Robert Rosen

Si la mécanique quantique nous enseigne que l’Univers est « encore plus bizarre que nous pouvons le supposer », cet enseignement relève d’un savoir de type épistémologique obtenu au terme d’une réflexion critique au sujet des conditions de possibilité de notre connaissance : la mécanique quantique, en révélant que toute expérience scientifique forme une totalité contextualisée (une plénitude) au sein de laquelle aucune entité (l’observateur, l’objet étudié, la machine, etc.) n’est jamais complètement isolable, nous permet de mieux cerner les contraintes inhérentes à notre manière de connaître. Nous atteignons là une sorte de savoir transcendantal au sujet de la structure du processus de modélisation lui-même, et notamment au sujet des conditions d’encodage et de formalisation. Le principe d’incertitude n’est qu’une autre manière de pointer de telles conditions qui limitent la connaissance, sans pour autant nous apprendre quoi que ce soit de plus au sujet de la Nature elle-même !

Our goal in the paper is to offer both an eulogy and a critique of
the machine metaphor as a theoretical resource for understanding organic systems. We begin by presenting an abbreviated history of the machine metaphor,
pointing out how it was instrumental in the development of modern biology, as it provided a conceptual basis for an analytical program in the sciences of life. Then we deal with what exactly makes the machine metaphor such a successful resource, pointing to what organisms and machines in fact
share in common – based on the relational approaches advanced by Varela and Rosen, we suggest that both are ʻconstrained systemsʼ. In the third part, we present an alternative way of conceptualizing living systems, bringing now
the disanalogies with machines to the foreground. Reviewing the independent work of different authors, we show that there is distinct organicist theoretical camp, where the organism is generally understood as an autonomous system.
Finally, we observe that many authors from that camp are now reclaiming Kant’s treatment of organisms in the Critique of Judgment, in particular the concept of «natural purpose» – but those authors do that with a markedly anti-Kantian goal: to naturalize teleology. Our conclusion is that the view of
organism as an autonomous system gives us the key to a naturalistic understanding that can finally overcome the mechanical view of nature so characteristic of modern thought. The machine metaphor, despite all its undeniable contributions to the advancement of biological research, shows itself ultimately insufficient for a complex view of the phenomena of life – and discarding it doesn’t need to mean any concession to vitalism: on the contrary, it may be exactly what we need to invigorate a robustly materialist project.

The fracture in the emerging discipline of biosemiotics when the code biologist Marcello Barbieri claimed that Peircian biosemiotics is not genuine science raises anew the question: What is science? When it comes to radically new approaches in science, there is no simple answer to this question, because if successful, these new approaches change what is understood to be science. This is what Galileo, Darwin and Einstein did to science, and with quantum theory, opposing interpretations are not merely about what theory is right, but what is real science. Peirce's work, as he acknowledged, is really a continuation of efforts of Schelling to challenge the heritage of Newtonian science for the very good reason that the deep assumptions of Newtonian science had made sentient life, human consciousness and free will unintelligible, the condition for there being science. Pointing out the need for such a revolution in science has not succeeded as a defence of Peircian biosemiotics, however. In this paper, I will defend the scientific credentials of Peircian biosemiotics by relating it to the theoretical biology of the bio-mathematician, Robert Rosen. Rosen's relational biology, focusing on anticipatory systems and giving a place to final causes, should also be seen as a rigorous development of the Schellingian project to conceive nature in such a way that the emergence of sentient life, mind and science are intelligible. Rosen has made a very strong case for the characterization of his ideas as a real advance not only in science, but in how science should be understood, and I will argue that it is possible to provide a strong defence of Peircian biosemiotics as science through Rosen's defence of relational biology. In the process, I will show how biosemiotics can and should become a crucial component of anticipatory systems theory.

Weblink to full paper: https://tinyurl.com/yc9r6kys 

Abstract:

Ever since Einstein’s arrival at the forefront of science, mainstream physicists have tended to think of nature as a giant 4-dimensional spacetime continuum in which all of eternity exists all at once in one timeless block universe. Accordingly, much to the dismay of more process-minded researchers, the experience of an ongoing present moment is typically branded as illusory.
      Mainstream physics is having a hard time, however, providing a well-founded defense of this alleged illusoriness of time. This is because physics, as an empirical science, is itself utterly dependent on experience to begin with. Moreover, if nature were indeed purely physical -- as contemporary mainstream physics wants us to believe -- it is quite difficult to see how it could ever be able to give rise to something so explicitly non-physical like conscious experience. On top of this, the argument of time's illusoriness becomes even more doubtful in view of the extraordinary level of sophistication that would be required for our conscious experience to achieve such an utterly convincing, but -- physically speaking -- pointless illusion.
      It is because of problems like these that process thought has persistently objected to the “eternalism” of mainstream physics. Recently physicist Lee Smolin has brought up some other major arguments against this timeless picture in his controversial 2013 book Time Reborn. Although he passionately argues that physics should take an entirely different direction, he admits that he has no readily available roadmap to success.
      Fortunately, however, over the last 15 years or so, a neo- Whiteheadian, biocentric way of doing foundational physics, namely Reg Cahill's process physics, has made its appearance. According to process physics, nature is a routine-driven or habit-based process, rather than a changeless world whose observable phenomena are governed by eternally fixed and highly deterministic physical laws. Although, in the currently prevailing view, the universe is seen as a law-abiding natural world whose entire history -- past, present, and future -- must have been "called forth by law" in one go at the big bang, process physics suggests that the universe has come into actuality from an initially undifferentiated, orderless background of dispositional activity patterns which was driven by a habit-establishing, iterative update routine.
      In the process physics model, all such habit-establishing activity patterns are "mutually informative" as they are actively making a meaningful difference to (i.e., in-forming) each other. This mutual informativeness among activity patterns will thus actively give shape to ongoing structure formation within nature as a whole, thereby renewing it through stochastic (hence, novelty-infusing) update iterations. In this way, the process of nature starts to evolve from its initial featurelessness to then branch out to higher and higher levels of complexity, thus eventually even leading to neural network-like structure formation on the universe’s supra-galactic level of organization.
      Because of this noise-driven branching behavior, the natural universe can be thought of as habit-bound with a potential for creative novelty and open-ended evolution. Furthermore, three-dimensionality, gravitational and relativistic effects, nonlocality, and near-classical behavior are spontaneously emergent within the process physics model. Also, the models constantly renewing activity patterns bring along an inherent present moment effect, thereby reintroducing time in terms of the system’s ongoing change as it goes through its cyclic iterations. As a final point, subjectivity -- in the form of mutual informativeness -- is a naturally evolving, innate feature, not a coincidental, later-arriving side-effect.

This paper examines three exemplary theories of living organization with respect to their common feature of defining life in terms of metabolic closure: autopoiesis, (M, R) systems, and chemoton theory. Metabolic closure is broadly understood to denote the property of organized chemical systems that each component necessary for the maintenance of the system is produced from within the system itself, except for an input of energy. It is argued that two of the theories considered—autopoiesis and (M, R) systems—participate in a hylomorphist pattern of thinking which separates the “form” of the living system from its “matter.” The analysis and critique of hylomorphism found in the work of the philosopher Gilbert Simondon is then applied to these two theories, and on the basis of this critique it is argued that the chemoton model offers a superior theory of minimal life which overcomes many of the problems associated with the other two. Throughout, the relationship between hylomorphism and the understanding of living things as machines is explored. The paper concludes by considering how hylomorphism as a background ontology for theories of life fundamentally influences the way life is defined.

Comme nous le rappelle Christian Fierens, la méthode de la raison pratique commence selon Kant du côté de la forme (et du formel) par le principe de la loi morale, pour déterminer ensuite le concept, ce qui est Bien, et terminer enfin par « la mobilisation de la sensibilité vers la loi morale (le respect) » (Fierens, 2000, p. 116). Ce cheminement jamais achevé de la raison pure pratique, que la méthode psychanalytique est invitée à reprendre, entraîne le praticien dans un mouvement perpétuel : « il doit se refaire et ce n’est que dans la répétition qu’il devient effectif » (ibid.).
Une première manière d’exprimer la thèse défendue à travers ma contribution serait celle-ci : en agissant moralement, nous interagissons nécessairement avec un réel que notre action transforme, et cette transformation implique l’imprédicativité et la généricité. Ce que vous pouvez comprendre de l’ « imprédicativité » (cette notion sera précisée plus loin) c’est que nous ne parviendrons jamais à enfermer cette transformation réelle dans un discours pouvant présumer tout savoir. Quant à la « généricité » (notion sur laquelle je reviendrai également plus loin), elle signifie que nous n’en finirons jamais d’apprendre grâce à cette transformation réelle.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the epistemological justification of a proposal initially made by the biomathematician Robert Rosen in 1958. In this theoretical proposal, Rosen suggests using the mathematical concept of “category” and the correlative concept of “natural equivalence” in mathematical modeling applied to living beings. Our questions are the following: According to Rosen, to what extent does the mathematical notion of category give access to more “natural” formalisms in the modeling of living beings? Is the so-called “naturalness” of some kinds of equivalences (which the mathematical notion of category makes it possible to generalize and to put at the forefront) analogous to the naturalness of living systems? Rosen appears to answer “yes” and to ground this transfer of the concept of “natural equivalence” in biology on such an analogy. But this hypothesis, although fertile, remains debatable.
Finally, this paper makes a brief account of the later evolution of Rosen’s arguments about this topic. In particular, it sheds light on the new role played by the notion of “category” in his more recent objections to the computational models that have pervaded almost every domain of biology since the 1990s.

Since this paper (extended abstract) is rejected by anonymous reviewers, this is its final version. I apologize for its rough and unfinished form, but this author cannot continue this work. If you are curious what Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory and David Deutsch’s Universal Constructor looks like, read it anyway. Feel free to use it in parts or entirety for your paper if you are in the mood to do that. Not a single word on the topic will be added by Aleksandar Malečić. Have a nice day.

Living organisms persist as functional wholes far beyond the individual lifetimes of their functional components. They achieve this by taking antecedent action, continuously fabricating themselves in anticipation of a future nonfunctional and deleterious internal state. This property of self-fabrication is the most basic expression of biological anticipation and of life itself. Self-fabricating systems must be closed to efficient causation, and in this chapter, I identify the classes of efficient biochemical causes in the cell and show how they are organized in a hierarchical cycle, the hallmark of a system closed to efficient causation. Broadly speaking, the three classes of efficient causes are the enzyme catalysts of covalent metabolic chemistry, the intracellular milieu that drives the supramolecular processes of chaperone-assisted folding and self-assembly of polypeptides and nucleic acids into functional catalysts and transporters, and the membrane transporters that maintain the intracellular milieu, in particular its electrolyte composition.

This text was submitted to a journal. As it’s rejected and considering that it was very exhausting (a no-man’s land) to write it, no new submission will happen soon. There is actually a relatively similar book chapter written by the same author, hence maybe this text also contains some quality. Enjoy it or ignore it.
Prologue
Once upon a time some people wondered what self-awareness is made of… And they lived happily ever after.
Introduction
The title of this article is inspired, among other things also elaborated here, by the idea of the theory of everything and quantum mechanics and its interpretations (Penrose, 2004a). It is interesting that, as scientists went down the scale into investigations of smaller and smaller objects, they encountered mathematical formulas, wave functions, and waves-particles instead of tiny balls or other geometrical shapes of matter. If reality at its most fundamental (size-wise) is uncertain (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) and prone to interpretations, perhaps an attempt to tell the story of everything is just as legit as searching for the theory of everything. One way or another, that “everything” should, in order to deserve its name, somehow either implicitly or explicitly include consciousness. Bearing in mind what Heisenberg and Pauli (Zeilinger, 1996) had to say about reality, this approach seems to be a natural continuation of their work. Unfortunately, it’s too late to ask them (especially Pauli – “the most radical position” (Zeilinger, 1996)) for opinion.

Published in BioSystems (2016), 148, 12-21.

Co-authored with Alvaro Moreno

In this paper we address the question of minimal cognition by investigating the origin of some crucial cognitive properties from the very basic organisation of biological systems. More specifically, we propose a theoretical model of how a system can distinguish between specific features of its interaction with the environment, which is a fundamental requirement for the emergence of minimal forms of cognition. We argue that the appearance of this capacity is grounded in the molecular domain, and originates from basic mechanisms of biological regulation. In doing so, our aim is to provide a theoretical account that can also work as a possible conceptual bridge between Synthetic Biology and Artificial Intelligence. In fact, we argue, Synthetic Biology can contribute to the study of minimal cognition (and therefore to a minimal AI), by providing a privileged approach to the study of these mechanisms by means of artificial systems.

Relational biology relies heavily on the enriched understanding of causal entailment that Robert Rosen's formalisation of Aristotle's four causes has made possible, although to date efficient causes and the rehabilitation of final cause have been its main focus. Formal cause has been paid rather scant attention, but, as this paper demonstrates, is crucial to our understanding of many types of processes, not necessarily biological. The graph-theoretic relational diagram of a mapping has played a key role in relational biology, and the first part of the paper is devoted to developing an explicit representation of formal cause in the diagram and how it acts in combination with efficient cause to form a mapping. I then use these representations to show how Von Neumann's universal constructor can be cast into a relational diagram in a way that avoids the logical paradox that Rosen detected in his own representation of the constructor in terms of sets and mappings. One aspect that was absent from both Von Neumann's and Rosen's treatments was the necessity of a code to translate the description (the formal cause) of the automaton to be constructed into the construction process itself. A formal definition of codes in general, and organic codes in particular, allows the relational diagram to be extended so as to capture this translation of formal cause into process. The extended relational diagram is used to exemplify causal entailment in a diverse range of processes, such as enzyme action, construction of automata, communication through the Morse code, and ribosomal polypeptide synthesis through the genetic code.

Dans ce qui suit, nous préciserons le contexte d’émergence de la notion de « modèle » dans le champ scientifique, avant d’évaluer les limites du pouvoir explicatif (prédictif) des modèles sensés rendre compte des phénomènes naturels. Pour mener cette réflexion critique nous suivrons les propositions de Robert Rosen (1934-1998), un biologiste théoricien américain peu connu, qui s’était assigné pour tâche de modéliser la vie. Plus précisément, il s’agissait pour lui de déterminer les conditions auxquelles la vie en elle-même pourrait éventuellement être modélisée, et donc expliquée.

Dans le domaine des phénomènes ayant trait au vivant, la « création » est un fait admis par tous, et notamment les biologistes. La diversité manifeste des formes de vie, et plus généralement la singularité de toute forme de vie, suffit à donner un sens à la « création » telle qu’elle sera abordée dans notre propos. Cependant, rendre compte de ce fait au moyen d’un système théorique explicatif pose un problème au biologiste. Ce problème intéresse le philosophe. Et même le théologien.

La mécanique quantique est une théorie physique contemporaine réputée pour ses défis au sens commun et ses paradoxes. Depuis bientôt un siècle, plusieurs interprétations de la théorie ont été proposées par les physiciens et les philosophes, offrant des images quantiques du monde, ou des ontologies, radicalement différentes. L’existence d’un hasard fondamental, ou d’une multitude de mondes en-dehors du nôtre, dépend ainsi de l’interprétation adoptée. Après avoir discuté de la définition de l’interprétation d’une théorie physique, ce livre présente trois principales interprétations quantiques, empiriquement équivalentes : l’interprétation dite orthodoxe, l’interprétation de Bohm, et l’interprétation des mondes multiples. Des textes de David Z. Albert et Rivka Galchen, ainsi que de David N. Mermin, présentent le concept de non-localité et invitent à une analyse de l’argument d’Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen et du théorème de Bell.

We will here defend the idea that the present situation of biology calls for a paradigm change. Several facts, particularly those concerning the structure-function relationships, invite us to recognize the limits of experimental biology and its reductionist approach. After clarifying the limits of the modern and structural approach in biology, owing to the dominant Newtonian paradigm, we will follow the main thesis of the biologist and mathematician Robert Rosen (1934-1998). We will thus turn towards relational biology, a theoretical approach which considers living systems as naturally formed by a network of functional components and interacting among themselves to form networks. Relational biology, as this author conceives it, supposes that we become familiar with the notions of open systems, complexity, modelling relation and (M, R)-systems. We will introduce these notions and focus our attention on the Metabolism-Repair systems which formalize Rosen's answer to the question " what is life ? " .

Since this paper (extended abstract) is rejected by anonymous reviewers, this is its final version. I apologize for its rough and unfinished form, but this author cannot continue this work. If you are curious what Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory and David Deutsch’s Universal Constructor looks like, read it anyway. Feel free to use it in parts or entirety for your paper if you are in the mood to do that. Not a single word on the topic will be added by Aleksandar Malečić. Have a nice day.

Ce chapitre propose un apercu de la tradition theorique et philosophique qui, au cours des deux derniers siecles, a mis la circularite au centre de l'analyse des phenomenes biologiques. Selon cette tradition, les organismes realisent un regime causal circulaire dans la mesure ou leur existence depend des effets de leur propre activite : les organismes biologiques s'autodeterminent. A son tour, l'autodetermination est le fondement d'un certain nombre de proprietes et dimensions biologiques, telles que l'individuation, la teleologie, la normativite ou encore la fonctionnalite. Nous montrons comment cette idee generale a fait l'objet d'une theorisation qui a pris, selon les cas, la forme d'une conceptualisation, d'une modelisation ou les deux a fois. Nous analysons les differences principales entre les differentes contributions, en soulignant leurs qualites et faiblesses. Enfin, nous concluons en evoquant certains developpements contemporains de cett...

For official full paper, see: https://tinyurl.com/yc9r6kys (date of publication: October 18, 2017).

Process Physics, Time and Consciousness: Nature as an internally meaningful, habit-establishing process.
Chapter 3. Doing physics in a box

In his provocative and stimulating book Time Reborn (2013), Lee Smolin argued that contemporary mainstream physics is still very much based on the Newtonian paradigm: " My argument starts with a simple observation: the success of scientific theories from Newton to the present day is based on their use of a particular framework of explanation invented by Newton. This framework views nature as consisting of nothing but particles with timeless properties whose motions and interactions are determined by timeless laws. The properties of the particles, such as their masses and electric charges, never change, and neither do the laws that act on them. This framework is ideally suited to describe small parts of the universe, but it falls apart when we attempt to apply it to the universe as a whole. All the major theories of physics are about parts of the universe – a radio, a ball in flight, a biological cell, the Earth, a galaxy. When we describe a part of the universe we leave ourselves and our measuring tools outside the system. We leave out our role in selecting or preparing the system we study. We leave out the references that serve to establish where the system is. Most crucially for our concern with the nature of time, we leave out the clocks by which we measure change in the system. " (Smolin 2013, xxiii) When ignoring the limitations of the Newtonian paradigm, we may all too easily forget that the exclusion of clocks, measuring rods and ourselves is in fact an act of idealizing abstraction. By failing to question the actual validity of this abstraction, we may soon become convinced that our simple equations for our local isolated systems can be extrapolated to the global universe without any trouble whatsoever. And that's in fact exactly what happened after Galileo. That is, building from Galileo's proportional relationships between distance and time, Newton was able to add force and mass into the mix, and in so doing developed his more advanced Newtonian equations of motion. Like this, the equations dealing with the gravitation of ordinary objects on earth could be unified with Kepler's laws of planetary motion, thus leading to the famous 'clockwork universe' worldview in which everything is determined from beginning to end. This even motivated Pierre-Simon Laplace to claim that it should in principle be possible to calculate any future state for all of nature if only we were

(For video presentation, please click:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKNcR3aIPJA ):

Introduction:

This talk aims to make plausible that the process of nature is routine-driven or habit-based, rather than governed by fixed and eternal physical laws. Counter to the currently prevailing view of a law-abiding natural world, Reg Cahill’s Process Physics suggests that the universe in its earliest stage comes into actuality from an initially undifferentiated and structureless kind of pre-space which by virtue of its universal interconnectedness entails a cyclic, iterative update process. In this way, nature forms a self-organizing, habit-establishing, and internally meaningful whole in which all affects and makes a difference to all else. This in stark contrast to mainstream physics which conceives of nature as if it were ultimately no more than a collection of law-governed, mechanistically interacting physical contents.

In summary, the primordial and initially undifferentiated universe can be thought of as driven by a cyclic, iterative update process. Like this, nature’s initially patternless, primordial processuality starts to make a difference to random activity patterns within itself, thereby spontaneously evolving emergent structure formation. In this way, from its earliest beginnings, nature forms an internally meaningful totality with bio-analogous, habit-establishing evolution, rather than the system of law-governed (and, so it is hoped, entirely algorithmically specifiable) physical contents of mainstream physics.

All this can be concluded on the basis of Process Physics which models nature as one giant organismic process of seamlessly interconnected activity patterns. But although we all know about time in consciousness from first-hand experience, Reg Cahill’s Process Physics is most likely still a complete unknown to most of us. So, therefore, this video presentation will try to give you a somewhat condensed preliminary introduction.

Mainstream physics usually tends to interpret the process of measurement as the extraction of empirical data from nature by an external, ‘nature-representing’ observation system. Eventually, empirically adequate theoretical representations of nature should thus be attainable. However, information is not just a representa¬tion-enabling signal or the mere syntactical content of nature-representing empirical data, but rather an all-pervading process of mutual informativeness in which everything affects, and actively gives shape to, everything else, and vice versa. In this way, all within-nature activity patterns make a meaningful difference to all other activity patterns and, eventually, to their greater embedding 'omni-system' which is nature as a whole. According to Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi, the massive culmination of such mutual informativeness can facilitate higher-order consciousness. Also, Reginald Cahill’s Process Physics provides a way of modelling nature in terms of this mutual informativeness.

More Info: Full paper to be published in "Science and Mind in Contemporary Process Thought" Jakub Dziadkowiec and Lukasz Lamza. (Eds.) Cambridge (UK): Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
Paper first presented at the 9th International Whitehead Conference, in Cracow, Poland, September 9-12, 2013.

La question qui nous occupera aujourd’hui n’est en soi que le reflet d’une idée reçue de longue date. En effet, elle renvoie à une conviction répandue tant chez le commun des mortels que dans les milieux scientifiques eux-mêmes, à savoir que la physique joue un rôle fondamental et dominant dans le domaine de la connaissance de la nature. La question serait-elle donc naïve pour autant ? Ne ferons-nous que commenter, avec une insistance dépourvue d’originalité, un état de fait parfaitement établi ?
Je ne suivrai pas ici cette voie royale, mais choisirai plutôt la difficulté en me laissant guider par mon « instinct » philosophique qui me prescrit la méfiance à l’égard des vérités établies. J’opterai pour le doute et je proposerai de prendre le contre pied de l’idée reçue selon laquelle la physique serait la maîtresse de toutes les sciences.

We will here defend the idea that the present situation of biology calls for a paradigm change. Several facts, particularly those concerning the structure-function relationships, invite us to recognize the limits of experimental biology and its reductionist approach. After clarifying the limits of the modern and structural approach in biology, owing to the dominant Newtonian paradigm, we will follow the main thesis of the biologist and mathematician Robert Rosen (1934-1998). We will thus turn towards relational biology, a theoretical approach which considers living systems as naturally formed by a network of functional components and interacting among themselves to form networks. Relational biology, as this author conceives it, supposes that we become familiar with the notions of open systems, complexity, modelling relation and (M, R)-systems. We will introduce these notions and focus our attention on the Metabolism-Repair systems which formalize Rosen's answer to the question " what is life ? " .

Unraveling the specific spirit which animated some seminal works in the first half of the twentieth century could increase our understanding of the contemporary diversity of theoretical biologies and, more generally, of the biological studies which are based on theoretical models, especially as far as growth and morphogenesis are concerned. Going back to the main epistemological ideas of d’Arcy Thompson, Lotka, Woodger, Rashevsky and Rosen, this chapter follows a historical, epistemological but also comparative line. Its guiding questions are the following: to what extent can one say that there was and there still exists a diversity of mathematical biologies, but also a diversity of biophysics and theoretical biologies? In what precise terms nonetheless can we formulate the core problem that all theoretical biologies have to solve - whatever their diversity? How each of these diverse approaches leads us to conceive the nature of the complexities of life? And, how accordingly, does each one lead us to think the epistemic role of theorizing and modeling once it has assumed for itself the very nature and origin of these complexities?