Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present some system-theoretical notions—such as constraint, closure, integration, coordination, etc.—which have recently raised a renovated interest and have undergone a deep development, especially in those branches of philosophy of biology characterized by a systemic approach. The implications of these notions for the analysis and characterization of self-maintaining organizations will be discussed with the aid of examples taken from models of minimal living systems, and some conceptual distinctions will be provided. In the last part of the paper the epistemic implications of these ideas will be presented.
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Notes
- 1.
By functional integration I mean here the degree of mutual dependence between those subsystems and processes—what I would call functional as opposed to structural components [2]—that are necessary for the functioning of a system and are identified and characterized in terms of such contribution.
- 2.
See Umerez and Mossio [22] for a brief but detailed review on the notion of constraint.
- 3.
A more detailed analysis can be found in [12].
- 4.
The idea that in those far from equilibrium systems which are capable of self-maintenance and self-production, the very existence and activity of their constituents depend on the network of processes of transformation that they realize, and they collectively promote the conditions of their own existence through their interaction with the environment.
- 5.
For each constraint C i , (at least some of) the boundary conditions required for its maintenance are determined by the immediate action of another constraint C j , whose maintenance depend in turn on C i as an immediate constraint. The system is self-maintaining because its constraints, through closure, are able to act on some dynamics in such a way that, in turn, the same dynamics contribute to maintain some of the boundary conditions that allow their existence [12, 14, 15].
- 6.
The possibility or not to formulate models of the behavior of the system that converge to an optimal (or complete) description of it.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Basque Government, Spain (Postdoctoral fellowship and research project IT 590-13) and by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain (Research project FFI2011-25665).
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Bich, L. (2016). Systems and Organizations: Theoretical Tools, Conceptual Distinctions and Epistemological Implications. In: Minati, G., Abram, M., Pessa, E. (eds) Towards a Post-Bertalanffy Systemics. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24391-7_21
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