Autopoiesis of Signs and Systems

I intend to explore the connections between the ideas drawn from many sources quite diverse in origin and era.  Although I will often refer to specific contributions from particular authors, it is critical to see these works for how they contribute to a collective and historical project.  Rather than needing to conclude that a particular philosophy has gotten it right, we see a dialog conducted throughout history that is engaged in the construction of artifacts held in commons by all mankind.  Dewey and Peirce can be contrasted in how they address the idealisms of the western tradition from Platonism and how it becomes embedded in Christian philosophy as it descends from earlier traditions that become codified in religious texts, but the difference is more one of emphasis than substance.  

John Dewey is valuable for his insistence on grounding all knowledge in experience in contrast to metaphysics and idealisms.  Peirce, on the other hand, appears as a bit of absolutist for his theory of signs and semiosis. Although Dewey is one of the few who actually acknowledge the important contributions  Peirce made, he might have disputed the way Peirce finds reality in symbolic structures.  It is clear, though, that they share a deeply pragmatic approach to and focus on the methods of developing knowledge.  In the parable of the blindfolded men describing an elephant, each only having access to parts of the whole experience, Dewey insists that we must always refer back to experience and not accept any theory as the complete truth. Peirce, however, says just that there is an elephant whether or not our partial theories succeed in capturing a significant part of it.

Our thinking is incoherent if we fail to notice that there are neither ideas nor idealisms without an organism capable of thought and thinking.  At this point we to have some understanding of the origin and structure of such organisms, and the work Maturana and Varela and their description of autopoietic systems is a key step.

I see the possibility of connecting these ideas in a comprehensive systems theory, and as a way of interpreting the world.  Instead of considering the world as a pre-existing structure, we see a world that is formed by its interactions, by events that play out cyclically and gain permanence through eternal return; and by the discovery of structure and relatedness rather than as an unchanging metaphysic.  The world appears as systems nested within systems with each level defined by its internal structure and how it is coupled to its environment in maintaining that structure.

Semiotics provides a necessary piece for understanding systems function through the operations of autopoiesis.  Objects don't have any substantial character and instead are constituted as networks of processes or events; they are empty as we will discuss more below.  What gives a system substance is the way it repeats the performance of these processes in time.  The components are nested systems in their own right, and the boundaries of the system and all of its nested subsystems are made substantial by the repetitive interactions that occur between the systems and their environment: 

The patterns represented in the Platonic forms are also related to the patterns of group theory, and these connect directly to patterns of the smallest natural numbers which in turn  are connected to the forms that ground the latest theories in physics in the form of string theory and particle physics already confirmed.  Physics has discovered that the apparent solidity of the material world is more like point (i) in the description of autopoietic systems, based on the continuous repetition of a pattern of events emergent from a simple structure.  The simple components, that is, the various quantum particles and emergent atoms can only behave within the operational closure dictated by their simple structure with relatively few degrees of freedom.  Of course complexity, in terms of the dynamics of non-linear systems and chaotic behavior, develops in the simplest systems.

Contrasting with the depth of subtle relationships in the nesting and interactions of plants and animals in a food web, physics and chemestry is simple indeed. We don't even have that much language to draw compare relative complexities, or even to identify all the critical boundaries where structural coupling occurs. This way of looking at systems hasn't been with us long enough to be well developed; much work remains to be done.

For Dewey, science is a process grounded in experience that is designed (by experience and practice) specifically to find the permanent and repeatable features of the world.  That doesn't mean it rejects the changeable, impermanent and obscure aspects of the world, but it just filters them out for the sake of the particular inquiry taken up.  Only if we forget the ground of experience do we mistake the clarified models of science for the complete picture.  Idealists may deprecate inductive processes vs. deductive ones that can only rely on some revealed truth as a ground.  Autopoiesis provides the necessary connecting link between Peirce's triadic signs and experience as a middle term.  Both Dewey's experience and Peirce's semiosis are constituted in the internal organization of an autopoietic entity(operational closure).  If reflected experience fails to connect to the environment (structural coupling), the unity ceases to be viable and disappears from existence.

Idealism collapses the world into a projected singularity that, if it exists at all, can only be determined inductively from our position of embodiment.  Only by understanding experience as a middle term, neither purely of an external world nor subjective, can we recover Peirce's third term. On the face of this, the spectacular success of the objective procedure is truly remarkable.  It is sometimes remarked that effectiveness of mathematics is unreasonable, and that its apparent effectiveness is an inductive proof of the mathematical nature of the world.  This might be conclusive if you forget that the process of induction is never final;  it is a process subject to revision based upon on new evidence.  The theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED) produces remarkably accurate predictions that extend to eight or more decimal places, but the same group of theories also suggest that most of the universe is composed of dark matter and energy that current theories cannot begin to do justice to.  The more we know, the more that we know that we don't know.

Turtles All the Way Down

I see no reason not to expect that, with suitable contextualization, these ideas can be interpreted more generally as we look to interpret the development of humanity's social systems.  Vincent Ostrum describes our political systems as artifacts where the artisans are parts of the artifacts, and calls for a multi-disciplinary and multi-level exploration of the history and possibilities of these human developments.  For similar reasons, I have pointed to the idea of Process Architecture as a call to develop new practices in social processes; for more of us to become artisans and architects in the creation of social systems.

It seems that Niklas Luhmann had started on this track of describing social systems as autopoietic, but I am skeptical about the direction of this work.  I am more drawn to a middle way of thinking about the interpretation of any theory as discussed in Varela's book The Embodied Mind. 

Varela draws on the Buddhist idea of emptiness (sunyata), which asserts that in neither the self nor the world can we find a ground; calling into question any theory that seeks foundations in any absolute principle, whether it is the spirit of a singular god concept or the materialism of the physical world.  Peirce's theory of signs takes a pragmatic middle way that resolves the dualisms and conflicts of idealism vs. materialism.  Peirce is almost mystical in his insistence on the importance of three elements of the sign and his analysis of firstness, secondness and thirdness at the beginnings of his philosophy.  For Peirce, I would not think of these as absolutes or foundational, but as signs.  They refer to something, and I would claim their objects, the second term of a sign for Peirce, are forms or ideas.  That is, ideal structures in the same way that Platonic forms are ideas, and all of mathematics is about ideas, forms.  Thirdness in these Platonic forms is the process of performing math; developing mathematical ideas and working out problems and puzzles.

Emptiness is the same sort of thing. It is an sign (word) that refers to forms which are ideal.  Varela's writing states that these ideas about emptiness are not common to all the Buddhist traditions, and a late development at that.  He also suggests that the Great Vehicle (Mahayana) develops a whole tradition from this seed idea.  Peirce would call this development and evolution of thought through history semiosis, the unfolding of the meaning of a sign in the minds of interpreters; plural to signify the collective nature of this process as it unfolds in community and dialog.  This example has a lot to tell us about semiotics and what Peirce may have had in mind.  It may only take a moment of insight to clarify the meaning of a sign (e.g. emptiness, or Oneness of monotheism) in an interpretant that captures the ideal object of this sign in a deep way, but there are also whole traditions of dialog that deepens our understanding of such ideas.  And similar dialogs in other traditions; the Zohar explains the term Ein Sof as follows:

"Before He gave any shape to the world, before He produced any form, He was alone, without form and without resemblance to anything else. Who then can comprehend how He was before the Creation? Hence it is forbidden to lend Him any form or similitude, or even to call Him by His sacred name, or to indicate Him by a single letter or a single point... But after He created the form of the Heavenly Man, He used him as a chariot wherein to descend, and He wishes to be called after His form, which is the sacred name "YHWH"."

Feminine pronouns might be much more appropriate for describing an emptiness before the emergence of any form, a diffuse state of being that is pregnant with possibility as opposed to active and definite.  My intention is not to drift off into mysticism, but to point out the depth of the simplest of all ideas (nothingness or oneness).  Not to deprecate the mystical, but to point out that, at base, these are pragmatic ideas with concrete consequences.  When Dewey discusses how signs appear in experience, how ritual and practice connect directly to a spirit world for people and cultures for whom they still possess magical properties, and how they are for objectivists, I see two ways of collapsing a Peircean triad into a diad and losing contact with experience.  Magical thinking collapses the sign into its object and makes the fear of forces unseen palpable, and separation impossible.  The objectivist discounts the existence of the third term, the mind that processes the symbols into meaning.  With either collapse, only by reference to a permanent world external to the experiencer can we find a final answer to questions of meaning.

We can never be architects of our own future when we do not see that all of our existing social systems and the norms they rest on emerge in an evolving social process.  Vincent Ostrum's emphasis on the fact of our artisanship with respect to social systems.  This is not to say that a social architect can just design a new set of norms and install them as a new social system; the process or norming is an emergent social process.  Through the application of skill and insight, however, such processes can be guided and nurtured, and very likely this is how we come to have the systems and norms that we do.  Leaders in a given time and place show a way, and when they are successful it grows and reproduces an emergent set of practices that people will engage in, teach to their children and codify in books and oral traditions.  The concluding parts of Ostrum's paper has a substantial review of the work of Alexis de Tocqueville and his constructive use of multiple levels and foci of analysis in Democracy in America.  His observations of how race relations and the way the habits of racism can become part of how the social environment is structured seems prescient given the current political context.  We need to keep finding ways of openning up the psychological structures that maintain separations if we want to create an environment where being different doesn't mean otherness.

The Kabalistic quote above comes from a tradition of magical thinking and for many who hold do it, this is another metaphysic of a given idealist world, but I find it more productive and interesting to consider it aesthetically and as a map of the archetypes of the psyche.  Some may reject much of Jung's work on grounds that they are not objective or scientific, but I think the study and treatment of psychic malady lends itself to a more accepting filter and the admission of imaginal realms (to use Fred Alan Wolf's term).  Although I don't mix my math or philosophy with numerology, mystical ideas are part of what these signs may refer to and potentially within the scope of inquiry, depending on the nature of the question.  Clearly, they are part of what Peirce calls the phaneron:

Phaneroscopy is the description of the phaneron; and by the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not.

As an amatuer mathematician, it doesn't surprise me at all that ideas about emptiness and nothingness are late breaking idea in humanity.  We are counting somethings long before we count nothing.  The natural numbers begin with one, and only later do Islamic mathematicians invent the cypher to revolutionize mathematics.  I also note that a space of zero dimensions is different than no space at all and the empty set is different than nothingness.  I see Peirce as creating a deeper philosophical connection to the forms of the small numbers.

Maturana and Varela developed these ideas to describe complex living systems with complex internal organizations, but Peirce thought that his theory of signs didn't just start with conscious or even sentient beings.  Take water for example.  The atoms are generated in historic processes of the Universe.  The Big-Bang, the galaxy and star formation produce environments where many solar systems like our own can form, run their course and central star explodes producing a new cloud of molecular and atomic dust.  Hydrogen forms early and directly out of the nuclear soup that is the condensate of the expanding and cooling of the pure energy of the Big Bang.  Oxygen is generated by atomic fusion in the late phases of stars.  In fact, fusion proceeds up the the element Iron (Fe) before the star explodes, and how it explodes depends on its mass.

The rule for all of these interactions seem to just emerge from spontaneous symmetries and geometry of space-time.  Theorists are still arguing about why these rules are as they are, and there is some considerable speculation that are either a pure mathematical form that simply emerges because it is the only consistent pattern, or maybe the only pattern consistent with the emergence of intelligent forms (i.e. us, this is often called the anthropic principle).  It may be that there are processes beyond our limits of perception that generate these conditions, and speculatively they may regenerate them in an autopoietic sense at the universal scale.  Beyond some scale, we can only speculate, but what we can see tells us that energy, mostly in the form of electromagnetic radiation (light in all its forms) and gravity are what drives all of the processes.  Without sufficient energy, interactions cannot occur.

That brings us back around to water.  Nuclear interactions generally need the gravitational energy of sufficient mass to start a fusion fire, so that generally only occurs in stars.  We already discussed that stars form and reform out of interstellar dust clouds.  Gravity is the driving force that forms the system, but fusion itself is about kinetic energy from the high temperatures caused by the compression of a gas/plasma, but it is the confinement by gravity that makes it possible.  Whenever there is sufficient concentration of dust, it will condense and if there is enough material, a star is born and maybe some planets form around it and it burns until it runs through its fuel by making heavier elements and when it explodes it can make even heavier elements.  These elements accumulated from previous cycles of star formation and death are the source of the constituent elements of the planets, and Earth in particular, but the development of life on Earth depends on a long stable period where Hydrogen burns slowly forming Helium and bathes the Earth in solar radiation.  It is largely the solar radiation in the form of light that provides the free energy input to keep the networks of chemical processes going long enough for self-organization to occur and for living systems to form.  Is any of this understanding of how and why necessary to an understanding of the importance of the Sun to life and humans on this planet?

Once made, most atomic nuclei are stable, except for a few of the heavy ones.  There is atomic Hydrogen and Oxygen in the dust clouds, and when these mix at sufficient density they will interact chemically.  We can read the electromagnetic signatures of interstellar dust clouds and see these elements gaining and losing electrons, but unless there's a lot of high energy light around the electrons will join with these atoms and make them stable, and the atoms will pair up as H² and O² if given a chance, and if these H²'s and O²'s get together they form H²0's and that's water.  Add more energy and they can break up (again we can read this in the spectrum of a dust cloud).  The form of each of these molecules is dictated by the lower level symmetries.

None of this depends on any consciousness or sentience, but the forms and energy levels of all the systems components are critical in what forms and when.  Water is a polar molecule because the two hydrogens bond to the oxygen at a certain angle.  Water forms from the constituent elements because there is less chemical energy in the bonds, so it only needs a little push and it's like rolling down hill.  We could take advantage of that by storing hydrogen and burning it in a controlled way with oxygen and harnessing that free energy.  Plants do something like the reverse of this in photosynthesis, absorbing sunlight and freeing oxygen from C0², then using that energy stored as hydrocarbon molecules in later processes.  So far we only have the possibility of chemical interaction, and the suggestion of something more in living systems.  We have mass processes involving clouds and condensation into solid and liquid forms.  Recent research suggest that there are many solar systems with earth like planets, and we have at least one example of complex living systems evolving.  The physical and chemical processes described so far only tell us that conditions similar to the ones that allowed for life to emerge here are likely to exist in many many systems across the universe.

Although these simple systems do not exactly "specify their organization" to reproduce it, there is an organization that is produced again and again throughout space and time.  The conditions of the accumulation of chemical forms and interactions occurs repeatedly, spontaneously.  At the simplest levels of biological activity, even below that level in pure chemical forms we find repeating networks of processes.  Some of these are simple and open; the only boundaries are formed by concentrations of the constituent elements.  Instead of being problematic, this is an indicator of an emergent hierarchy of systems.  Autopoietic systems depend on the emergence of self-organizing systems as a medium of formation for the higher level of organization represented in autopoietic systems.

I read in Maurer that Luhmann favors a top down analysis of the organization of system, and note that this is completely consistent with Varela's emphasis on groundlessness.  I also note that an appreciation for a middle way is largely absent in Luhmann, and to the extent that Maurer mentions semiotics and signs in Luhmann both in reference and critique that it brings to mind the diadic thinking of Saussure in contrast to the triadic systems of Peirce.  In spite of that Maurer's critique excels in pointing to what needs further development:

To what extent can one understand language as a medium in this way? Language is not a medium in terms of the ―physical quality of its signs nor in the conscious states of its speakers and listeners, readers and writers‖ (LUHMANN 1994: 54).³⁰ As a medium, language is neither a conglomeration of signs or thoughts, which can be articulated as words and sentences, nor can it be understood as a signifying system. The medial aspects of language consist in the autopoiesis of communication, for which the structural coupling of communication and consciousness is the precondition.

 The triadic system of signs provides a great opportunity for integrating much work in systems theory.  As someone with an already long career in systems design, architecture and engineering I can bring a great deal of practical experience to this dialog, but some insights came to stay very early in my career.  One is that to build and understand systems, you need to work both ends towards the middle.  No singular approach to design, whether top down or bottom up works very well.  If you insist at only starting from the top, you will never understand the components well enough to address global issues that emerge from the behavior of the lower levels of the systems.  These will be important issues that relate to performance, stability and the long term viability of your systems.  On the other hand, if you only start from the bottom and work upwards, you can easily get lost in the forest while working only with the trees.  You lose sight of the larger goals that need to be addressed, and it systems theory you may even come to discount any role for teleology or purpose at all.

The digression into how water emerges and becomes present as a medium for the development of life and planet Earth is about the importance of the medium of self-organizing systems as a background, an environment, for the emergence of autopoietic systems.  Similarly, in social systems there are a number of critical background capacities and subsystems that are critical for the emergence of autopoiesis of social systems.  Family and tribal units are characteristic of non-human social organization, but the development of language and related systems are critical to the emergence of social organisms that go well beyond kinship relationships.  Human language itself is much older than these later developments and functionally is a difference in degree more than in kind over communication in other social species.  We can only know speculatively whether whale-song or grief in elephants are expressions of spiritual experiences that connect with similar expressions from the depth of human prehistory, but I think our experience and our expressions of art echo truths of the matter embedded in our very beings.

The sciences of evolution point to the emergence of excess capacities that don't need to be expressed in survival oriented traits to be carried along by the processes of reproductions.  Genetic studies show that large quantities of DNA information might even be considered parasitic in that it exists only because it reproduces itself, or even replicates itself within the genome.  Initial language development may just be an offshoot of more general mamalian characteristics that fascilitate care for the young and social cohesion, and whether or not they are excess or necessary when they emerge, they fascillitate the continuation of other trends, for example the neoteny this is connected to the enlarging brain and related evolutionary trends.  We can leave open the explanation of why a particular historical path is followed, and simply point out that it is consistent with the requirement of autopoiesis throughout that history and that we know where it has arrived in the present.  The important point is the the continuity of autopoietic production and reproduction is a necessity, and that this necessary continuity constitutes an evolving historical processes.  In simpler organisms, this history is wholly represented in the genomic history, and at some point the possibility and then reality of social (cultural) history emerges.

It seems that something unique is happening with humans at the dawn of the neolythic age as humans become capable of inventing material cultures.  Before this period there is comparatively very slow change in the material culture of stone tools and related lifeways, and I think it is safe claim that there is no discontinuous break with other social species.  Writing and history come along later, but there is early evidence that symbolic artifacts become the foundation for an emergence of autopoiesis in a collective sociology.  We can see clearly in the archaeological record how emerging and evolving life ways are spreading and changing with each human generation.  The material cultures of agriculture and animal husbandry change the social environment for humans and foster the development of specialization and trade among groups that go well beyond the ties of kinship.  Counting and accounting are necessary and may evolve with, before or after written language, and these development are likely to be deeply connected.

This essay raises more questions than it answers, and the biggest questions are about what is the environment in which the processes of autopoiesis occur for social systems, and what are the system units.   Whole cultures are too wide and individuals or even families are too narrow.  Perhaps something like a nation, but how do you even clearly define that through history.  I would look toward something like a hermeneutic considered as a theory of knowing and being.  This would need to be considered as it relates to all the classes of the real social networks, and how individuals and families construct and assume identities.  Productive activities at the basic levels of societies, the production of food, shelter and tools (weapons) have to support the organizational structures of the whole network.  All of this is shifting over time as new ideas of right and justice emerge and disseminate along side new technologies and their deployments.

The visible history is dominated by warfare and battles, but this obscures the role of productivity at the lowest levels.  When the technology of social networks outstrips the possibility of physical control, then multiple societies and their differing hermeneutics come into contact as well.  As armies sweep across regions, they sometimes enact a genocide and replace many of the lower levels, but often they do not unless they are resisted.  Ideas and material culture spread through distinct networks of skills and practice that are often hidden as necessary to escape oppression from a dominant culture.  Empires whose elites share a common culture, at least visibly, rise and fall.

Another key environmental factor in all of this is the development of money and financial systems.  Although a system of valuation of wealth and trade based on a single world currency (the US dollar) has emerged, it certainly has not always been so.  The systems of debt finance that are now global in scope only developed over the last few hundred years, though they have their roots in systems going back to the first counting and accounting systems noted earlier as key developments.  At the base of all societies is the production and trading of basic commodities for living, and the productivity of differing material production processes will have varied greatly creating abundance and scarcity at particular times and places.  Until more recently, these commodities had to be produced and consumed locally or not at all, and the local peoples would bare hardships from scarcity, or expand in population in abundant times.  Systems of trading and control over a larger scale would have had to operate largely independently and on top of this base of productivity.