By Mario deSantis, September 6, 1998

Living Systems: Organization/Pattern, Structure, and Process/Cognition

In the "the web of life", every phenomena and living organism are interconnected as a whole. Living organisms are characterized by a continuous exchange of energy and matter and therefore we can visualize the web of life as made up of living systems interacting continuously in a network fashion with other systems. Therefore, nodes of a network are living systems and the web of life is composed of networks within networks.

This new developing concept of looking at our complex phenomena in terms of networks and related relationships among their nodes, has become more pressing as we have entered a new social and economic system where the sharing of information, knowledge and technological changes are becoming the most important resources [1]. Therefore, the theory of living systems must be perceived not as a peculiar theory related to a given phenomena, but as a general theory of organization affecting everything and everybody in the "web of life". This modern theory of organization of living systems has surfaced through the work of many scientists [2], however, for the practical purposes of this article, we are going to present this theory as rationalized by the neuroscientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Their explanations of the theory of living systems stem from their studies in the behaviour of our nervous system [3] and therefore their findings can be directly perceived by our own understanding and life experiences.

Maturana found that the nervous system operates as a closed network of interactions, in which every change of the interactive relationships between certain components of the network always results in a change of the interactive relationships of the same or of other components. He hypothesized that this circular--feedback-organization of the interactive relationships within the nervous system was the basic organization of all living systems; that is, this circular--feedback--organization of relationships permits the self-organization and self maintenance of all living systems; further, since in living systems, cells combine to form tissues, tissues to form organs, and organs to form organisms, this circular--feedback--organization allows for the evolution of living systems into more complex systems.

Maturana defines cognition as the self-organization of living systems to maintain themselves and in this regard he states: "Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system" [4]

In their studies, Maturana and Varela distinguish between organization and structure. The organization is the pattern or set of relations describing the form, the order and the quality of the system which permit us to distinguish for instance a dog, or a birch tree, or a cat, or a liver; the structure, instead, is made up of the relations identifying the physical components of the system in terms of, for instance, their individual shapes, chemical composition and related quantities;

Capra makes reference to Maturana's definition of cognition as a process of life and theorizes that the notion of cognition provides the synthesis of the concepts of structure and organization of all living systems. Therefore, Capra states "The process of life is the activity involved in the continual embodiment of the system's pattern of organization"

This theory of all living systems, comprehensively explained through the concepts of organization (or pattern), structure and process (or cognition) has dramatic and revolutionary consequences on how we perceive the world. In accordance to this theory, there is no such a thing as an objective reality, we all enfold our realities within the interconnectedness of the web of life, and therefore the evolution of our universe and of our organizations become the greatest challenges of our time.

REFERENCES

[1] Refer to the works of Kevin Kelly, Executive Editor of "Wired, the official magazine of the digital revolution" http://staff.hotwired.com/kevin/ Refer to the works of economist Paul Romer http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~promer/

Coping with changes: an overview of the Learning Organization, Knowledge Economy and current practices in information technology applications, by Mario deSantis, June 1997.

Refer to the Knowledge Management site http://www.brint.com/km/whatis.htm

[2] Among the main contributors to this theory are the chemists Ilya Prigogine and Manfred Eigen; the biologists Conrad Waddington, Paul Weiss, Lynn Margulis, and James Lovelock; writer Dorion Sagan; the anthropologist Gregory Bateson; the neuroscientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela; the systems theorists Erich Jantsch and Ervin Laszlo

[3] Definition of Nervous System, Microsoft Encarta 96 Encyclopedia: "Those elements within the animal organism that are concerned with the reception of stimuli, the transmission of nerve impulses, or the activation of muscle mechanisms... The reception of stimuli is the function of special sensory cells. The conducting elements of the nervous system are cells called neurons;... That part of the nervous system located in the skull is referred to as the brain..."

[4] Maturana's quote found in THE WEB OF LIFE, by Fritjof Capra, Anchor Books, 1996, page 97.