[Fis] Current remarks/Info Synthesis?

Mon Dec 22 05:14:34 CET 2025

Dear AP supporters: How would you incorporate this into the whole AP
picture? I'm curious:
[image: G8onWMkXsAIzdA3.jpg]
Best regards - Jason

On Sun, Dec 21, 2025 at 4:19 PM Paul Suni <paul.p.suni at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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>
> 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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