Whitney Easton Midtern Assignment Paper
docx
keyboard_arrow_up
School
University Of Connecticut *
*We aren’t endorsed by this school
Course
2215
Subject
History
Date
Dec 6, 2023
Type
docx
Pages
3
Uploaded by whiteaston
Whitney Easton
PARP 6060-Intro to PCC
Midterm Assignment
Fall 2023
Pattern, Structure, and Process: Fritjof Capra
For this assignment, I have chosen the book The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of
Living Systems,
by Fritjof Capra. I am taking the Modern Physics course this semester with Prof.
Kerri Welch, and we were assigned several chapters of the book to read, so I wanted to
complete the book as part of this review. The contents of this book align nicely with several of
the modules we have worked on in the first half of the semester and shed further light on the
ways in which we will have to change our relationship to living systems in order to prevent
planetary and/or social collapse. I actually first read this book in 1996 in my Junior year of
College at Northeastern University in Boston. Although I loved the book, I didn’t quite grasp it as
fully as I did in this second reading.
The basic argument that Capra makes is that the mechanistic and reductionistic view of science
is dying and that in its place should rise a new paradigm in which living entities are understood
as organic systems defined by the internal and external relationships that support them, as well
as the process of creation and change that comprise them. This new paradigm that Capra
describes is based on three major deviations from the mechanistic view that define the
organistic understanding of living systems: 1. A pattern of self-organization, 2. A dissipative
structure, and 3. A self-aware process. I will explain these concepts below.
A Pattern of Self-Organization
The pattern of self-organization that Capra explains is referred to as “autopoiesis” which is a
term coined by two Chilean Scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, to refer to the
findings of their many years of research on the process of self-creation in living systems. What
Maturana and Varela found was that, unlike mechanical entities, living organisms have the
power and necessity to continually recreate themselves. The creation starts with a chemical
catalyst and goes through a process of iteration until the organic matter develops cellular
structure that can self-replicate. It is not that these authors discovered the notion of self-
replication in cells, but they showed how this process can happen in any system and it is one of
the things that separates living systems from physical systems at all levels. Autopoietic systems,
unlike a bicycle, go through a process of continual renewal of their cells. If they stop the
regeneration of their cells, they die. For Capra, an understanding of this dynamic growth is
essential in understanding why the mechanistic view of life as the reductionistic study of
components of biological systems misses the relational and process-oriented reality of living
systems. This system is a closed loop of organization, regeneration, and replication of the
internal parts of the cell.
A Dissipative Structure
In contrast, to the work of Maturana and Varela, the work done by Ilya Prigogine centered
around the open and dissipative nature of systems in regard to energy and matter. Prigogine
explored the concept of systems (both living and non-living) that exist in states of high order, far
from equilibrium, in continual exchange of matter, while dissipating energy. These systems need
a constant source of new energy and matter in, while constantly releasing energy and waste.
Biological entities are dissipative structures, because they need constant energy intake to
maintain themselves in a high level of organization and will constantly burn that energy while
releasing waste products into their environment. This makes a dissipative structure an open
system, even though the organizational pattern of the structure is closed to change and remains
the same. These entities are able to maintain themselves structurally, even though they are
adding and releasing material constantly. Dissipative structures are complex and cannot be
described through the traditional linear equations of classical thermodynamics.
A Self-Aware Process
Capra discusses cognition as the process of knowing and argues that there must be some level
of cognition in these structures when taking into consideration their tendency to maintain an
internal pattern of design and self-replication, while simultaneously using the intake and release
of external energy to maintain a highly ordered structure. This is a complicated process and
Capra sees self-awareness all the way down.
A portion of this work regarding systems theory
was taken up by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis and came to be known as, “the Gaia
hypothesis.” The authors of this theory hypothesized that the earth itself was a system that had
some level of awareness and could coordinate the various systems on Earth to maintain and
protect life. The idea that there is some level of self-awareness in all living systems flies in the
face of materialistic science that sees a firm Cartesian division between mind and matter. Capra
is arguing that all systems that go through the process of managing their own creation,
maintenance, replication, resource-use, and high-level organization, must have some level of
self-awareness or cognizance. The more complicated the biological structure the more
awareness that is needed. This awareness does not need to come from a central processing unit
such as the brain, according to Capra, but rather can be the symbiotic expression of a multi-
relational organic mind.
I enjoyed this text immensely for its lucid explanations of chaos theory, fractals, and social
structures, in addition to the aforementioned dissipative structures, change as process,
autopoiesis, self-organization, and cognition. I felt that these concepts related directly to this
course and our exploration of the various paths of wisdom that may help us to understand deep
ecology and connect to our society, our planet, and our souls before it is too late. Although the
process that was explained in the book was organic and natural, while reading this text and
writing this synopsis, I could only think of capitalism as a large, living system with an autopoietic
need to continually generate new cells and grow, a need to take in new energy sources and
excrete waste products, and a self-awareness through the “invisible hand” of the marketplace.
This made me wonder if capitalism could evolve (like other organisms) to a system that is less
destructive of its natural habitat, or (if Gaia is self-aware), is she using climate change and its
ramifications to kill the invasive predator before it takes down the whole ecosystem, thereby
returning the planet to homeostasis. Given that the book was written nearly 30 years ago, I
would like to do some more research to see if Capra addresses these questions directly and to
see how his systems theory has evolved.
Your preview ends here
Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version
- Access to all documents
- Unlimited textbook solutions
- 24/7 expert homework help