Week 6: Living & Non-living systems

According to "The Nature of Life" there are three criteria that a living system must have: 1) pattern of organization -or- relationships that determine essential characteristics, 2) structure or the physical embodiment of the system's pattern of organization and 3) life processes -which- are the interaction of the pattern and structure in an on-going process of activity, as imagined by the designer/creator of the given systems. In addition, one other key element is essential to defining a living system: cognition -or- perception. According to this article, the last criteria is a function of autopoiesis and is what distinguishes a living system from a non-living system.

I think of the "patterns of organization" as the subtle, energetic systems of life. Examples of these would be the energy fields that underlie the human body, including the chakras and the various layers of the auric field. Another subtle underlying energetic pattern around which humans and other living systems are organized includes the TCM meridians and points or Ayurveda's marma points. Similarly, the various functions of the bodies systems are also patterns of organization (including the nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, endocrine, reproductive, metabolic and immune systems). The actual organs of these systems is what would be the physical being and expression of the subtler patterns of organization. And of course, DNA is the most fundamental physical structure underlying embodiment. However, the energy behind DNA, which supports its physical structure, is referred to in the field of Epigenetics-the study of Epigenomes- is contained in the chemicals and switches behind the scenes that tell the different genes how to operate and when.

And, we are told that it is cognition and perception that determine whether a system is alive or not. Yet quantum physicists tell us that the basic 'stuff' the universe is made out of is a unified field of non-local energy -consciousness if you would- which when it interacts at a local point with itself, produces an expression of that interaction we experience as different things, be they a person, animal, plant or bacteria. Similarly, this interaction between the underlying pattern of this unified field, and the structure that it produces, is what is considered the activity involved in the life processes inherent in a living system's pattern of organization. However, if that same conscious unified field underlies everything in existence, perhaps distinguishing between a living versus a non-living system, is simply an exercise in semantics. More food for thought.