2 Damiano Co-Emergences in Life and Science Synthese

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

DOI 10.1007/s11229-010-9725-3

Co-emergences in life and science: a double proposal

for biological emergentism

Luisa Damiano

Received: 21 December 2009 / Accepted: 2 February 2010 / Published online: 17 March 2010© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract This article addresses the problem of emergence through a distinction,

often neglected in the literature, between two different aspects of this issue: (1) the

theoretical problem of providing modelizations able to explain the expression of emer-

gent properties; (2) the epistemological problem of warranting the scientific value of

the emergentist descriptions of nature. This paper considers this double issue with

regard to the biological domain, and proposes a double solution (theoretical and epis-

temological) originally developed in early studies on self-organization. The underlyinghypothesis is that this solution offers the current biological emergentism the opportu-

nity of developing a coherent structure: matching consistently the theoretical and the

epistemological frames of the research, that is, coupling the emergentist conception

of life with an emergentist conception of science.

Keywords Autonomy · Autopoiesis · Co-emergence · Dialog ·

Organizational closure · Self-organization

1 Introduction

The notion of emergence departs so strongly from traditional schemes of scientific

rationality that its adoption is anything but trivial. For researchers it requires that they

reflect on the acceptability of their description of nature. Unless they try to avoid the

This article was written while L. Damiano was working at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and

Frontier Sciences Ritsumeikan University, 56-1 Kitamachi, Toji-in, Kita-ku, Kyoto

603-8577, Japan.

L. Damiano (B)

Adaptive Systems Research Group, E122, School of Computer Science and STRI,

University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts AL10 9AB, UK

e-mail: [email protected]

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274 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

problem by neutralizing the heterodox character of the notion, they have to propose

to the scientific community new standards of admissibility, which constitute, in final

analysis, new visions of nature, as well as new visions of science.1 When a scientific

observer decides to include in his descriptions a reference to “emergent properties”—

schematically speaking, properties of a whole that lack counterparts in the propertiesof its single elements2—he has to take on at least two issues. The first is a theoretical

problem, which requires a theoretical innovation: the elaboration of models able to

explain how nature can disobey the old reductionist postulate “the whole is the sum

of its parts.” The second issue is an epistemological problem, that requires an epis-

temological innovation: the suspension and, possibly, the substitution of the classical

objectivist principle which relates the value of scientific descriptions to the charac-

terization of a reality that is free from subjective influences. As emphasized by the

current debate, emergent properties are subject to procedures of identification that do

not rely on criteria independent from the observer. Attributing emergent propertiesto a system means establishing that some of its global properties are not reducible

to the properties of its elements. This acknowledgment rests on an evaluation by the

observer, based on his methods and tools of exploration, in such a way that the resulting

description cannot be considered devoid of subjective influences. As a matter of fact

the “non-reducible” properties it deals with are always susceptible to being considered

as not belonging to the system explored. They can always be viewed as projections on

the system of a failure in knowledge: the inability of the observer, and his apparatus,

to do the reduction. Emergentist descriptions of nature cannot aspire to the classi-

cal—“strong”—status of objectivity, a traditional emblem of scientificity.3

If researchon emergence does not want to be scientifically disqualified, it has to develop new

criteria to define the value of the scientific description of nature, where ‘new’ means

different from the classical idea of objectivity—conceived as absence of subjective

contaminations, to put it roughly.

This double configuration—theoretical and epistemological—of the problem of

emergence shapes the structure of this paper, which proposes a solution to the two

dimensions of the issue.

It is worth noticing that this is not a solution that comes from outside the scientific

domain. The kind of philosophy of science to which this paper belongs does not aim to

impose on science criteria and analyses elaborated externally. Rather, it follows a path

opened by some scientists and philosophers who, faced with the twentieth century

crisis of classical science and the challenge of modeling the complexity of nature,

1 This statement intends to criticize the trends of the debate whose attempts to clarify the notion of emer-

gence essentially aim to eliminate its polemical charge. This paper presents a different approach. Its aim is to

outline one of the scientific elaborations of the notion which, instead of removing, enhances its potentialities

of innovation in relation to the traditional way of conceiving nature and science.

2 This can be considered the most basic and common meaning of the notion of emergence (cf., e.g., Clayton

and Davies 2006; Bedau and Humphreys 2008). The emergent phenomenon considered in this paper is life

(Sect. 3).

3 A particularly clear formulation of this aspect of the issue of emergence is outlined and treated, from

different epistemological perspectives, in Bitbol (2007, 2009), Clark (1997, Chap. 6), and Stengers (1995,

2003).

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 275

acknowledged the need for an epistemology that operates internally to science.4 They

founded a form of “naturalized epistemology” where epistemology is conceptualized

as “the metasystem of the scientific system,” participating in scientific evolution “from

within”—partaking in the “self-transformation of science” as an “internal mechanism

of self-regulation.”5 A detailed account of this epistemological orientation, and itsdifferences from traditional epistemology, can be found in specific literature (e.g.,

Apostel 1983; Piaget 1967b, 1972; Bocchi and Ceruti 1981; Ceruti 1989; Morin 1982,

1990; Varela 1979, Chap. 16). Here I will give only a general characterization of this

approach. Epistemology, conceived as a “second-order science,” is a level of inquiry

that uses categories and tools produced by science to analyze the functioning of the

science itself (i.e., the structures and dynamics of scientific knowledge). The purpose

of this “self-application of science” (Apostel 1983, p. 86) is to induce the transforma-

tion of the theoretical and heuristic frames of science, in order to renew and maximize

its functioning—a goal which the metasystem also pursues in order to renew andmaximize its own functioning. The interpretations of this epistemological program

generally follow two main orientations. The first consists in structuring a feedback

loop between the results of the scientific study of cognition and the heuristic princi-

ples guiding scientific research.6 The second aims at recovering neglected or unused

scientific resources (i.e., theoretical or heuristic solutions rejected or marginalized by

dominant paradigms of research), and reintroducing them within the scientific debate,

where they can serve as tools for overcoming specific theoretical or heuristic obsta-

cles.7

This article adopts this second orientation. Its aim is to re-propose the solutionthat was developed for the issue of emergence by one of the most “revolutionary”

branches of the twentieth century science—pioneer research on self-organization

(cf. Sect. 3), often presented in the literature as “a new science” (see, e.g., Capra

1997; Dumouchel and Dupuy 1983; Jantcsh 1980; Johnson 1995, 2001; Telfener and

Casadio 2003). In some work this label is used to assert that the above-mentioned

direction of research founded a new scientific discipline (or a “quasi-discipline”; see,

e.g., Dumouchel and Dupuy 1983). But increasingly often the thesis of “a new sci-

ence” is proposed in a stronger and more interesting sense, according to which early

4 These scientists and philosophers are often referred to as the founders of the “epistemology of com-

plexity” (cf., e.g., Bocchi and Ceruti 1985). Some of the most well-known of these researchers are Heinz

von Foerster, Edgar Morin, Jean Piaget, Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers. As argued in the text, their

approach can be considered as one among contemporary “naturalistic approaches to epistemology.” For a

detailed description of the underlying epistemological orientation and correlated debate see Bonjour (1994),

Foley (1994), Kornblith (1999), and Quine (1969).

5 As argued elsewhere (Damiano 2009, pp. 113–129), this epistemological program intends to “curve” the

Cartesian tree of sciences up to give it a circular scheme of organization, that is, the capability of using

scientific knowledge about nature and man to evaluate the pertinence and transform the theoretical and

epistemological basis of scientific inquiry. Cf., e.g., Foerster (1981), Morin (1973, pp. 227–233; 1977),

Piaget (1967c, 1972, Introduction), Prigogine and Stengers (1979a,b).6 This is a typical attitude of “naturalized epistemology.” Some of its paradigmatic applications in the

context of the so-called ‘epistemology of complexity’ can be found in Piaget (1967a,b), Morin (1973, 1977,

1986), and Varela (1979).

7 Some paradigmatic applications of this approach in the context of the “epistemology of complexity” can

be found in Atlan (1972), Varela (1979), and Foerster (1981).

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276 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

research on self-organization constituted an alternative scientific tradition. The pic-

ture is that of a nascent post-classical science which, structured around the notion of

emergence, can be called “the new science of self-organization” or “the new science

of emergence”.8

In fact, in its self-organizational conceptualization, the notion of emergence is dou-bly heterodox.9 It is not simply the core concept of a post-mechanistic scenario in

which natural evolution manifests a creative power that Newtonian trajectories lack:

the ability to transcend the physico-chemical level of reality to give rise to “quali-

tatively different” levels—life, cognition, man, and his particular “cogno-socio-cul-

tural complexity” (Morin 1986), scientific enterprise included. The self-organizational

notion of emergence, by supporting this view of natural evolution, is also at the heart

of an heuristic specificity characterizing the early research on self-organization. As

they adopted this emergentist scenario as theoretical background, the pioneers of self-

organization rejected the classical image of the observer as an “absolute spectator,”the protagonist of explorations without localization and perspective. They described

the scientific observer as belonging to the natural world and approaching nature from

within. Indeed, in their literature, the observer of self-organization is able to explore

nature because he has not an absolute point of view, but a situated and limited one,

namely, the point of view of a self-organizing system—i.e., the kind of natural system

he is studying (see, e.g., Foerster 1981; Prigogine and Stengers 1979a,b; Sect. 4 of

this paper). This heuristic shift, which is far from being trivial, was at the origin of

some important innovations in the ways of conceiving and doing science. It implied

a decisive symmetrization in the relation between observer and observed, and led theearly researchers on self-organization to offer a profound renewal of classical schemes

of scientific rationality—a real heuristic refoundation, that implied establishing new

criteria of scientificity.10

The interest of the pioneers of self-organization’s approach to emergence lies pre-

cisely in this double theoretical and heuristic innovation. It allowed them to convinc-

ingly address both aspects of the issue, and to do so in relation to one of the most

difficult points where the issue of emergence arises: the passage between the phys-

ical and the biological. The early self-organization researchers conceived the notion

of emergence as essential to the scientific characterization of life. In order to sup-

port their biological emergentism, they developed two axes of legitimization, one

theoretical and one epistemological, which are interdependent and interestingly con-

vergent. These axes meet in a concept that, although it was only recently formalized,

has always played a key role in the tradition of self-organization. It is the idea of

“co-emergence,” a notion that designates a relation of mutual specification between

two or more entities.11 In early literature on self-organization it has at least two mean-

ings. The pioneers used this concept not only to define a biological relation between a

8

See the literature mentioned supra in this paragraph.9 In these pages ‘classical’, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern science’ are used as equivalent expressions, which

refer to the Newtonian (or modern) scientific tradition. The expression ‘post-classical science’ is used to

indicate the part of contemporary science that diverges from classical schemes of the Newtonian tradition.

10 This thesis is presented in details in Damiano (2009).

11 Its formalization can be found, for example, in Varela (1979).

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 277

whole and its parts able to make intelligible the idea that life is an emergent property.

They also used co-emergence to define the scientific relation of knowledge (i.e., the

observer–observed relation) in a new and unorthodox way, which allowed them to

formulate the problem of the value of scientific descriptions without resorting to the

classical objective/subjective dichotomy.In the following pages I wish to present this double legitimization of biological

emergentism. In accordance with the epistemological approach chosen here, my goal

is not merely genealogical. My intention is to promote the potentialities of this strategy

of legitimization, and propose that the contemporary biological emergentism consider

it. What is a stake is a promising emergentist theory of life coupled with a coherent

vision of science: the idea of an emergentist science that conceives (and can even

study) itself as a product of the emergent natural process of knowledge.

2 Background note: pioneer research on self-organization and its legacy

In this text ‘pioneer research on self-organization’ refers to the scientific genealogy

of the notion of self-organization, that is, to the lines of research that introduced this

concept in twentieth century scientific discourse.12 According to one of the most con-

vincing genealogical hypothesis—that of Stengers (1985a)—four heterodox branches

of scientific research, developed between the 1930s and the 1970s, were responsi-

ble for this introduction: (1) organicistic embryology (Cambridge group, Brussels

group);13 (2) thermodynamics of dissipative structures founded by Ilya Prigogine

(School of Brussels); (3) second-order cybernetics founded by Heinz von Foerster

(Biological Computer Laboratory group, or BCL group);14 (4) Henri Atlan’s neocon-

nectionism.15 In spite of the fact that they had different domains of research, all these

groups shared a common objective, as well as a common basic hypothesis of research.

Each aimed, though from a different perspective, at developing a categorical access

to the specificities of the biological domain, and each grounded its exploration on the

idea that the most distinctive property of biological systems is autonomy. Generally

this property was conceived as a relative independence from the environment which

allows a system to specify and control its own processes, and thus to display dynamics

of “self-determination”—self-organization.In her genealogy of this notion, Stengers argues that, although each of these pio-

neer groups carried its research independently, they can be divided by relations of

filiation (essentially: transmission and/or hybridization of conceptual instruments and

12 In this article the expression ‘line of research’ refers to an ensemble of research groups connected by

common orientation or by relationships of filiation.

13 Some of the researchers belonging to this line of scientific inquiry are Joseph Needham, Conrad Wadd-

ington, Jean Brachet, Albert Dalcq, and Paul Weiss.

14 This laboratory was founded by Foerster at the Illinois University in 1958 and hosted researchers such

as Gordon Pask, Georg Zopf and Ross Ashby.

15 Cf. Atlan (1983). Stengers excludes Stuart Kauffman from her genealogy because she considers that

Henri Atlan implemented the first neoconnectionist approach linked to the notion of self-organization

(Stengers 1985a). Of course this genealogical thesis does not deny the strong importance of Kauffman’s

work in the research on self-organization (cf. Stengers 1995, 2003).

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278 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

approaches) in two main directions of research. They can be conceived, according to

Stengers, as two parallel genealogical axes of the concept of self-organization, which

introduced and developed the notion independently: (a) the naturalistic axis, made up

of lines (1) and (2), and (b) the cybernetic axis, made up of lines (3) and (4).16

Their confluence in the idea of self-organization reveals the unitary character of the production of these four lines of research. Though they belonged to different

disciplines and referred to different theoretical languages, they developed strongly

convergent models to describe autonomy. Their respective descriptive solutions pre-

sented not only theoretical, but also heuristic common elements, which are notably

different from those proposed by classical science, and consistent enough to underpin

a new scientific tradition of research.

As a matter of fact this tradition, though only marginally, did develop. In the suc-

cessive inquiry on self-organization (successive to that carried on by the pioneers’

groups) one can detect groups that had direct contact with the pioneers, and inher-ited both their theoretical and heuristic heterodoxy. Besides the innovative categories

coined by the first researchers on self-organization (notions such as circular causal-

ity, self-referentiality, organizing randomness, etc.), these descendant groups adopted

and developed also the pioneers’ post-classical view of science. As argued in detail

elsewhere, among these “heirs” we can find three groups, which are interconnected

by relations of hybridization in a line of research that is still active.17 The first is

the Genetic Epistemology Group founded by Jean Piaget, who, through direct con-

tacts with the pioneers (i.e., collaborations taking place from the late 1950s onwards),

refined their theories of biological autonomy and developed their heuristics in anadvanced epistemological program (Bocchi and Ceruti 1981; Piaget 1967b). The sec-

ond group can be found in the School of Santiago founded by Humberto Maturana

and Francisco Varela, well-known creators of autopoietic biology. As pointed out in

other works, their characterization of biological autonomy can be considered a critical

development of the pioneers’, which implied a conceptual transformation, i.e., the

dismissal of the concept of “self-organization” and the introduction of the notion of

“autopoiesis” (see Damiano 2009). The third group, which derived directly from the

School of Santiago, is enactive cognitive science founded by Varela in the last years

of his collaboration with Maturana.18 Its basic conceptual framework is a general

theory of autonomous systems (Varela 1979) that creatively integrates early self-orga-

nizational production with autopoiesis. Its application to cognitive phenomena can be

16 In fact Stengers (1985a) proposes the thesis of a double introduction of the notion of self-organization in

twentieth century science. Accordingly: (1) the first introduction was due to organicistic embryology, whose

formulation of the notion (in particular in its Weissian version) was inherited by Prigogine and his group;

(2) the second introduction of the concept of self-organization was due to the BCL, whose formulation (in

particular in its Foersterian version) was inherited by Atlan.

17 These relations of filiation are not always admitted by the researchers belonging to these research

groups. For example, the School of Santiago (in particular Maturana) denied or minimized the influence of the pioneer groups’ productions on its theory of biological autonomy, although this influence is difficult to

underestimate at many levels. Autopoietic biology exhibits very strong convergences, both theoretical and

heuristic, with the pioneers’ production, and the contacts of its authors with the pioneers, their literature

and Piaget’s literature are well-known, as well as acknowledged by Maturana and Varela. Cf. Ceruti (1989),

Dupuy et al. (1985), Stengers (1985a), and Varela (1979).

18 On enactive cognitive science cf., e.g., Thompson (2007) and Thompson and Varela (2001).

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 279

easily recognized as an expression of the theoretical and heuristic orientations of the

pioneer groups.19

Taking this image of the evolution of the early science of self-organization as back-

ground, this article considers the stream of research from the pioneer lines to Varelian

enactive cognitive science as the “tradition of self-organization”—the provider of thedouble legitimization of biological emergentism mentioned earlier.

In the following pages this article sketches this legitimating solution in two steps:

Sect. 3 follows the development of its theoretical axis until it intersects the episte-

mological axis via the notion of co-emergence; Sect. 4 proposes an overview of the

epistemological axis, and highlights the results of this dual strategy of legitimization

of biological emergentism.

3 Life as co-emergence. The evolution of the descriptive pattern

of organizational closure

The emergentist orientation of the pioneer groups, implicit in their common hypoth-

esis about the nature of the biological domain, becomes explicit if we decompose it

into three main theses.

(1) The biological level rests on the physico-chemical level, but is qualitatively dif-

ferent from it.

(2) The specific characteristic of biological systems, autonomy, is not found in their

physico-chemical components taken separately, but in the living whole in which

these components are supposed to be dynamically connected.

(3) Autonomy depends on the organization of the physico-chemical components

of living things, that is, the functional relations that join these components into

unitary and active structures given by the organisms.

These theses determine the pioneers’ theoretical production. They set two conditions

to open a categorical access specific to the biological domain: (a) to structure a level of

description that is not focused on the physico-chemical components of living systems,

but on their organizational correlation; (b) to model this organization in a way that

explains how it can generate autonomy as a global property (i.e. a property belonging

to the level of the global unit, and not to the level of the physico-chemical compo-

nents). These conditions tie a proper modelization of the biological domain to a specific

solution to the theoretical problem of emergence: providing an organizational expla-

nation of the emergent character of biological autonomy. In other words: determining

what kind of organizational scheme (what kind of organizational relations between

physico-chemical elements) can produce biological autonomy as a property of the

whole.

This was one of the primary modelization problems faced by the different lines of

the tradition of self-organization, which developed the same theoretical solution—a

common descriptive pattern, implemented in a multiplicity of different models. Thecore of this theoretical solution consists in a circular organizational scheme, which,

19 I refer not only to Varelian work in cognitive science, but also to that of his ex-collaborators, such as

Thompson (2007).

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280 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

in its minimal shape, makes of the production of biological autonomy a process of

mutual specification between the living wholes and their parts—a process better con-

ceptualized by a scion of the notion of emergence, namely, co-emergence.

The development of the tradition of self-organization can be conceived as a pro-

gressive refinement of this kind of modelization, and can be broken up into three mainphases:

(a) The production of the pioneer theories of biological self-organization, with the

first pictures of the circular living organization;

(b) the Piagetian synthesis of the first self-organizational theories of the living, asso-

ciated to the introduction of the notion of “closure”—a conceptualization of the

living organizational circularity today known as “organizational closure;”

(c) the critical revision of the early theories of biological self-organization by

Maturana and Varela, which led to a definition of the living based on the notionof autopoiesis—better: “autopoietic network,” conceivable as a re-conceptuali-

zation of the Piagetian notion of closure.

In the next three subsections I will rapidly sketch this evolution. More precisely,

I will focus on some of the main contributions belonging to the above-mentioned three

phases: (1) Weiss’ model of the “hierarchical organized system,” 20 (2) Piaget’s notion

of “closure,” and (3) Maturana and Varela’s concept of “autopoietic organization.” My

goal is to highlight the development of the theoretical axis of the self-organizational

legitimization of biological emergentism, showing the progressive improvements that

led it to converge with the epistemological axis. As I will try to show, this evolutionproduced the clarification of the concept of autonomy and the refinement of the under-

lying picture of a circular organization, but also the complexification of the thesis that

life, conceived as the emergence of autonomy, relies on a process of co-specifica-

tion–co-emergence. In its most complex form—the most interesting for a biological

emergentism looking for a theoretical solution able to address the epistemological

dimension of the issue of emergence—this thesis affirms more or less the following.

Life is a dynamic complex of co-specifying levels (whole and parts, organization and

structure, unit and environment…) which co-evolves with an observer –or, better: a

community of observers. In short: Life co-emerges with its observers (see Sects. 4 and5 of this paper).21

3.1 The model of the “hierarchical organized system”

The basic shape of the self-organizational solution to the theoretical problem of emer-

gence can be found in the work of Paul Weiss, a member of the pioneer groups of

embryologists. His investigations dealt with one of the most evident expressions of

biological autonomy—and a very important topic in embryology: self-stabilization

20 In French: “système hiérarchique organisé” (Weiss 1974b).

21 Here the notion “co-evolution” means generically “dynamical coupling,” and its use does not intend to

touch the issue of biological evolution.

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 281

behaviors.22 On the basis of experimental research, Weiss described self-stabilization

behaviors as endogenous variations of the internal dynamics of organisms which take

place in reaction to external perturbations and tend to compensate for their destabi-

lizing effects. He highlighted that exogenous pressures, producing local alteration in

the living’s internal processes, do not activate any specific biological control center.Rather, they trigger a series of correlated modifications in the dynamics of the compo-

nents which, as long as the destabilization is lower than the system’s stability threshold,

lead to compensations. This remark led Weiss to make the hypothesis that in biologi-

cal systems reaction to perturbations is a “collective phenomenon”, and oriented him

towards an innovative methodological option. Weiss rejected the mainstream analyt-

ical approach to the study of biological stability, which, because it supposes the inde-

pendence of components, requires focus on their individual properties and processes.

The idea of the collective character of stabilizing behaviors prompts to develop an

organizational approach, whose focus is not single physico-chemical components, butthe functional correlations that are supposed to dynamically integrate them into living

units. According to this new approach, Weiss acknowledged that in order to address the

problem of stability one must identify an organizational scheme able to support bio-

logical stabilizing behaviors. Weiss’ solution—which was borrowed from some of the

seminal works of the founders of organicist embryology—consisted in the hypothesis

of a circular organization. He conceptualized it as a “closed network,” in which every

element is functionally correlated to another in such a way that any local deviation

entails a compensative reaction distributed on all the interdependent correlations.

Around this basic scheme Weiss elaborated a general model of biological systems,coherent with emergentist logic. It is the model of the “hierarchical organized system,”

which can be expressed in three main theses. (1) The circular scheme of organization,

by connecting the components in a network of functional co-dependencies, stratifies

the biological systems in two qualitatively different levels: (i) the level of the parts,

exhibiting highly variable behaviors; (ii) the level of organizational correlation of the

parts, i.e., the whole, which is strongly invariant and capable of conservative behav-

iors. (2) The two levels are linked with a circular causal interaction: A deviation of one

or several parts from the standard network dynamics triggers a conservative reaction

of the whole, which compensates the deviation through interrelated variations in the

parts’ processes. (3) The organization of biological systems is hierarchical: The whole,

through the organizational constraints structuring it, reduces the degrees of freedom

of its components, integrating them into a global network dynamics and regulating

their behaviors in case of deviation.

This was the notion of biological systems that Weiss linked to the theoretical idea

of a “self-organizing system:” a totality which defines by itself its internal dynam-

ics, by imposing it on its components, and which stabilizes itself in reaction to local

perturbations by modifying the processes of the components.

The main contributions of this model can be sorted according to the following three

categories: autonomy, organization, co-emergence.

22 The primary references of this section are Weiss (1974a,b,c). A more detailed treatment of the Weissian

modelization of self-stabilization behaviors is provided in Bich and Damiano (2008) and Damiano (2009).

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282 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

3.1.1 Autonomy

Intending to explain biological autonomy as the stability of the whole, Weiss redefines

autonomy as global dynamical self-determination, which includes self-stabilization.

In consequence he identifies living systems as self-organizing systems, that is, systemsthat define and regulate their own dynamics.

3.1.2 Circular organization of the living

Weiss explains the emergent character of autonomy with the hypothesis of organiza-

tional circularity—a closed network of functional relations. The general idea is that

these circular links, by reducing the degrees of freedom of the components, inhibit the

expression of some of their properties and simultaneously lead to the expression of

global properties, such as self-determination.

3.1.3 Life as a process of co-emergence

Weiss’s hypothesis of circular organization implies the co-emergence of parts and

whole. His explanation of autonomy as an emergent character relies on the idea that,

while the parts constitute the whole, the whole transforms the parts. In this sense,

the emergence of the whole is, at the same time, the emergence of its parts, which

are endowed with properties co-defined by the whole—that is, by their being corre-

lated in a whole. This co-specification between parts, according to Weiss’s model, iswhat explains biological self-stabilization. In fact, it is what allows the emergence,

in biological systems, of global patterns of compensation in the presence of local

perturbations.

3.2 The notion of “closure”

Further evolution of the Weissian self-organizational solution to the theoretical prob-

lem of biological emergence came from Jean Piaget, one of the first to conceive epis-

temology as a “self-application of science.” His work of re-elaboration of the early

theories of biological self-organization contributed significantly to the development

of the scientific research on biological autonomy. Piaget’s synthesis had the merit of

coining an innovative notion, which is still at the core of scientific conceptualization

of biological self-organization: “closure,” or, more frequently in the current literature,

“organizational closure.”23 This concept is proposed in Biologie et Connaissance as

complementary to the idea of “thermodynamical openness” of living systems, and

was introduced by Piaget to explain the property of self-determination, conceived in

Weissian terms. With the concept of closure Piaget reformed the Weissian scheme of

the circular organization of the living by attributing it a dynamical character. The ideawas to describe the correlation of the physico-chemical components of a living system

23 The primary reference is Piaget (1967a, in particular §11.3). For a detailed account of Piagetian closure

see Ceruti (1989), and of the organizational closure see Varela (1979).

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 283

as a concatenation of operations that produce these very components by synthesis

and destruction. Piaget conceived this as a dynamical chain in which each operation

triggers and integrates at least one other, and thus generates a global self-determined

dynamics. The notion of closure pictures this as a cyclical process which, as long as

it receives matter and energy exogenously, is able to regenerate itself.This modelization of biological metabolism led Piaget to take three steps beyond

Weiss. They can be described as follows.

3.2.1 Autonomy

While intending to explain biological autonomy as self-determination of the whole,

Piaget redefines autonomy as the property of self-production, which includes self-

determination and self-stabilization. Accordingly, he re-thinks the living, qua self-

organizational systems, as self-producing systems. The idea is of systems thatproduce themselves by determining and regulating their internal dynamics, that is, the

autonomous and permanent production of their own physico-chemical components.

This significantly reconceptualizes Weiss’s notion of living wholes—“conservative

totalities.” In Piagetian view living systems do not only maintain their identity, but

they also generate it as systems of production of their own components. This advance-

ment implies an interesting theoretical characterization of living beings, as systems

whose global identity persists while all their components change.


This Piagetian modelization improves in two ways upon Weiss’s idea of the circular

organization of the living. The notion of closure is not limited to introducing a new

vision of the reticular concatenation of relations of production of components. It also

brings about an important specification of the idea of the biological organization: the

thesis that organization is the only dimension of living systems that persists. This is

one of the major implications of the idea of closure: The chain of operations, while

continuously transforming the components of living systems, regenerates the func-

tional relations of production between them, and, in doing so, also regenerates the

chain itself. Piaget formalizes this aspect of the idea of closure—i.e. the idea that the

organization is the invariant of the living dynamics—by distinguishing the notions

of organization and structure (see Piaget 1967a, §11.1; Ceruti 1989, Chap. 3). In

Piaget’s theory of the living, (1) organization is the relational frame of living systems,

i.e., the invariant set of relations that integrates the components into the biological unit

(i.e., the closure), while (2) structure is the concrete set of all the parts of the living

system and their relations, i.e., the particular and transient materialization of a living

unit, which changes at every instant of its self-producing dynamics.


This conceptual elaboration constitutes an extension of the thesis according to which

life is a process of co-emergence. Grounded in the idea of closure, Piaget’s formal-

ization of the notions of organization and structure distinguishes two co-dependent

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284 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

dimensions of the living. In fact, the relational frame (the organization) cannot exist

without a concrete and transient realization into specific elements and their specific

operational relations (a structure), and, conversely, there cannot be a concrete unit

of elements in flux (a structure) without a relational frame able to integrate them

in a permanent global unit (the organization). One implies the other—its realizationrequires the realization of the other. Thus, the Piagetian notion of closure does not

only propose the idea that the self-productive dynamics of living systems implies the

permanent co-emergence of parts and whole. It also characterizes this dynamics as

the permanent co-emergence of organization and structure. In this way Piaget clari-

fies Weiss’s explanation of living stabilization. He characterizes it as the conservation

of the invariance of the organization through structural variations, that is, through

the activation and realization of different patterns of self-production that compensate

external destabilizations.

3.3 The concept of “autopoietic organization”

The distinction between organization and structure played a crucial role in the develop-

ment of autopoietic biology, although it is not clear whether and to what extent Piaget

directly influenced Maturana and Varela.24 At the basis of the autopoietic theory of

the living there is an idea first put forward by Piaget: the identity of living systems

(the identity that they produce and keep through structural changes) is their organi-

zation. The School of Santiago developed this insight, and gave it a formulation that

fully expresses its theoretical potential: The organization, conceived as the relationalunity of the parts, is the invariant of biological dynamics both at the ontogenetic and

phylogenetic levels. This relational unity is what is maintained in the permanent flux

of physico-chemical components. This unity is what remains unchanged during onto-

genetic transformations that can at time render a living being unrecognisable from one

observation to the next. This relational unity is also transmitted through reproduction.

It is the living feature that remains unchanged generation after generation, and further-

more the feature shared by all the living. Thus to define this organization corresponds

to providing a general definition of the living.

This definitional project was the main goal of autopoietic biology—a theoreticalgoal which implied the rejection of the term ‘self-organization’. Maturana and Varela

refused this notion, which suggests that a living system can change its organization.

They wanted to define the specific organization of living systems with a term that could

avoid this misleading interpretation, and chose ‘autopoiesis’—that is, self-production.

They tried to define the autopoietic organization at the level of the minimal cellular

system. The result can be recognized as a refinement of the Piagetian notion of closure,

contained in the definition of ‘autopoietic organization’.

[Autopoietic organization is] (…) a network of processes of production (trans-

formation and destruction) of components that produces the components which:

24 The primary references of this section are Maturana and Varela (1980, 1987). A more detailed treatment

of autopoietic definition of life is provided in Bich and Damiano (2007), Damiano (2009, Chaps. 3 and 4),

and Damiano and Luisi (2007).

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 285

(i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and

realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) consti-

tute (…) a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by

specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network. (Maturana

and Varela 1980, p. 79)

This notion does not simply describe a cycle of productive operations involving the

components, as does the Piagetian concept of closure. It also conceptualizes the pro-

cess of production of the living body. It formalizes not only the dynamical, but also

the topological autonomy of living systems: their capability to specify by themselves

their borders, by generating from within a boundary that distinguishes the internal

environment from the external one. The notion of autopoietic organization thus led

Maturana and Varela to take three steps beyond Piaget.

3.3.1 Autonomy

Biological autonomy, as autopoiesis, is a form of self-production that includes not

only self-determination and self-stabilization, but also self-distinction from the envi-

ronment. Livings systems, conceived as autopoietic units, distinguish themselves from

self-organizing systems (as previously defined in the literature) by the triple form of

autonomy contained in the concept of autopoiesis.


The innovative aspect of Maturana and Varela’s notion of circular organization is that

refining the closure sketched by Piaget, it is able to conceptualize a form of self-pro-

duction which amounts to self-individuation, that is, self-differentiation from a back-

ground. With this conceptualization, the School of Santiago succeeds in modeling the

capability of self-specification particular to living systems, which, by permanent pro-

duction of their borders, while specifying themselves, specify also their environmental

context.


Autopoietic biology extends the thesis of co-emergence. According to its definition

of living systems, the co-emergence of parts and whole coincides not only with the

co-emergence of structure and organization, but also with the co-emergence of the

autopoietic unit and its environment —a double simultaneous emergence which lasts

as long as the autopoietic system itself.

Co-emergence is the best notion to define the dynamical interaction between an

autopoietic system and its environment, which Maturana and Varela called “structural

coupling”.25 It is a symmetric relation of reciprocal perturbations and compensationswhich implies the correlated emergence, in the living system and its environment, of

compatible self-determined patterns of self-production. The two systems are connected

25 “Structural coupling” is also sometimes referred as “co-evolution”.

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286 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

through a relationship of radical interdependence resulting not from a direct action of

one system on the other, but from the coordination of their forms of autonomy—their

respective processes of self-production.

The description of this form of dynamical coordination (structural coupling) is the

point where the theoretical axis of legitimation of biological emergentism meets theepistemological axis. In fact, here autopoietic biology becomes cognitive biology.

4 Cognition as co-emergence: toward an heuristics of participation

For Maturana and Varela the autopoietic unit co-emerging with its environment is not

a “trivial object” (Foerster 1985).26 It is a sensible and reactive structure, which does

not passively undergo environmental pressures. It perceives exogenous perturbations

selectively, depending on the specificity of its internal structure. It reacts to them by

generating endogenous patterns of equilibration consistent with its structure and its

history of coupling to the environment. This kind of system, while producing its own

identity, generates internal operational meanings and associates them in a stable way

to external events perceived as perturbations. It produces meanings expressed in terms

of endogenous dynamical schemes of compensation. These schemes are patterns of

self-production whose activation appears, from a point of view external to the autopoi-

etic unit, as actions directed toward its conservation—e.g., the absorption of a sugar

molecule; the capture of a photon; the overcoming of an obstacle during movement in

the environment...

This idea induced Maturana and Varela to attribute a cognitive activity to autopoi-etic units—that is, first of all, to minimal cellular units. Generally this is considered

the most innovative (and most questionable) theoretical step of autopoietic biology.

Basically it radicalizes theoretical developments already present in early research on

self-organization.

I refer to the pioneers of self-organization’s contributions to the science of cogni-

tion, which are so heterodox that they are often ignored in the official history of this

discipline. These pioneers strongly criticized the “computationalist” (or “classic”)

approach to cognitive science from the beginning. They condemned as distorting the

very basis of computationalism, that is, the transfer of the digital computer theoreti-cal scheme from the domain of engineering to that of natural cognition. The danger

the pioneers denounced was the elimination, from the domain of the inquiry, of the

property that distinguishes living systems from artifacts: the formers’ ability to define

their organization by themselves, without intervention by engineers. According to the

pioneers, this approach gives a misleading image of cognitive phenomena, as it pic-

tures living cognition as an activity of problem solving framed and imposed by an

external designer. This leads cognitive science to neglect that living cognition is about

solving the basic and “intrinsic” problem of biological organisms: maintaining their

organization through interactions with a changing environment.

26 The primary references for the part of this section dedicated to the view of cognition developed by

the pioneers of self-organization and by autopoietic biology are: Atlan (1983), Ceruti (1989), Dupuy et al.

(1985), Foerster (1981), Maturana and Varela (1980, 1987), Stengers (1985a), and Telfener and Casadio

(2003).

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 287

Transforming this criticism into a viable approach to cognitive phenomena is the

aim that was at the origin of the cybernetic line of inquiry in early research on

self-organization. Basically, its program was to re-introduce organizational autonomy

in the scientific exploration of natural cognitive systems. More concretely: To propose

a model which, instead of underpinning natural cognition in an input-output com-putational device, grounds it in a plausible mechanism of the biological dynamics of

“organization of itself.” The development of this program, by the BCL group and some

neoconnectionist derivations, opposed to the paradigm of the digital computer the new

model of the biological computer : the idea of a cognitive system that is grounded in

a circular organization (an ‘organizational closure’) and is able to “organize itself”

(‘self-organize’) in co-evolution with its environment. From a gnoseological point of

view, this theoretical shift away from the “orthodoxy of the PC” was extreme—verging

on heresy. The model of self-organizing systems requires conceiving contact with the

environment as interference (not as reception of exogenous information), the cognitiveprocess as self-regulation (not as symbolic computation), its result as the construction

of meanings for perceived environmental events (not their representation), the valid-

ity of knowledge as viability or pertinence in a domain (and not correspondence to

reality). The first explorers conceived it as the capacity to support operational efficacy

in the system’s environmental niche, or, more generally, in the domain defined by the

problem that the system has to solve.

This “autonomist” view of living cognition is what the School of Santiago refined

in the autopoietic model, which was created to compete with the “paradigm of the

PC”. Once one accepts to ground the idea of cognition at the level of the cell (thatis, once one accepts the radical version of the idea of cognitive biology), then the

descriptive power of the autopoietic model is enhanced. Unlike the model of the

digital computer , the model of the autopoietic unit is grounded in cellular biology

and defines a plausible mechanism for generating the dynamics of the cell. At the

level of the minimal biological cognition, it can appear as a convincing alternative

to the classical model of cognitive science. Moreover, it can appear as an alternative

which, through its strong biological bases, promises a relevant gnoseological gain: to

overcome the Cartesian dualism inherited by classical cognitive science.

By equating cognition and autopoiesis at the level of the cell, Maturana and Varela’s

cognitive biology locates at the roots of the evolutionary tree the post-classical idea of

an “embodied mind”—a mind arising from the materiality of the body (Johnson 1987;

Varela et al. 1991; Clark 1997; Thompson 2007). From the most basic level of the

biological domain, the autopoietic theory links cognitive experience to the process of

production which gives rise to the body. By doing this, it opens a pathway to overcome

the classical gnoseological dualism at all the levels generated by biological evolution.

The post-Cartesian message that this theory provides—a thesis which constitutes one

of the theoretical bases of the “embodied cognitive science” (Clark 1999)—is that from

the lowest biological levels to the anthropo-social level, cognition relies on having a

body endowed with a determined structure and embedded in a specific environment.

Such a radical interpretation of the autonomist cognitive biology produced a double

connection between autopoietic biology and the pioneer research on self-organization.

Developing this extreme interpretation, the School of Santiago brought rigor not only

to the theoretical, but also to the heuristics insights of the early research on self-

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 289

scientific constructions can converge with local and non-exhaustive manifestations of

the entities explored.28

This constructivist style of knowledge does not rest on acknowledging a structural

subjective alteration in scientific descriptions that can not be eliminated. It rests on

a stronger constructivist thesis, according to which the subjective contribution is a positive and constitutive ingredient of the scientific description of nature: an essen-

tial creative activity, without which reality can not manifest itself with the form of

defined objects of research. That is how these researchers elaborated a heuristics of

negotiation: if the access to reality consists in its subjective construction, the only way

to keep reference to the entity explored is by allowing it to orient the process of its

scientific reification. In other words: to frame a symmetric relation of knowledge, that

is, a relation of co-specification—co-emergence.

The pioneers of research on self-organization dismissed the regulative classical

view, according to which observer and reality are two pre-defined entities, essentiallyimmune from any reciprocal influence. In the perspective of the heuristic of dialog,

the subject and object of scientific exploration are strongly interdependent—co-emer-

gent—polarities, reciprocally structuring and re-structuring themselves through the

evolution of the knowledge relation. The idea is that of a dynamics of scientific explo-

ration where subjective categories specify reality as an object of research, and reality,

in turn, exerts on these categories a certain specification. The latter was conceptu-

alized by the first explorers of self-organization as the resistance to the application

of subjective categories, through which reality specifies their descriptive possibilities

and limits. It indicates where these categories succeed—that is, the domain in whichthey support operational efficiency—and where, on the contrary, new categories are

required to build plausible objects of research. This way, instead of being a neu-

tral contact between two pre-defined entities, the knowledge relation is a permanent

co-transformation, which produces an ever growing multiplicity of coupled subjective

and objective configurations—co-emergent descriptive categories and defined objects

of research.

In this new space of intelligibility—defined by the co-specification, and not by

the opposition, of subject and object—the problem of ensuring the scientific value of

emergentism, in spite of the condemnation of the latter by the classical principle of

objectivity, finds a solution. In this new heuristic context the dependence of emergen-

tist descriptions of nature on the scientific observer is not a problem in itself, as every

scientific description has the epistemological status of a subjective construction and

the issue of the validity of scientific knowledge can not be framed in the old terms

of absence of subjective contaminations. According to the scientific epistemology of

dialog, the issue has to be reframed in terms of the pertinence of scientific reifications

of reality, that is, the operational efficacy they offer to science in the domain where

they have to be applied. In consequence, emergentist descriptions can have scientific

validity and, like any other scientific production, have to demonstrate it through the

effects of their application.

28 As argued elsewhere (Damiano 2009), the heuristics developed by the pioneers of self-organization is

a form of the so-called “heuristics of complexity.” Cf. Bocchi and Ceruti (1985) and Stengers (1985b).

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290 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

This approach to the epistemological legitimization of emergentism can be ascribed

also to Maturana and Varela, whose scientific production appears as one of the best

expression of the pioneers’ style of dialog.

Autopoietic literature, since the beginning, has offered a strong—extreme—inter-

pretation of this heuristics and, in particular, of its most post-classical ideal: to realizean explicit construction of the objects explored. In autopoietic production scientific

observers of life (sometimes as generic observers, and sometimes as Maturana and

Varela in person) are always present. They describe their operations of setting up, test-

ing, and adjusting the descriptive scenarios they use. Moreover, they always show the

non-exhaustive character of their perspectives, displaying openings, blind points, and

voids. Whoever has explored early production on self-organization will meet again

in the autopoietic literature the heuristic figure of the “interlocutor”—Paul Weiss’s

scientist who “operates cuts;” Gordon Pask’s observer who “makes conversation with

networks,” “jumping” from one theoretical framework to another; Ilya Prigogine andIsabelle Stengers’s descriptor who “negotiates” on the border between discovery and

invention; Jean Piaget’s “scientific creator.” The School of Santiago also adopts this

kind of heuristic figure, but in a more thorough way. Observers presenting the the-

ory of autopoiesis do not simply propose multiple sketches of living systems. They

couple their plural characterization of life with a second-order characterization: the

description of the dialogical process of description—i.e., a procedure of scientific

characterization always theorized, but often not exploited by the first explorers of

self-organization). Rather than simply exploring living systems in a plural way, pre-

sentations of the theory of autopoiesis deal with an evolving relationship of knowledgebetween observer and observed, and with the descriptive possibilities that arise from

this evolution. The focus is on the dialog between the observer and the observed,

which structures a multiple access to life—a multiple way to build life as an object of

research.

The fundamental paradigm of our interaction with an autonomous system is a

conversation, and its unsatisfactory results breaches of understanding. (Varela

1979, p. xii)

It is through this dialogic description of life that the School of Santiago produceswhat may be the most complete expression of the pioneers’ heuristics. Following the

branches of the evolutionary “trees of knowledge,” the theory crosses the biological

level of nature and reaches the anthropological, where it characterizes humans, and

among them scientific observers, as second-order autopoietic systems.

(…) The phenomenology of autopoietic systems generates observers (…).

(Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 122)

This way, autopoietic cognitive biology not only includes the scientific observers in

the class of the systems it deals with (i.e., the class of autopoietic systems). This

theory also describes its own scientific creators (i.e., Maturana and Varela) as well as

their scientific production (the theory itself) with the descriptive framework it applies

to its objects (i.e., autopoietic systems) and their cognitive productions. This way, it

defines by itself its own epistemological status, which is one it attributes to all cogni-

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Synthese (2012) 185:273–294 291

tive productions: The status of subjective constructions whose validity is pertinence or

viability—the capability to support operational efficacy in their domain of application.

The result of this application of autopoietic theory to itself can be put schematically

as follows: Life as an emergent phenomenon (theoretically defined by the School of

Santiago as co-emergence of parts and whole, structure and organization, unit andenvironment , subject and object ) is not a reality in itself, nor an arbitrary subjective

creation. Rather, it is a complex of various levels of observation that co-emerge and

co-evolve with a descriptor—that is to say, which derive from negotiations between

an observer (or better: a community of observers) and the living.

No description of an absolute reality is possible. (Maturana and Varela 1980,

p. 121)

The epistemological space in which the theory of autopoiesis situates its emergentist

definition of life is the one framed for scientific knowledge by the pioneers of self-organization: the space of dialog, which Varela once described as the epistemological

space of participation.

The successor to objectivism is not subjectivism, by way of negation, but rather

the full appreciation of participation, which is a move beyond either of them

(…). (Varela 1979, p. 276)

In this space the notion of emergence, with its discussed dependence on the observer,

does not appear as a concept condemned to non scientificity, but as an appropriate

expression for the science theorized and implemented by the tradition of self-organi-zation.29 A science that aims at producing the convergence between manifestations of

reality and its scientific reifications, knowing it is facing a reality that is not available

for description without the subjective activity of construction. A science that tries to

build plausible objectual referents negotiated with the reality explored and proposed

to the scientific community through shared modalities of their scientific construction.

A science that replaces external objects with accesses to reality which can be more

or less profitable, stable, shared. A science that operates in a region of intelligibility

where the classical conceptual dualities of objective/subective, truth/error, reality/irre-

ality, discovery/invention do not function in opposition, but rather through a relationof strict interdependence which verges to convergence.

5 Conclusion: the double proposal of the tradition of self-organization

This article offers for debate the solution to the issue of emergence put forward by the

tradition of self-organization to defend its emergentist conception of life. The interest

of this solution is that it is dual. It consists in a legitimization of biological emergen-

tism that allows scientific rationality to face coherently the two aspects (theoretical

and epistemological) of the issue of emergence.To solve the theoretical problem of providing a plausible model of life as emergence,

the tradition of self-organization attributed to living systems a circular organization,

29 Here ‘appropriate’ means epistemologically coherent, and not pertinent or viable.

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292 Synthese (2012) 185:273–294

which, by linking together the physico-chemical components, limits their degrees of

freedom, inhibits some of their individual properties and generates global proper-

ties. One of the most advanced conceptualization defines this circular organization as

an autopoietic network , which defines a dynamical mechanism able to generate the

basic living dynamics—the endogenously controlled process of the biological body’sproduction.

To solve the epistemological problem of warranting the scientific value of emergen-

tist descriptions of life, the tradition of self-organization developed a non-objectivist

heuristics, which expresses, at the level of scientific epistemology, a conception of nat-

ural cognition grounded in the emergentist description of living systems given by this

tradition. This heuristics, coherent with some of the orientations of nascent embodied

cognitive science, excludes the possibility for scientific knowledge to access to objec-

tive descriptions of reality, but does not condemn science to arbitrary subjectivism. It

acknowledges the active action of the observers in the definition of their objects of research, and it proposes conceiving scientific descriptions as subjective constructions

that can converge with manifestations of nature. Basically, this thesis claims that, while

scientific research has to renounce describing a reality in itself, it can aspire to build

pertinent objectual referents for nature, i.e. models that allow scientific rationality to

efficiently interact with reality within the domain of their application. In accordance

with this heuristics, the problem of the validity of emergentist descriptions of nature

is not that dependence on the observer bounds them to non-scientificity. Instead, it

becomes the problem of establishing if and to what extent reality produces a judgment

of pertinence for these subjective constructions, that is, if and to what extent they offerto the observer operational efficacy in the domains he explores.30

The coupling of these two solutions outlines the proposal of the tradition of self-

organization to the current biological emergentism. To summarize: an emergentist

modelization of life which, giving rise to a theory of cognition, produces a scientific

heuristics which defines the epistemological status of this modelization (i.e., co-con-

struction), its possible epistemological legitimacy (i.e., pertinence or viability, that

is, operational efficacy in a domain) as well as a procedure for the achievement of

this legitimacy (i.e., permanent exposure to the judgment of reality and permanent

theoretical evolution based on this evaluation).

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