[FRIAM] causation / evolution

[Prof David West]

If I remember correctly, the last time I attended "the mother church," a
discussion about causation was a thread in a larger discussion about
evolution. Later reflection on that discussion led me to revisit the
work of Maturana and Varela (autopoeisis and structural coupling). 
Later, in response to West's quasi-tantrum "Truth" discussion on this
list, I found myself returning to the same source. I am going to present
a two-day workshop on the design of complex systems (as opposed to the
design of complicated systems, like software, which is mere engineering)
and, once again, found myself consulting the Chilean biologists.

So I am curious as to whether or not others on the list have found the
work of Maturana and Varela of interest in understanding complex
systems? Does anyone else see connections to past and present
(causation, systems, evolution) FRIAM discussions? Am I wandering in the
deep woods again without a competent guide?

A brief excerpt of comments by students of M&V is included below,
perhaps to trigger memories, perhaps to plant seeds.

dave west
   

Maturana-the-biologist was unhappy with enumerating features of living
systems to define 'life', and wanted to capture the invariant feature of
living systems around which natural selection operates. He wanted to do
this in a way that retained the autonomy of living systems as a central
feature, and hence without recourse to referential concepts like
'purpose' or 'function'. 

Systems are structure determined. That is, anything a system does at any
moment in time is determined by its structure - its component bits and
pieces, and the relationships between them. Maturana and Varela are at
pains to take account of the perspective of the observer when talking of
systems and how they behave in relation to their environment. The
behaviour of a system is something ascribed to it by someone observing
it in interaction with its environment. Hence behaviour is not something
that is 'in' a system, and to refer to how a system relates to its
environment whilst trying to understand it as an autonomous entity
violates that very notion of autonomy. This is why all of the mechanics
of the process of Autopoiesis as described by Maturana and Varela are
kept strictly within the bounds of the Autopoietic system. This strict
requirement is enforced via concepts like 'operational closure' and
'organizational closure.'

The consequences of this perspective are not always obvious. A good
example however, is the immune system's ability to distinguish between
self and non-self. Varela has been pointing out for some time that this
is an observed behaviour, produced by the operational dynamics of the
immune system in its environment, and that it is wrong to look for some
discriminatory recognition mechanism within the immune system. Attention
should be focused on the internal dynamics of the immune system, and how
this is affected by and affects its environment of operation in such a
way as to give rise to the behaviour observed. A similar approach is
taken to the nervous system.

Autopoietic theory of course recognises that systems exist within
environments, relate to them, and at low enough material level are
entirely open to them.