[Fis] Current remarks/Info Synthesis?

[Paul Suni]

Dear Pedro,

Thank you for starting this wonderful thread! I think we’re maybe on the same page, but I want to defend AP. When I found AP 25 years ago, it literally changed my life. My background in theoretical physics and semiconductor technology conflicted completely with my background in the transformational practices of humanistic/existential psychology and my intellectual engagement with the organismic psychological tradition.

I deeply appreciate your challenge of AP and it reminds us that AP is not a biological theory. As you know, Maturana even originally called his field of research “ experimental epistemology” rather than biology. Later, following their paper “ Autopoiesis and Cognition” Maturana and Varela published their totallly revolutionary book “ Tree of Knowledge,” which had the beautiful subtitle, “ The Biological Roots of Human Understanding.” In my biased view of AP, I regard it as a scientifially languaged conceptual bridge between knowing and being.

Having said that, I imagine that AP could possibly respond to your critique on AP’s terms  by continuing to reject the tyranny of reductive  information and reframing its notion of languaging in the contexts of apoptosis, the one component system and introjection of genetic material. I believe that apoptosis, the one component system and the introjection of DNA could probably be handled in AP as consensual coordinations of coordinations (languaging) in service of the conservation of autopoiesis and cognition. There is not enough space here to go into it.

 In my view, languaging i.e. consensual coordinations of coordinations ought to be regarded as information, if the notion of information is to eventually become applicable to human sentience. However, your subsequent remarks (today) on a new approach to information already seem to point in that integrative direction, and my answer to your question, “ we would need…what?” is that we should strive for a new notion of information that handles the tense dynamical relations between the component and collective. This can be expressed mathematically.

Based on your challenge, it is clear that AP may need careful rehabilitation, but it should help us to develop new conceptions of information that make value real. In AP value comes from conservation, but this conservation requires problem solving, which should be regarded as a matter of resolving tensions (according to Gilbert Simondon’s critique of information).

Cheers,
Paul 

P.S. My AI basically says that the above response to you is lousy. It doesn’t understand that there is a consensual coordination of coordinations going on here. I hope that you’ll take a more tolerant view of my response to you than AI does.

> On Dec 21, 2025, at 10:42 AM, Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
> 
> It is my impression that there is a vast swath of biological (& social) phenomena the conceptualization of which demands a new approach to information --tentatively, a new synthesis. Let me show a few potential guidelines.
> 
> -- When the best known cellular signaling system is approached, i.e., the E. coli set of component-systems (1 CS, 2CS, 3CS) plus transporters, channels, receptor-channels, sigma factors, etc., what we contemplate is a vast exploratory system of the environment, so that an "information flow" based on specific molecular recognition events grants the advancement of a life cycle continuously adapted to the changing environment.
> 
> -- When we do a similar exercise with the cells of a multicellular, we find several dozen of signaling pathways, each one of a much larger complexity, that have been acting during the different phases of the life cycle of that cell, and particularly along its developmental & tissular differentiation trajectory. Now, the "information flow" intercepted by the single cell is caught within what was called a "bauplan", further participating in a microscopic problem-solving of the whole functions & niche adaptations of the multicell organism. 
> 
> -- When advanced nervous systems appear, a quasi-instantaneous information flow and a coupled locomotion & action system provide a new way to stay in the world, which culminates (in some important aspects) in the human adaptation to a social niche. Now the information flow contains language, emotional contents, facial & bodily expressions, plus all the previous ecological demands. The human life cycle takes place amidst a "sociotype" of acquaintances to which most of the information flow belongs or is addressed to. It is in this framework that new ways of communication may propel social complexity, though stifling at the same time the adaptive propensities inherent in human life cycles.  Just a glance on the Anthropogenesis special issue to appear quite soon can be revealing. 
> 
> What McLuhan predicated on the media of his time (and the history of) was based on a thin and pretty abstracted conception of the media impact on our individual nervous systems (not his fault, but the state of science in his time). Without diminishing his legate, we need to encounter him from the other side of the "breach" (reminding C.P. Snow's gap between literary intellectuals -humanities- and natural scientists), now equipped with a far richer understanding on the information phenomena in the biological & the social. Rather then looking for elegant, ambitious all-comprehensive names we would need... what?
> 
> All the best,
> --Pedro
> 
> El 19/12/2025 a las 17:14, Mark Johnson escribió:
>> Dear Gordana, all,
>> 
>> The comparison of autopoiesis with Darwin is very interesting. Like Maturana, Darwin provided a scientific narrative which had explanatory power but whose predictive power is largely untestable. There's a whole contorted series of scientific developments which have ensued since, with genomics and neo-Darwinism leading the charge. The likes of Denis Noble (and Torday) have been challenging all of this, of course.
>> 
>> In the light of this, wouldn't it be equally possible to say "Darwinism was never meant to explain cell communication, or epigenetic inheritance, or to predict the effect of microgravity on PTHrP - it was an explanation at a higher level. It is not a causal explanation, but a constraint on the unity of any particular organism." But are we not just playing with words here? What isn't a constraint on the unity of an organism?!
>> 
>> If we were to look at something slightly different, why not examine Friston Free Energy? I'm not an advocate of FEP, but it at least does seem to be furnished with empirical examples that correlate with simulated models (I made a simulation the other day - chat is really good at this these days - Free Energy Principle: Evolution & Organismic Agency <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://markwilliamjohnson.github.io/epicoh/FEP.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Qb2Aia8dIGosrRcBARsQjQF_8zptefw-6jT5Vzg963ZqA5aSiuvQcGwBAwuJr3HRn92qWfCAa_Givk9pC32sQqE$>). But on deeper inspection of those models, new questions emerge about all those Bayesian calculations, the abstractness of it all - but at least there's something empirical there (The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? | Nature Reviews Neuroscience <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2787__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Qb2Aia8dIGosrRcBARsQjQF_8zptefw-6jT5Vzg963ZqA5aSiuvQcGwBAwuJr3HRn92qWfCAa_Givk9pllVzxis$>)
>> 
>> I think the real point is that we have a choice as to whether we attach ourselves to explanatory principles and conduct our scientific discourse on the basis of that attachment (which, to be frank, is what cults do), or we insist on the turn to nature and question to what extent our explanatory narratives are unsound. 
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> 
>> Mark
>> 
>> On Fri, 19 Dec 2025 at 10:37, Gordana Dodig Crnkovic <dodig at chalmers.se <mailto:dodig at chalmers.se>> wrote:
>>> Dear Mark, dear all,
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think the comparison with the periodic table sets rather different expectations than autopoiesis was ever meant to address.
>>> 
>>> Autopoiesis is not comparable to the periodic table.
>>> 
>>> If anything, it is closer in spirit to Darwin’s theory of evolution.
>>> 
>>> Darwin’s framework was extraordinarily powerful, yet radically incomplete at the time it was proposed.
>>> 
>>> Much of what we now take to be central to evolutionary theory, such as genetics, population dynamics, molecular mechanisms,
>>> 
>>> basal cognition, etc. was unavailable to him.
>>> 
>>> Over time, evolutionary theory was extended, revised, and enriched,
>>> 
>>> and its continued capacity to generate new developments is a sign of its strength.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> This development is clearly visible in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis that expands 
>>> the gene-centric Modern Synthesis by integrating development (evo-devo), 
>>> phenotypic plasticity, epigenetic inheritance, and niche construction.
>>> 
>>> It treats organisms as active participants in evolution, shaping their environments and affecting evolution
>>> through developmental and organizational processes, rather than viewing genes as the only drivers.
>>> 
>>> This did not replace Darwinian evolution. It deepened and operationalized it.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> I see autopoiesis in a similar way. It is not a finished theory, and many of its aspects require further development.
>>> 
>>> For example, Maturana was famously opposed to assigning an essential role to information, 
>>> whereas today it seems obvious that informational processes are central.
>>> 
>>> Likewise, classical formulations of autopoiesis focus primarily on the autopoietic system itself, the living agent,
>>> giving comparatively little attention to the environment and the interactive processes that couple the two.
>>> 
>>> We are gradually learning how important those interactions are.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> But this reflects the character of an open-ended, generative theory, one that continues to inspire refinements, 
>>> improvements, and integration with other approaches.
>>> 
>>> To my mind, what ultimately counts is whether the ongoing development of autopoietic thinking 
>>> leads to genuinely new and deep biological insights.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> Best regards,
>>> 
>>> Gordana
>>> 
>>> -
> 
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