The cell is the fundamental construct of living systems. It is the common building block of all living tissue and the foundation for all living systems, without exception. In many ways it is the best example of a prototypical system that we can conjure up, and it is in many ways the epitome of natural self-organization. Indeed, general systems science really had its birth in the concern with holistic perspectives upon cellular function and development, at a time when the internal organization and happenings of a cell were still pretty much a mysterious "black box." We need only consider how remarkable cellular evolutionary development has been, when we realize that all living organisms have been basically the descendants of a continuous, non-stop process of cellular growth, reproduction and division from the first proto-biotic cellular formations, and it is possible that all life might have originated from a single successful cellular system. I return to the examination of the cell as a system, for beyond ecology, what little formal biological study I've had has been focused upon the cell.

A systems based perspective upon the cell therefore would be based upon not only the examination of the metabolism, behavior and life-cycle of a cell as a prototypical biological system, but upon what can be called "cell ecology" and properly "cellular meta-biotics" or the nature of inter-cellular interactions that influence the outcomes of microbial development and evolution. At some point, microbial populations would begin exerting a significant influence upon their environment, and begin altering their bio-geophysical contexts in the direction that encouraged further evolutionary development taking place. In spite of the self-containing environment within the cell membrane, all cells exhibit specialized environmental adaptations. They exist in rather special and narrow contexts of cell development, that define the limits of their growth and development.

Under normal conditions for a cell, a cell can be expected to respond to its environment by growing in population to the natural limits of its context, and then overstepping these limits in critical ways. Death rates will eventually balance or exceed reproductive rates, and the population will eventually crash or achieve some long term equilibrium.

A phenomenon called "endosymbiosis," the encapsulization of the DNA machinery of one micro-organism by another, and the appropriation of that machinery, seems to me a fitting demonstration of a systems-based meta-biotic framework. Virus's and viroids are similar entities, that, though associated with disease, demonstrate a kind of meta-biotic complication of living systems that do not fit normal hierarchical frameworks. Horizontal transmission of DNA, especially in some forms of soil bacteria, are another case that clearly defies our received models of strict vertical and intergenerational transmission of DNA from parent to offspring.

"Endosymbiosis" becomes the basis for the emergence of Eukarya, more complex cells, and in turn for multi-cellular organization, which features functional subordination and specialization of cell types. A fertilized gamete will carry the blueprints that include the instructions for the development of a large number of different specialized cell types performing a host of integrated functions. The differentiation of so many cell types from a single precursor resembles the controlled internalized embodiment of the entire process of taxon evolution of complex forms from simple parent cells. 

It is evident therefore in the first place that all cells are capable of evolutionary development and speciation through chance genetic variation of structure. Microorganisms have been observed to be capable of quite rapid speciation and evolutionary development, compared to more complex living systems that are slower to replicate and reproduce. The earliest known form of cells, presumably some primitive form of Prokarya, were of minimal possible size and structure, probably less than five micrometers in diameter and a micron in thickness. This was perhaps the optimal size for rapid self-replication and immediate exploitation of whatever growth medium becomes available. It seems that life seized on the basic principles involved in this, and capitalized on it as much as possible.

It is the case therefore that in the war against disease, there is a on-going struggle to develop effective vaccines against new strains of old strains of bacteria that become immune to previous remedies through evolutionary adaptation.

The principle function of the cell can be said to provide a suitable environment for the storage and replication of DNA and the machinery needed for this storage and replication, as well as for replication needed for the components of the cell itself. A cell must therefore be capable of faithfully reproducing its DNA informational database, and itself. It requires transportable and usable energy, in chemical form, for carrying out its many tasks, and it must be capable of somehow capturing and transporting energy into itself across its membrane. Cellular reproduction is a normal part of cell growth and its life-cycle. 

Essential components of cells, besides DNA, are:

1. A cell wall and/or cytoplasmic membrane

2. Cytoplasm

3. A nucleus or nucleoid

4. Cellular Organelles, consisting of ribosomes and/or mitochondrioon, endoplasmic reticula for the manufacture of proteins and for the maintenance of cellular tissue structure, function and equilibrium.

The first distinction we draw is between simple bacteria or prokaryotes, and complex cells referred to as eukarya or eukaryotes. In general, prokaryotes are much smaller and simpler than eukaryotes, averaging between 1 and 5 micrometers (versus about 25 micrometers for eukarya) and about 1 micrometer in depth. They have a cell wall, but otherwise lack many of the structures common to eukarya. 

Prokarya are simple one-celled organisms capable of fairly rapid reproduction. They are presumably the first organisms, or the direct descendants of the first forms of life, to have evolved on earth. Some have even suggested the possibility that they may have been carried to earth in a meteorite that crashed in the best of circumstances (cosmic seeding hypothesis), and from there began reproducing and evolving. Prokarya are grouped into bacteria and archaea, distinguished largely by the complex structures of the cell walls and analytically by their growth characteristics in various mediums and the ability to stain under a cover slip of a microscopic slide. 

Eukarya evolved from Prokarya, with the suggested mechanism of the symbiotic ingestion ("endosymbiosis") of one cell by another to form a more complex structure of organelles like mitochondria and chloroplasts. Eukarya include algae, fungi, protozoa and all multi-cellular life forms we know of. Prokarya in general do not form multi-cellular structures of any form. They lead an independent life contained within the narrow confines of their cell wall. Under the right conditions, they are known to grow rapidly, which growth is defined by the cellular division and propagation by mitosis at a fairly fast doubling rate.

One possible scenario of the development of proto-life was that the first forms to emerge were primitive extremophiles, Archaea, that developed through chemosynthesis. These eventually differentiated and evolved into forms that were less marginal and more tolerable of normal conditions, and that possibly could find a broader range of energy resources. From these developed what we know of as the prototypical generalized bacteria. This bacteria became so successful as an environmental generalist, that the first adaptive radiation of life was its spread by air, water or any other medium to virtually the entire earth, to cover the whole earth in a thin, invisible layer of life. When this prototypical bacteria encountered extreme conditions, it possibly resumed characteristics of an extremophile form.

One of the main functions of the cell-membrane is to provide a medium for transport between the external environment of the cell and the cell's self-maintaining internal environment. We know from the standard general system model that such transport mechanisms and mediums are fundamental to the definition of systems as order creating and order maintaining processes. The cell membrane, therefore, with or without the added structural or buffer support of a cell wall, is a vital component of all cell systems, for they are the principal transport mechanisms of such systems that maintain internal equilibrium and stability of the internal environment across a random and external environment.

In the case of multi-cellular organisms, we must ask what a cell gives up in terms of its independence as a system, and what it gains in turn from the specialization of function and structures. Specialized cells tend to take on definite shapes and configurations of structure, and they tend to be capable of performing fairly specialized functions, either in a chemo-mechanical manner or in terms of the production of special protein structures or cellular metabolism. What is clear is that such cells, in become specialized, become dependent upon the organismic contexts in which they develop--they cannot survive apart from the super-cellular structures in which they develop.

It is clear that from fairly early on cellular evolution became a meta-biotic process, with cells respond to and adapting to the presence and behavior of other cells as a part of their environment. The most basic form of this kind of interaction was probably competition of different strains of bacteria for the same resource substrates. Selection that we can observe at this level is generally geared to those strains that can effectively tolerate, adapt to and exploit a different medium. Symbiotic or complementary relationships between different strains of bacteria may have developed in time. 

The earliest mechanisms of cellular metabolism (catabolism and anabolism) was presumably some form of chemo-synthesis--the derivation of usable chemical energy from some form of enzyme reaction with a chemical substrate. Presumably, one of the first metabiotic forms of relationship that may have developed between different species of bacteria may have been that of predator-prey relations, or the capacity for one strain of bacteria to attack and consume another form of bacteria for its energy and material reserves. Photo-synthesis was known to have evolved from early Eukarya, and presumably one of the first forms of endosymbiosis may have been in terms of photosynthetic cloroplasts capable of synthesizing chemical energy from the energy of the sun. Indirect symbiosis and interdependence also undoubtedly occurred, by which the action and metabolism of one organism created the environment suitable for the growth of a second organism.

Presumably, though there are many kinds of Prokarya we know of today, their basic structure and function is not so very different than that of their original precursors, and the diversity of life forms at this level appears to be far lower overall than the diversity of more complex multi-cellular organisms. Of all varieties of prokarya, the forms possibly most similar to the ancestral "precursor" of life are possibly the archaea though what we know of these prokarya today is that they have fairly specialized cellular membranes and walls.

Human cultural ecology is distinct from the natural ecologies from which it arose. Human cultural ecology has been extremely successful, for the most part, in promoting the adaptive and reproductive success of the human species, and in its diversification to a wide range of niches in the world. Indeed, its open and constructive capacities has resulted in the development of entirely new niches and even whole ranges of niches that did not previously exist before the invention and construction of culture. 

But this success in our shared history has not come without a heavy price being extracted from our natural environment. Modern Homo sapiens may have refined the technologies of ecocide, but they were not the first to invent or utilize such technologies, and we may reach deeply into our shared heritage to find examples of the mass slaughter of life and the systematic destruction of entire ecosystems on behalf of maintaining a growing human system.

This success has been achieved by means of social organization, the application of technological systems in shaping, controlling and managing the environment, and in terms of anthropogenic factors like symbolic language, culture, and mind. We may find counter-examples among many species of similar forms of adaptation, particularly of social systems, but these are analogies of parallel evolution of form and function, and not homologies of shared design features or genetic coda.

It is clear that cultural and natural ecology have been out of balance, and the former has been advanced largely at the expense and exploitation of the latter. The sense of imbalance, or disequilibrium between cultural and natural ecologies is in the long run bound to have negative consequences for both forms of ecology, to the extent that cultural ecology is basically bound to and dependent upon natural ecology, and to the extent that natural ecologies are becoming increasingly influenced by and under the control of human cultural ecologies. The long-term consequence of course, as is evident with Global Warming and other global trends, is the rapid destruction and disruption of natural ecologies, almost upon every level at which they occur. These are long-term consequences for which we have known precedents, and, unfortunately, we do not have to wait very much longer to bear witness to their dire consequences.

The challenged faced by humankind is to bring back into balance, upon a new level, both natural and cultural ecologies, which means primarily the refashioning and reshaping of human cultural ecologies in a manner that will be less destructive and exploitative of natural ecologies. First and foremost is the effort to rapidly bring human population growth to control, even to a level of negative growth. Secondly, is to curtail and circumscribe the activities of human systems and communities, in terms that are most relevant to the future development of natural ecologies.

We are faced with a kind of Easter Island Scenario. The planet earth is a very large but not unlimited Easter Island. There is no convenient or suitable way off the island, at least for most people. We are wholly dependent upon the resources of the island for our survival and success, and yet by our very success in exploiting the resources of the island we are jeopardizing our future on that island. Of course, if we cut down all the trees on the island in order to transport our giant Moa heads, and we denude the island of all productive vegetation as a consequence ultimately of too great a human population, then we run headlong into the problem of the breakdown of natural ecologies for the sake of maintaining an imbalanced human ecology. We are then reminded of the Malthusian dilemmas of natural population increase that outstrips its environmental carrying capacities.

Altering human adaptive ecology to be more in line with a natural ecological framework begins with the individual in the home, but does not end there. Certainly in many systems it is not just undesirable, but downright socially self-destructive, to abnegate the drive and symbols of affluence by which modern societies are based and regulated, even if these patterns towards affluence are directly averse to the challenge of developing saner and safer human ecologies. I have learned this by personal experience. It takes organized corporate institutional structures to effectively implement new designs that encourage and entail alternative forms of human adaptation. Only by means of a ground swell, grass-roots movement, a "human tidal wave" might industry and government be encouraged to adopt alternative and less exploitative practices. If everyone boycotted those things known to be the most environmentally destructive, including large vehicles, etc, then certainly industry would be forced to alter their designs to suit public demand and taste. But cultivating such a form of resistance is difficult, especially when vast amounts of capital are spent just in advertising designed to convince people that they "need" big vehicles and the stuff that anti-environmental industry thrives upon.

It becomes in a sense, therefore, a kind of war, made up of many battles. The first battles are with ourselves in our local environment--recycling, eating lower on the trophic level, walking instead of driving, making fewer babies, working for the environment rather than against it, etc. It extends out to our local and areal communities--creating awareness, setting examples, participating and even initiating programs that come to rescue the environment or promote awareness of the environment. Finally, it extends to regional and national levels, and ultimately, to international and global levels of awareness.

We can conclude this overwrought essay by suggesting that those who are not only a part of the problem but the primary reason of the problem, cannot be counted upon to change themselves voluntarily, or to adopt policies that will be in reverse or adverse to their own established interests that are consonant with the established order of things in the world. The solution cannot come from those with power, but only from those who can and must empower themselves. The kind of revolution of human ecology I'm referring to is ultimately a kind of pacifist revolution, a concerted effort to deny to those who are in power and who are a big part of the problem the means of dehumanization and violence that they use to force their motives and get their way in the world.

The object of this digression is not to elaborate a model of bio-genesis. It is possible that we may never completely understand how life originated on earth. It is rather to open a forum for inquiry into the possibilities and "paradigmatic" range of possibilities we might pose in regard to the development of conjectural hypothesis and somewhat counter-factual histories of the development of first life, explained of course from a systems perspective that argues for stochastic self-organization, or "spontaneous origination" and not from any form of predetermination or "supernatural creation".

The most noteworthy characteristic of the earth is the vast abundance of water. Water in some abundance was a precursor to the development of proto-biotic systems. Water may not have originally been in the kind of abundance we see today, but it had to be sufficient enough and probably pure and salty enough, to become the basis of life. We cannot imagine a sea that is half methanol and half water as the substrate of life. I think the original ocean had to be a little larger than a set of tide-pools on a beach or even a chain of crater lakes where extinct volcanoes once roared.

The first question to be answered then is how was water first created in such abundance on earth, and what would have been the resulting atmospheric effects of the formation of large quantities of water on the earth's surface. The pathways that may have led to this occurrence are not known exactly, and may in fact have been quite complex by themselves.

Photosynthesis in algae does not appear to the most primitive form of prokaryotic life, even if it is perhaps the earliest or most primitive form of "green" life we have. This brings to question the possibility of life deriving energy from alternative sources than solar light, and only after first originating then "discovering" light in a kind of early "photosynthetic revolution." Evidence from undersea tubules that support rich living formations in the near complete absence of light suggest that this kind of formation was possible. Evidence of extremophiles existing in hot-springs or geysers at temperatures normally beyond that most life-forms can tolerate suggest the possibility of life forming originally in craters or at the edges of heat vents in a world presumably more volcanically active than today. I would think if some form of vulcanism is the most plausible explanation for the early formation of pre-biotic systems, then this vulcanism had to carry on in a relatively stable and steady-state manner in contexts that were not overly disruptive or explosive. We can find numerous instances of geo-thermal systems on the earth where enough heat can be produced in the vicinity of stable water sources to create a sufficient condition for the formation of living systems.

Alternative to heat energy produced by thermal vents, whether submarine or terrestrial, would be the reliance on some form of chemical energy--chemical energy that was available in either organic compounds or inorganic compounds in sufficient quantities to sustain indefinitely processes of basic replication. We are talking metabolic and catabolic reactions result in the formation of complex organic chemical molecules, and in their reformation on a continuous, periodic basis. 

We can venture off the edge of probable explanation, and suggest the possibility of even a cosmic "seeding" hypothesis--meteorites carrying organic molecules rained down on earth, created craters in volcanic areas. Rain and water collected in these craters and the organic molecules began interacting with one another in strange ways.

The first basis of such interaction would be a molecule that is able to utilize an external source of energy, probably for self-replication. We can find many examples of simple chemical systems in which molecules are spontaneously precipitated in concentration when certain threshold conditions are sufficient. 

For such a system to work in a prebiotically sufficiently manner, we would have to assume a semi-closed kind of system in which energy could be input in regular and probably steady quantities, and within which a certain kind of complex equilibrium could be established between a complex molecular form and its substrate, with the molecular form being able to reproduce itself from the substrate in a regular manner, at a steady rate, and possibly, the components of the molecule eventually breaking down and being recycled into the substrate. New components might be periodically introduced into such an environment. 

This early pre-biotic environment must have been somehow protected from a larger world in some way that allowed access to energy as well as to the basic building blocks of the molecules being produced. Not only did such molecules replicate themselves, but they obviously replicated themselves in growing numbers. We must imagine at some point the construction or presence of a barrier or even a "film" or membrane that isolated the machinery and processes of replication while simultaneously filtering both the components of replication as well as the energy that drove such replication. I think something as simple as a soap film, or a soap bubble, would be sufficient if it permitted transpiration of gases that might contain energy. Methane gas is a candidate for energy yielding molecules that might be easily transported across a membrane from a region of relatively high concentration to a region of low concentration. A by-product of methane gas combustion would be carbon dioxide, or alternatively water and oxygen. 

We can argue for an early form of a carbon cycle that must have been there in the earliest system, sans the photosynthesis but with an alternate pathway of chemo-synthesis that may be catalyzed by thermo-synthesis, or alternatively, the reverse, thermo-synthesis catalyzed by chemo-synthetic compounds.

In fact, from a systems standpoint, we should argue for the presence of the basic chemical  compounds, and elements, we find in all life forms today--namely nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The cycles associated with these elements, found in living systems, and the basic reactions pathways associated with the organic molecules and compounds associated with these elements, should be more or less present in some form in the earliest pre-biotic systems. That water is a universal solvent, and that many solutions occur in water and many chemical compounds are soluble or partly soluble in water, seems like a basis for pre-biotic formations. 

The complexity of analyzing possible pathways of compounds and energy relations, especially in terms of bonding of molecules, is too complex to be explored in this digression. We may in brief speculate that certain kinds of compounds may have been present in certain forms and variable concentrations--possibly methane gas, ammonia, water, carbon dioxide, and probably certain calcium compounds. These would have given rise to basic lipids, organic molecules, and nitrogen compounds that we associate with all living tissues and cells.

This kind of experiment in fact resembles in very primitive outline a simple prokaryotic cell, minus of course the genetic machinery. We must assume that the pre-biotic molecules were in a sense early genetic sequences of a sort, that were being replicated on a continuous basis. Enough variability must have been present in the early stages of this continuous self-replication that multiple forms or varieties of similar self-replicating molecules emerged. 

At this stage, something else must have happened. The number of sub-processes involved in the cycles and chains of self-replication gradually became extended at a number of different points of articulation, and different replicating "species" of molecule began interacting with one another, and this interaction eventually must have influenced the context and process of events in self-replication.

It is at this point that I would say we would step from a "pre-biotic" form to a "proto-biotic" form of self-replication. Not only would the basic molecules themselves have to be self-replicated, but the entire system and even the entire environment become capable of regeneration. Life at this point quits merely responding to conditions in its environment, and begins control and creating, in a systems like manner, conditions of its environment. This is the stage at which we would expect the emergence of a full-blown prototypical cell that carried and reproduced not only the essential genetic molecule, but the environment and machinery for replication as well, including, perhaps most importantly, the cell wall. 

I can imagine a prototypical, generic kind of cytoplasm as somewhat replicating the initial conditions of the primordial "soup" or broth n which life first formed. It would be kind of like a small tide-pool at the edge of a steam vent, constantly full of water, at the bottom of which would collect the right ingredients for such self-replication to occur spontaneous in an on-going way--eventually this aggregation would become "encapsulated" in a shell of sorts, not a hard shell but a semi-permeable membrane. And eventually, the molecules in this "large proto-cell" would come to wrap the membrane around themselves--at the point that they could reproduce not only their own structure in a consistent manner, but the machinery for maintaining and producing the membrane as well.

All natural systems are self-organizing. They are not self-organizing in any self-deterministic manner in the sense that their design is somehow inherent to the parts that compose such systems. Rather, they become spontaneously organized by themselves when conditions conducive to their organization, are ripe and available. These conditions are invariably complex and stochastic in the sense that they are largely based upon the concatenation of random variables by chance. 

Biological systems are the epitome of natural self-organization, and their finite complexity defies not only description, but our imagination and sense of credibility. It is no wonder when we deal with the myriad intricacies encountered in living systems in almost every form of their expression that we are tempted to believe in some sense of predetermination of pattern. We may say of course that biological design is genetically predetermined, as indeed it is. It is in fact by virtue of non-random genetic determination that life has been able to perpetuate itself and to recreate itself anew on a continuous basis. This "self-replication" is something no non-living system has yet been observed to do. But the question of predetermination comes before the phenomenon of genetic predetermination--how did life get to the point of being able to replicate itself in a reliable and consistent manner?

If the original organization of living systems on earth was unpredetermined, then it was stochastically achieved within conditions that were suitable to its spontaneous self-organization. We can imagine that this was probably only accomplished by much "trial and error" without implying of course any deliberate intentionality to the chances processes then occurring. The genetic organization of life was not achieved by an preordained plan or a-priori sense of structure. It was achieved through the chance concatenation of factors that made the organization of genetic codons probable.

If we examine natural evolutionary development of living forms, we find that it is based upon two principles at least--1st) chance point mutation in genetic coding sequences that lead to a process of significant alteration of cellular structure, function and pattern as a function of RNA transcription; 2nd) it has been demonstrated that DNA structure and transmission has undergone several major transformations in the course of evolution, probably associated with the emergence of new forms of life, and these kinds of transformations of the transmission process appear to have been based upon inherent structural variability of the DNA machinery, built in from the beginning. (From a systems perspective, these principles of evolutionary dynamics at the genetic level are predictable.)

We can find the evolution of living systems to be a continuation of natural systems principles of underdetermined self-organization upon a completely different level, and in fact, operating upon several levels simultaneously. The inherent multi-level variability of ecological and evolutionary systems has resulted in the differentiation of life into a vast number of alternative forms and designs, and it has resulted in a kind of blind genetic algorithm, a kind of exploration of alternative possibilities of structure in systems. We are reluctant to credit any form or sense of "teleological purpose" to this patterning of Taxon cycles and evolution of increasingly complex and sophisticated forms of life, but we can safely invoke systems principles like "equi-finality" to explain how complex systems can blindly explore a large range of possibilities of an even larger search-solution landscape and in the process hit upon remarkable design solutions for life forms to take.

We must somewhat smugly credit ourselves, Homo sapiens sapiens, as one of those wonderful solutions of this process of the blind exploration of life's possibilities. I say so not in sarcasm to our many faults and chronic history of violence and greed, but in respect and awe of a natural world that can produce such complex creatures, however imperfect in nature.

I have addressed the question of the non-predetermination of self-organizing natural systems not because this has arisen recently as a popular issue in modern American political culture dealing with this neo-creationist ideology of "Intelligent Design." Rather, my purpose for addressing the problem of predetermination in natural systems was to provide some kind of conceptual platform in a quasi-formal sense for explaining how natural systems may normally arise, indeed, must arise, from purely chance conditions which result in the formation of "pre-systems" or conditions for the organization of systems. This can only be understood when local conditions permit the augmentation and concentration of energy as a working gradient against the normal and random process of entropy, i.e, the non-random organization of natural energy in "pockets" mediated by some kind of "boundary" mechanism.