The problem of the three faces of living systems

Abstract

How should theorists understand the living system type, especially given all the rapid, technical and intellectual advancements that biology has made? This central question for theoretical biologists is difficult to answer in part due to the heterogeneity of contemporary biological understanding. Another part of the difficulty is in circumscribing the domain of the explanandum at a sufficient level of abstraction. In this doctoral dissertation, I hypothesise that there are at least three broad and recurring patterns, corresponding to three different ways of explaining the uniqueness of the living system type. I call this the three faces of living systems, and this comprises understanding their organisation, their individuality, and their subjectivity (sensu lato). Determining the phenomenal and epistemic structure between the three faces is a problem that is critical to formulating a theoretical understanding of living systems. My principal aim is to assess the extent of dependence and connection between the three faces. I do this by exploring and analysing a set of theorists as case studies. The case studies include the work of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Thomas Pradeu, and Peter Godfrey-Smith. To analyse the epistemic relationships between the three faces, I harness Angela Potochnik’s coordinate theory about the structure of science, whilst developing a concept of patchwork theorising from the work of Karl Popper and Pradeu. With these epistemological resources, I design a method to assess the extent of epistemic interdependency between the three faces, according to the coordination of patchwork theorising.

I survey and find that there are a substantially wide range of cross-disciplinary research contexts, wherein conjectures about the organisation, individuality and subjectivity of living systems are explicitly and implicitly formed. This supports the initial hypothesis. I also conduct an extensive analysis of my cases and find a range of different instances of non-trivial epistemic interdependence between them. From these findings I formulate the argument that all three faces have some form of interdependence, mutually affecting how each facet should be understood. I call this the entanglement conjecture, and it is my contribution to the philosophical and biological discourse concerning a living systems theory. Previous research on either the organisation, individuality, or subjectivity of living systems has overemphasised the explanatory autonomy of each, and it has appeared as though the heterogeneity of biological understanding reinforces a picture of epistemic independence. This has resulted in skepticism towards the formulation of living systems theory, especially with respect to the abstraction of a general type. From the findings of my analyses, I argue that there are several instances of (non-trivial) epistemic entanglement, despite the explanatory autonomy. The thesis therefore provides an intellectual scaffold for the pursuit of a living systems theory.