The role of epigenetics is functionary and the biological study is.........
The terrestrial biological phenomenon is an energetic phenomenon which is auto-catalytic (i.e. it reproduces itself through nonlinear, biophysical and biochemical self-accelerated processes), and also autopoietic (i.e. it constantly redefines itself, supporting and reproducing itself in its interior). Biological systems are thermodynamically open, transient energetic systems, free to exchange energy and matter with the environment. Their very existence depends on an ability and capacity to make the most of a suitable (biocompatible) external energy source.
The progenitors of all biological systems were specific auto-catalytic organic molecular systems (Ageno’s lipid envelopes) which gave rise to protocells (biological evolution is the history of the integration and individualisation processes undergone by the biochemical and biophysical relationships which define a biological organism).
The protocell is a nonlinear, dynamic system that is more individualised (defined, localised) and more integrated (variable complexity in information processing and reporting) than an organic molecular system. The evolution of protocells gave rise to cells.
A cell is a reticular system of nonlinear sub-energetic/energetic biophysical processes at a phase limit between chaos and order. These processes govern the generation of integrated biochemical relationships, which in turn give rise to a reticular system of atomic/supra-atomic structures, organised in such a way as to form a structural and functional unit which is well defined and delimited by a membrane. As a whole, the cell is an energetic system which is more efficient and more productive than any of its structures or processes taken singularly. In general, a cell is an energy system governed by nonlinear biochemical and biophysical relationships, which are more stable and more integrated than those which define a protocell, whose dynamic is in turn more stable and more integrated than organic molecular systems.
Cellular energy balance is the central factor around which the entire cellular dynamic revolves: if, during the time and space of its existence, the biological system is able to achieve an adequate energy gain, then its adaptability and its phylogenetic continuity will have a good probability of fulfilling themselves, but if this energy gain is not assured, the system may be doomed to mutation or extinction1. To avoid extinction and to survive, all biological systems, from the simplest to the most complex, utilize and develop two types of closely interrelated and interdependent energetic/adaptive strategies: - one tends to adapt the system to the unconditional variations imposed by its surroundings (the force of gravity and the earth’s magnetic field, the terrestrial geo-climatic macro-system, cosmological changing relationships, geological eras, cyclic weather and climate events, etc.).
- the other tends to adapt the variables conditioned by its surroundings to the system’s need for survival (conformation of the land, underwater environments, the atmosphere, the availability of bio-compatible energy resources, etc.).
Claudio Messori • Environmental, spatial and temporal variability represents the scenario the energetic/adaptive biodynamic has to cope with. For survival purposes this means that energetic/adaptive strategies: - cannot rely on linear processes (feedback loops) of problem solving, which lack information and limit the system’s tolerance to environmental pressure, but instead must turn the solutions into problems (feed-forward) by exploiting the nonlinearity of natural processes, which is rich in information (capacity to generate interference) and in a position to guarantee the system functional plasticity and structural tolerance (the nonlinear - fractal – the turning of solutions into problems is the motor behind learning and is contextualized through it),
- cannot exist as independent facts severed from the context, but must exist as facts dependent upon the contest, since they are a part of it and of its dynamic (dependency on environmental variation induces biological variation which goes to producing ecosystems).
One of the many variables which accompany the diversification of biological systems is the different proportion between the degree of adaptive pressure exerted by the system on the environment, and the pressure exerted by the environment on the system.
Clearly, extreme environmental conditions, such as the ones on our planet more than three billion years ago, imposed rigid limitations on the formation and survival of proto-biological systems. Also because of this, the planet we inhabit today has been populated by colonies of the same category of unicellular marine organisms, (chemo-magnetic-photo-synthetic prokaryotes) for hundreds of millions of years.
After around three billion years, the level of their adaptive pressure on the environment, the evolution of forms of energy transfer, the production and exploitation of biocompatible energy, and the huge release of gaseous oxygen into the atmosphere, allowed the biological phenomenon to make a phylogenetically epochal bifurcation (the third after those of the passage from organic molecular systems to protocells, and from protocells to cells). With the Cambrian Era this bifurcation marked a decisive turning point in the history of the evolution of strategies destined to fulfil energy needs: genotypic and phenotypic diversification (cell differentiation), and with it the formation of multi-cellular organisms.
Until the Cambrian Era, biological evolution revolved around the development of biochemical and biophysical strategies, aimed at fulfilling energy requirements. From the Cambrian onwards a new solution amongst energy requirements started to sketch a second way for the biological colonisation of our Planet Earth: adaptation by a huge diversification of behavioural strategies. Every evolutionary bifurcation is marked by the availability of a surplus of expendable energy for the diversification and/or integration of processes which govern the fulfilment of energy and/or adaptive requirements.
Claudio Messori • The formation of multi-cellular organisms during the Cambrian contextualized an extraordinary passage: - from a territorial model of ecosystem organisation (whose protagonists were whole clusters of unicellular organisms distributed over one or more areas, linked by a common adaptive and bio-energetic gain) to an ecosystem organisation multi-cellular model, whose protagonists were cell colonies, specialised and joined by a common structural, functional link, defined and identified in the construction of a tissue;
- from a territorial model of the unit behaviour of whole groups of cells (where individual behaviour was prescribed by the group and described by a unanimous dynamic, such as we may observe in our own time in the synchronised movements of certain schools of fish, flocks of birds, communities of ants or termites, swarms of bees, etc.), to the tissue model, where organs and systems of organs operate in synchrony for the survival and unity of the system.
The biological unit (cell), from being a composed, integrated system delimited (membrane) by a multitude of sub-cellular structures and molecular units, became an integrated cellular ecosystem (multi-cellular organism), consisting of differentiated cells, specialised according to the role and function they must play to be a choral unit. Between the Cambrian and the lower Palaeolithic, biological diversity went through an initial upward motion and then gradually descended to a point of stillness (Jurassic). The first appearance of the human species may be dated to recent times (4 to 5 million years ago), a period characterised by a stable equilibrium which was self-regulating and in a position to respond efficiently to environmental pressure, between a biological macro-system governed by biochemical and biophysical strategies aimed at fulfilling energy requirements, and a biological macro-system governed by the diversification of behavioural strategies aimed at adaptation. With the human species an amazing new phylogenetic bifurcation was to take shape. The animal Homo is an omnivore with a particularly versatile pharyngeal tract, featuring four limbs of which only two are used for travelling, while the other two are free for manipulative functions. Its peculiar imitative and psycho-perceptual skills (perception being the prerequisite for the internal representation of external reality) make it stand apart from other animals .
The animal of the genus Homo is able to mimic ecosystem dynamics, and also to translate them into psycho-perceptual images (imaginific function), to return to imitation and so on, in a relational, homo-systemic process, which deviates from the level of a behavioural stereotype towards its completion. It deviates from the level of conditioned reactions to a level of emotional response, from an imitation of a codified level to a codification of imitation. It deviates from terms of developing adaptive strategies to that of development of over-adaptive strategies, until it deviates from the imaginific plane to the plane of symbols and meanings, which after thousands of generations of tottering bipeds made them believe they were powerful enough to enter into open competition with Nature of which they are part, and as a consequence in competition with one another.
Claudio Messori • From the late Palaeolithic (about 50,000 to 40,000 years ago) onwards, the worm of the will to power crept into the imagery of human communities, influencing for better and worse all behavioural strategies of an over-adaptive kind, which future generations would come to use in their relationship with the world.
The twentieth century was the century of major scientific revolutions, triggered by quantum mechanics (which profoundly changed what we know about matter) and of Einstein's general theory of relativity (which radically changed what we know about time and space), in addition to a growing interest in the study of nonlinear dynamic systems (which changed what we know of the dynamics of physical phenomena), resulting in the introduction of epistemological and methodological tools that revolutionised the study of the extremely small and the extremely large. Results deriving from their application and the open scenarios in the interpretation of reality to which we belong, have had a significant impact outside of their areas of membership too (high energy physics, astrophysics, mathematics), substantially affecting also the standard vision of the world (creationist and positivist), including that of biological and mental phenomena.
The fields of biology and neuroscience, quantum and quantum-relativistic models, together with the Science of Chaos (the study of nonlinear dynamical systems of a chaotic kind), suggest new proposals and pose new questions about what is meant by life, consciousness and brain function, tracing horizons unthinkable even a few decades ago. The indispensable and distinctive prerequisite for the implementation of supra-adaptive dynamics (epigenetic) of the genus Homo, is its neurological (tele-encephalic dependent) and psycho-perceptual specificity (perceiving is a more integrated function than feeling, which is more integrated than reacting, which is more integrated than mental excitability), a specificity from whose interactions with the environment, the mental fact results.
Claudio Messori • To date, the biochemistry of biological phenomena has played a central role in defining what is meant by biologically alive, without being able to truly understand the causal relation between organic and inorganic, between physical and psychical, between the inanimate and animate world of biological life. The attention reserved to biochemical relationships presents the living system as a product of a complex combination of chemical reaction between atoms, molecules, and systems of molecules, powered by a dense network of energy transfers, whose function would ensure enough fuel to operate the machine....of the living. On the contrary, if we want to find answers to our questions, we can no longer be content to consider energy as the ability of a system to perform work, since we cannot avoid considering the relationship between the energetic (charge) level, and sub-energetic (Spin) level, and the annexed biophysical processes, as the relationship which presides over the in-formation and transformation of the living, like the territory of the syntropic carrier (inducer of order and coherence) around which the dynamic of the living orbits.......... more at: Messori Claudio, "Cells, Neurons, and Qualia: The Holographic Strange Attractor Model", Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research, 2011. Online: [http://www.jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/163 ]
The terrestrial biological phenomenon is an energetic phenomenon which is auto-catalytic (i.e. it reproduces itself through nonlinear, biophysical and biochemical self-accelerated processes), and also autopoietic (i.e. it constantly redefines itself, supporting and reproducing itself in its interior). Biological systems are thermodynamically open, transient energetic systems, free to exchange energy and matter with the environment. Their very existence depends on an ability and capacity to make the most of a suitable (biocompatible) external energy source.
The progenitors of all biological systems were specific auto-catalytic organic molecular systems (Ageno’s lipid envelopes) which gave rise to protocells (biological evolution is the history of the integration and individualisation processes undergone by the biochemical and biophysical relationships which define a biological organism).
The protocell is a nonlinear, dynamic system that is more individualised (defined, localised) and more integrated (variable complexity in information processing and reporting) than an organic molecular system. The evolution of protocells gave rise to cells.
A cell is a reticular system of nonlinear sub-energetic/energetic biophysical processes at a phase limit between chaos and order. These processes govern the generation of integrated biochemical relationships, which in turn give rise to a reticular system of atomic/supra-atomic structures, organised in such a way as to form a structural and functional unit which is well defined and delimited by a membrane.
As a whole, the cell is an energetic system which is more efficient and more productive than any of its structures or processes taken singularly. In general, a cell is an energy system governed by nonlinear biochemical and biophysical relationships, which are more stable and more integrated than those which define a protocell, whose dynamic is in turn more stable and more integrated than organic molecular systems.
Cellular energy balance is the central factor around which the entire cellular dynamic revolves: if, during the time and space of its existence, the biological system is able to achieve an adequate energy gain, then its adaptability and its phylogenetic continuity will have a good probability of fulfilling themselves, but if this energy gain is not assured, the system may be doomed to mutation or extinction1.
To avoid extinction and to survive, all biological systems, from the simplest to the most complex, utilize and develop two types of closely interrelated and interdependent energetic/adaptive strategies:
- one tends to adapt the system to the unconditional variations imposed by its surroundings (the force of gravity and the earth’s magnetic field, the terrestrial geo-climatic macro-system, cosmological changing relationships, geological eras, cyclic weather and climate events, etc.).
- the other tends to adapt the variables conditioned by its surroundings to the system’s need for survival (conformation of the land, underwater environments, the atmosphere, the availability of bio-compatible energy resources, etc.).
- cannot rely on linear processes (feedback loops) of problem solving, which lack information and limit the system’s tolerance to environmental pressure, but instead must turn the solutions into problems (feed-forward) by exploiting the nonlinearity of natural processes, which is rich in information (capacity to generate interference) and in a position to guarantee the system functional plasticity and structural tolerance (the nonlinear - fractal – the turning of solutions into problems is the motor behind learning and is contextualized through it),
- cannot exist as independent facts severed from the context, but must exist as facts dependent upon the contest, since they are a part of it and of its dynamic (dependency on environmental variation induces biological variation which goes to producing ecosystems).
One of the many variables which accompany the diversification of biological systems is the different proportion between the degree of adaptive pressure exerted by the system on the environment, and the pressure exerted by the environment on the system.
Clearly, extreme environmental conditions, such as the ones on our planet more than three billion years ago, imposed rigid limitations on the formation and survival of proto-biological systems. Also because of this, the planet we inhabit today has been populated by colonies of the same category of unicellular marine organisms, (chemo-magnetic-photo-synthetic prokaryotes) for hundreds of millions of years.
After around three billion years, the level of their adaptive pressure on the environment, the evolution of forms of energy transfer, the production and exploitation of biocompatible energy, and the huge release of gaseous oxygen into the atmosphere, allowed the biological phenomenon to make a phylogenetically epochal bifurcation (the third after those of the passage from organic molecular systems to protocells, and from protocells to cells). With the Cambrian Era this bifurcation marked a decisive turning point in the history of the evolution of strategies destined to fulfil energy needs: genotypic and phenotypic diversification (cell differentiation), and with it the formation of multi-cellular organisms.
Until the Cambrian Era, biological evolution revolved around the development of biochemical and biophysical strategies, aimed at fulfilling energy requirements. From the Cambrian onwards a new solution amongst energy requirements started to sketch a second way for the biological colonisation of our Planet Earth: adaptation by a huge diversification of behavioural strategies.
Every evolutionary bifurcation is marked by the availability of a surplus of expendable energy for the diversification and/or integration of processes which govern the fulfilment of energy and/or adaptive requirements.
- from a territorial model of ecosystem organisation (whose protagonists were whole clusters of unicellular organisms distributed over one or more areas, linked by a common adaptive and bio-energetic gain) to an ecosystem organisation multi-cellular model, whose protagonists were cell colonies, specialised and joined by a common structural, functional link, defined and identified in the construction of a tissue;
- from a territorial model of the unit behaviour of whole groups of cells (where individual behaviour was prescribed by the group and described by a unanimous dynamic, such as we may observe in our own time in the synchronised movements of certain schools of fish, flocks of birds, communities of ants or termites, swarms of bees, etc.), to the tissue model, where organs and systems of organs operate in synchrony for the survival and unity of the system.
The biological unit (cell), from being a composed, integrated system delimited (membrane) by a multitude of sub-cellular structures and molecular units, became an integrated cellular ecosystem (multi-cellular organism), consisting of differentiated cells, specialised according to the role and function they must play to be a choral unit.
Between the Cambrian and the lower Palaeolithic, biological diversity went through an initial upward motion and then gradually descended to a point of stillness (Jurassic).
The first appearance of the human species may be dated to recent times (4 to 5 million years ago), a period characterised by a stable equilibrium which was self-regulating and in a position to respond efficiently to environmental pressure, between a biological macro-system governed by biochemical and biophysical strategies aimed at fulfilling energy requirements, and a biological macro-system governed by the diversification of behavioural strategies aimed at adaptation.
With the human species an amazing new phylogenetic bifurcation was to take shape.
The animal Homo is an omnivore with a particularly versatile pharyngeal tract, featuring four limbs of which only two are used for travelling, while the other two are free for manipulative functions. Its peculiar imitative and psycho-perceptual skills (perception being the prerequisite for the internal representation of external reality) make it stand apart from other animals .
The animal of the genus Homo is able to mimic ecosystem dynamics, and also to translate them into psycho-perceptual images (imaginific function), to return to imitation and so on, in a relational, homo-systemic process, which deviates from the level of a behavioural stereotype towards its completion. It deviates from the level of conditioned reactions to a level of emotional response, from an imitation of a codified level to a codification of imitation. It deviates from terms of developing adaptive strategies to that of development of over-adaptive strategies, until it deviates from the imaginific plane to the plane of symbols and meanings, which after thousands of generations of tottering bipeds made them believe they were powerful enough to enter into open competition with Nature of which they are part, and as a consequence in competition with one another.
The twentieth century was the century of major scientific revolutions, triggered by quantum mechanics (which profoundly changed what we know about matter) and of Einstein's general theory of relativity (which radically changed what we know about time and space), in addition to a growing interest in the study of nonlinear dynamic systems (which changed what we know of the dynamics of physical phenomena), resulting in the introduction of epistemological and methodological tools that revolutionised the study of the extremely small and the extremely large. Results deriving from their application and the open scenarios in the interpretation of reality to which we belong, have had a significant impact outside of their areas of membership too (high energy physics, astrophysics, mathematics), substantially affecting also the standard vision of the world (creationist and positivist), including that of biological and mental phenomena.
The fields of biology and neuroscience, quantum and quantum-relativistic models, together with the Science of Chaos (the study of nonlinear dynamical systems of a chaotic kind), suggest new proposals and pose new questions about what is meant by life, consciousness and brain function, tracing horizons unthinkable even a few decades ago.
The indispensable and distinctive prerequisite for the implementation of supra-adaptive dynamics (epigenetic) of the genus Homo, is its neurological (tele-encephalic dependent) and psycho-perceptual specificity (perceiving is a more integrated function than feeling, which is more integrated than reacting, which is more integrated than mental excitability), a specificity from whose interactions with the environment, the mental fact results.