“Living systems are regenerative systems” (Part 2 of 3)
Conversation between Fritjof Capra and Daniel Wahl, Feb. 2020
Daniel: “The complexity scientist and evolutionary theorist John Steward described the pattern of evolution as a process of diversification and integration of the generated diversity at higher levels of complexity, and suggests that this integration tends to happen predominantly through the emergence of new patterns of cooperation (endosymbiosis, multicellular organisms, social animals, ecosystems).
1) Would you agree that we have somewhat neglected paying attention to cooperation and symbiosis as possibly a more important factor than competition throughout the long evolutionary journey of life as a planetary process?”
Fritjof: … “I really like Steward’s way of describing evolution and the emphasis on cooperation makes total sense, because it is actually implied in the diversification. If you understand life as a network than biodiversity means higher complexity of the network — more connections. Since this living network is a network of metabolic and cognitive processes, and ecological processes, every new connection can be seen as a cooperation. So connections are cooperations and greater diversity means more cooperation, or — if the cooperation lacks of course it means breakdown.” … “nature cooperates pervasively” …
Daniel: “You once said, and I paraphrase, if you follow the rivers of the economic, social and ecological crises upstream you come to realise that they stem from the same source: a crisis of perception, a crisis of consciousness:
2) Could you explain what you mean by that and how you see the significance of Maturana& Varela’s ‘Santiago Theory of Cognition’ in this context?”
Fritjof: … “ a shift from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network, and a network of course is a pattern of relationships. In order to understand networks we need to understand patterns and relationships, and that’s what systems thinking is all about. That is why I call this new paradigm a ‘systems view of the world’. …
The Santiago Theory of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela at the University of Santiago in Chile says that the dynamics of self-organisation of any living system is essentially a cognitive process. This is a great expansion of the view of cognition as the self-organising activity of living systems …
… when we adopt this view of seeing life around us as cognitive … and therefore as intelligent, this will profoundly influence the way we deal with our environment. If the environment really were are machine than the best way to deal with it would be to control it … but if the environment is a living being, an intelligent being, then the best way to deal with it is not control, but via dialogue, cooperation and partnership. …
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Daniel: “Goethe once said “Death is life’s ingenious way to create plenty of life”. So much about understanding life and learning how we might take a healing role in Socio-Ecological-Systems as we aim to regenerate depends on how we answer two questions that you ask in ‘The Systems View of Life’
3) What is Life? … and What is Death? … and how how do they both contribute to ‘creating conditions conducive to life’?”
Fritjof: The central question that I have been pursuing for the last 30 years is the question ‘what is life’? … in modern scientific language ‘the breath of life’ is called metabolism. Lynn Margulis defines metabolism as a constant flow of energy and matter through a network of processes … which allows the organism to continually regenerate, repair and perpetuate itself. …
My synthesis of the systems view of life is essentially a bringing together of the flow aspect and the network aspect of life. The flow aspect was researched by Ilya Prigogine with his theory of dissipative structures far from equilibrium maintaining themselves through a constant flow of energy and matter. The network aspect was researched by Maturana and Varela which described the key characteristics of these networks as self-generating or self-making — they used the Greek term autopoiesis. …
Autopoietic networks continuously regenerate themselves … we can say that if you really understand the systemic nature of life in terms of autopoiesis that a living system is a regenerative system. That is the very definition of life.”
Daniel: “Life as a planetary process is a regenerative community. When you were speaking of Prigogine I was reminded of my first conversation with Jim Lovelock at Schumacher College about that first moment when he got struck by the vision of Gaia as a planetary process. At the time he was working on designing new instruments for detecting life on Mars — as a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Labs — and in the office next to his new data came in from radio-spectrometry of the atmospheric composition of all the other planets in our solar system. During his tea break he looked at the data and what struck him was that on all the other planets there is a chemical equilibrium — all the reactions that can take place have taken place — but on Earth there is a striking chemical disequilibrium that makes life possible. … he realised that the process of life itself is also what creates this disequilibrium.”
Fritjof: “Prigogine would say because the Earth is a dissipative structure and Venus and Mars are not dissipative structures.” …
… I want to come back to life and death and that beautiful quotation from Goethe that you mentioned. … when you think of living systems as constantly renewing themselves you can think of this constant regeneration as the very essence of life … apply this to a human organism: we know that we constantly renew and recycle our cells. Very rapidly in fact, the stomach lining for instance renews itself every 24 hours … if you look at it from the point of view of the cell it is a cycle of life and death. So what is life and death at one level is the very essence of life at the higher level. This is a very deep insight and I think this is what Goethe meant.”
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(Here is part one of this interview)
More on the Capra Course:
More about Fritjof Capra:
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Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.
Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures
