Humanity lies groaning, half crushed under the weight of its own progress. They do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on our refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.
(i) We can describe physical autopoietic machines, and also manipulate them, as parts of a larger system that defines the independent events which perturb them. Thus we can view these perturbing independent events as inputs, and the changes of the machine that compensate these perturbations as outputs. To do this, however, amounts to treating an autopoietic machine as an allopoietic one, and to recognise that if the independent perturbing events are regular in their nature and occurrence, an autopoietic machine can in fact, be integrated into a larger system as a component allopoietic machine, without any alteration in its autopoietic organisation.
(ii) We can analyse a physical autopoietic machine in its physical parts, and treat all its partial homeostatic and regulatory mechanisms as allopoietic machines (sub-machines) by defining their input and output surfaces. Accordingly, these sub-machines are not necessarily components of an autopoietic machine because the relations that define such a machine need not be those that they generate through the input-output relations that define them.
(i) Autopoietic machines are autonomous; that is, they subordinate all changes to the maintenance of their own organisation, independently of how profoundly they may otherwise be transformed in the process.
(ii) Autopoietic machines have individuality; that is, by keeping their organisation as an invariant through its continuous production they actively maintain an identity which is independent of their interactions with an observer. Allopoietic machines have an identity that depends on the observer and is not determined through their operation.
(iii) Autopoietic machines are unities because, and only because, of their specific autopoietic organisation: their operations specify their own boundaries in the processes of self-production.
(iv)Autopoietic machines do not have inputs or outputs. They can be pertubated by independent events and undergo internal structural changes which compensate these perturbations. If the perturbations are repeated, the machine may undergo repeated series of internal changes which may or may not be identical. Whichever series of internal changes take place, however, they are always subordinated to the maintenance of the machine organisation, condition which is definatory of the autopoietic machines.
An autopoietic machine is a machine organised (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which:
(i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realise the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and
(ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realisation as such a network.
An environment with a large number of different possible states which come and go over time is a complex environment. So is an environment which is a patchwork of different conditions across space…A complex environment is in different states at different times, rather than the same state all the time, a complex environment is different in different places, rather than the same all over. Similarly a complex organism is one which has a heterogeneous structure or is heterogeneous with respect to what it does.
Perhaps the common sense view is that complexity is ORGANISED HETEROGENEITY. If organisation is understood as a property of regularity or predictability, then biological complexity would be some combination of order and disorder, homogeneity and heterogeneity.
Interpreted teleonomically, the environmental complexity thesis is a historical claim of a particular sort. It is an explanation of cognition’s existence in terms of certain of its effects…The development of thought out of the unthinking, and its maintenance, have presumably been the consequence of evolution by natural selection. When an evolutionary explanation is given which simply mentions certain alleged benefits associated with trait, rather than a detailed array of evolutionary forces, constraints and initial conditions, the explanation is often referred to as “adaptationist”. I am understanding one version of the environmental complexity thesis as an adaptationist hypothesis.
ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLEXITY THESIS:TELEOLOGY- holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, and there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists.
In general, it may be said that there are two types of final cause, which may be called intrinsic finality and extrinsic finality.
EXTRINSIC FINALITY consists of a being realising a purpose outside that being, for the utility and welfare of other beings. For instance, minerals are “designed” to be used by plants that are in turn “designed” to be used by animals – and similarly humanity serves some ultimate good beyond itself.
INTRINSIC FINALITY consists of a being realising a purpose directed toward the perfection of its own nature. In essence, it is what is “good for” a being. Just as physical masses obey universal gravitational tendencies, which did not evolve, but are simply a cosmic “given”, so life is intended to behave in certain ways so as to preserve itself from death, disease, and pain.
Cognition, in short, is incomplete until discharged in act; and although it is true that the later mental development, which attains its maximum through the vast hypertrophied cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast amount of theoretical activity over and above that which is immediately ministerial to practice, yet the earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the active nature asserts its right to the end.
