell replicas, thereby reconstituting and sometimes reproducing the original. In a diverse molecular environment, cycles of disruption and enclosure will cause auto-cells to incidentally encapsulate other molecules as well as reactive substrates. To the extent that any captured molecule can be incorporated into the autocatalytic process by virtue of structural degeneracy of the catalytic binding sites, the altered autocell will incorporate the new type of component into subsequent replications. Such altered autocells will be progenitors of “lineages” with variant characteristics that will differentially propagate with respect to the availability of commonly required substrates. Autocells are susceptible to a limited form of evolution, capable of leading to more efficient, more environmentally fitted, and more complex forms. This provides a simple demonstration of the plausibility of open-ended reproduction and evolvability without self-replicating template molecules or maintenance of persistent nonequilibrium chemistry. This model identifies an intermediate domain between prebiotic and biotic systems and bridges the gap from nonequilibrium thermodynamics to life. (shrink)

Development is a process whereby a relatively unspecified system comprised of loosely connected lower level parts becomes organized into a coherent, higher-level agency. Its temporal corollaries are growth, increasingly deterministic behavior, and a progressive reduction of developmental potential. During immature stages with relatively low specification and high potential, development is largely controlled by local interactions from the “bottom-up,” whereas during more highly specified stages with reduced potential, emergent autocatalytic processes exert “top-down” control. Robert Ulanowicz has shown that this phenomenology of (...) ascendency follows thermodynamic principles and can be described quantitatively using information theory, providing a general theory of development. However, the theory has not found a wide audience among developmental biologists, as genetic determinism encourages the popular reductionistic perception that ontogeny is controlled entirely by molecular mechanisms that exert efficient causality from the bottom-up. Nonetheless, measurements of metabolic rates and mRNA complexity in developing embryos, as well as functional analyses of gene regulatory systems, indicate that ontogeny fits the paradigm of developmental ascendency. Beyond informing biomedical research and the interpretation of large datasets obtained by systems-biological approaches, developmental ascendency helps explain the origin of life, and, being independent of scale, provides an overarching explanation for phylogenetic change that contextualizes Darwinian evolution. (shrink)

"What in the ever-loving blue-eyed world do these [U1ano wicz's] innocuous comments on thermodynamics have to do with ecology!" Anonymous manuscript reviewer The American Naturalist, 1979 "The germ of the idea grows very slowly into something recognizable. It may all start with the mere desire to have an idea in the first place. " Walt Kelly Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo, 1959 "It all seems extremely interesting, but for the life of me it sounds as if you pulled it (...) out of the air," my good friend Ray Lassiter exclaimed to me after enduring about 20 minutes of my enthusiasm for the newly formu lated concept of "ascendency" in ecosystems. "It wasn't," I replied, "but it would take a book to show you where it came from. " If such was the reaction of someone usually sympathetic to my manner of thinking, what could I expect from those who viewed biological devel opment in the traditional way? After all, I was suggesting that it is possi ble to quantify the growth and development of an entire ecosystem. Fur thermore, I was maintaining that this development was not entirely determined by events and entities at smaller scales, and yet could influ ence these component processes and structures. To be sure, mine was only the latest of many challenges to straight reductionism, but, like everyone else with a new idea, I thought mine was special. (shrink)

Development and Evolution surveys and illuminates the key themes of rapidly changing fields and areas of controversy that the redefining the theory and philosophy of biology. It continues Stanley Salthe's investigation of evolutionary theory, begun in his influential book Evolving Hierarchical Systems, while negating the implicit philosophical mechanisms of much of that work. Here Salthe attempts to reinitiate a theory of biology from the perspective of development rather than from that of evolution, recognizing the applicability of general systems thinking to (...) biological and social phenomena and pointing towards a non-Darwinian and even a postmodern biology. (shrink)