Part V

Biological Systems

It took nature about 3.5 billion years to evolve life to the point capable of producing an intelligent species; it took humankind just about 3.5 million years to evolve to the point that it is now capable of destroying all of life on earth of its own free will.

We need to marvel at the uniqueness of biological life in the universe. The chances of the right conditions needed to the early formation of living systems are so remote, that the natural historical fact of its origination on earth is little less than miraculous. It is for this reason alone, if for no other reason, that all life on earth needs to be treated with the respect it deserves. It is not merely the "resource" to be exploited by a capricious human nature. Violence against living systems, is violence to all of life. Reducing the chances of survival of living systems through over development and misguided human strategies mitigates and militates against all life. We need desperately to extend our notion of natural rights to embrace all living systems--that living systems of all kinds have inherent natural rights to be left alone in their natural habitats, to be allowed to continue their natural processes without undue interference.

The earth is truly a spaceship that travels through space carrying a myriad variety of living systems in long-term equilibrium. Life has flourished on earth for a very long time, and has even given rise to a form of creative and symbolic intelligence that is capable of extending itself in a deliberate and self-conscious manner to new systems. The earth itself provides a model and design template for how we can extend ourselves and other living systems into space in a stable and long term model. To risk destruction or harm to this model is to do immeasurable damage not only to the system as a whole, but to the many myriad forms of life it contains and produces.

Living systems as we know them so far are unique to the earth, and through long term evolutionary development that appears to stretch back 3.5 billion years in time, life has given rise to a further unique set of systems that are based upon the adaptive functioning of large brains that are capable of symbolic organization leading to purposive behavior. Living systems have been based upon the variability of design of organic compounds and the chemical bonding properties of carbon. It is possible that all life that may occur in the universe must be carbon based at least. Carbon molecules are capable of forming with a host of other chemical elements, especially hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, huge macro-molecular constructions, of various types, given rise to dynamic processes and new suites of emergent properties that we associate with the primitive uni-cellular functions of prokaryotic life. The most interesting characteristic of living systems are their adaptive and regenerative qualities. They are capable of growth and reproduction based directly or indirectly upon energy and compounds they can convert from a-biotic sources in their environments, and use this energy and chemical resources to fashion and rebuild themselves time and time again. It appears that living systems are not only capable of such indefinite regeneration and adaptation to changing a-biotic environments, but they are also capable it seems, of modifying these environments in ways that make them more conducive for the further elaboration and support of living systems. Simple uni-cellular organisms began grouping together in systematic ways, and eventually the single cell structure underwent basic evolutionary changes leading to Eukaryotic structures that proved capable of forming multi-cellular organisms with differentiated, articulated parts and organs that functioned together to produce emergent and constitutive systemic properties of organisms. Furthermore, living systems and organisms formed large scale colonies, communities and biotic systems with a tremendous degree of diversity, and these larger scale system exhibit properties and patterns also that appear unique as biological systems. These larger scale, macro-biotic systems have had there own evolutionary history of development, extinction, succession and transformation.

My interest in living systems or biological systems theory has been primarily in trying to tie the biological framework together into a single clear systems model, albeit one that articulates differently upon multiple levels of analysis. This interest has shifted somewhat away from what I would call grand scale eco-evolutionary models, and more toward the problems of integration, coordination and constitution of biological systems at multiple levels, as well as the development of a "biological meta-system" that would serve to functionally define the natural hierarchy and stratification of all known biological systems in a manner that would promote further biological research and understanding into the meaning of life. Though old-fashioned vitalism in biology is a taboo topic, one cannot but look at all forms of life and find a miraculous process occurring that defies simple analytic or physical explanation. One cannot help but see a certain sense of purposefulness of all life forms, a kind of teleology of evolutionary adaptation that we associate somewhat anthropomorphically with the will to survive. It is said that a Jelly Fish that has no brain and floats directionlessly in the ocean, cannot know if it is being preyed upon or intentionally avoid a collision with disaster. And yet the defenses and strategies that the Jelly Fish has evolved for adaptive survival and reproductive success demonstrates a kind of protoplasmic Telos of design that we cannot complete deny as against the mechanism of science. We know enough now to acknowledge and respect an entity as humble as a Jelly Fish as a kind of unique creature, a being, that has evolved its own systemic evolutionary design that is as successful in its own strange way as any. It seems as if the Jelly Fish had really needed a big brain, it probably would have evolved one, eventually, or else become extinct in the process. But the Jelly Fish is as abundant today as any other form of life and its design has not yet failed it in its evolutionary history. It can be said that we are distant cousins to the lowly Jelly Fish, and at some far distant epoch we shared a common ancestor.