Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Hylomorphism and the Metabolic Closure Conception of Life

  • Regular Article
  • Published:
Acta Biotheoretica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper examines three exemplary theories of living organization with respect to their common feature of defining life in terms of metabolic closure: autopoiesis, (M, R) systems, and chemoton theory. Metabolic closure is broadly understood to denote the property of organized chemical systems that each component necessary for the maintenance of the system is produced from within the system itself, except for an input of energy. It is argued that two of the theories considered—autopoiesis and (M, R) systems—participate in a hylomorphist pattern of thinking which separates the “form” of the living system from its “matter.” The analysis and critique of hylomorphism found in the work of the philosopher Gilbert Simondon is then applied to these two theories, and on the basis of this critique it is argued that the chemoton model offers a superior theory of minimal life which overcomes many of the problems associated with the other two. Throughout, the relationship between hylomorphism and the understanding of living things as machines is explored. The paper concludes by considering how hylomorphism as a background ontology for theories of life fundamentally influences the way life is defined.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Cited in Cornish-Bowden et al. (2007: 840).

  2. Cf., Bedau (1996), Cleland and Chyba (2002), Chyba and McDonald (1995), Szostak et al. (2001).

  3. Among the very many authors who express this view, cf., e.g., Woese (2004), Morange (2008), Kauffman (1993), Cornish-Bowden, et al. (2007), Maturana and Varela (1980), Rosen (1991), Gánti (2003).

  4. The system-theoretic concept of “closure,” used to differentiate levels of organization in nature, has also appeared in the literature with increasing frequency, being the theme of a relatively recent international workshop. Cf. Chandler and Van de Vijver (2000).

  5. Cf., e.g., the discussion of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in Prigogine and Nicolis (1977).

  6. The distinction between information and matter, which has often been used to distinguish living from non-living systems, has rightly been recognized as being involved in a kind a modern hylomorphism (cf. Oyama 2000: 1), but the same also holds for the distinction between organization and matter as it tends to be used in fundamental theories of life.

  7. The theories of autopoiesis and (M, R) systems remain especially influential in the field of artificial life and computational approaches to minimal life (Cf., e.g., Etxeberria 2004, Letelier et al. 2003, 2006, Mossio et al. 2009, Cottam et al. 2007). They also form some of the theoretical background for recent fundamental theories emphasizing organizational closure and autonomy as fundamental biological properties (Cf., Mossio and Moreno (2010), Letelier et al. (2011), Ruiz-Mirazo and Moreno (2012)). Chemoton theory, on the other hand, is the preferred theory of minimal life in Maynard Smith and Szathmáry’s influential work on major evolutionary transitions (1995), and is also promoted in Dennett (2011, 2013).

  8. This work, which was Simondon’s main doctoral thesis, is contained in a later re-issue entitled L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information (2005), which also includes later works and which will be cited here.

  9. In a sense, Aristotle’s hylomorphism could be considered a type of substantialism since it originates in the inquiry of the Metaphysics into what constitutes “substance,” the latter being understood in a broad sense to include the essence, the substratum, and the “thisness” hic et nunc. However, Simondon’s “substantialism” is more narrowly tied to atomism and to the rejection of “form.”

  10. Cf., Barnes (2003) on the ambiguity in the concept of “form” between the form as an abstract entity or universal, and the form as a particular or concrete entity.

  11. Cf., Rea (2011), Johnston (2006), Tahko (2012).

  12. Hence, it is not enough that form and matter are distinguished in any way for a theory to be hylomorphic. Since any individual at all (and even abstract objects) can be viewed as a hylomorphic compound, this would include “trivial” instances of form where, for instance, form is an aggregate of parts or is reducible to material and/or efficient causes.

  13. This differs from Szathmáry’s (2005) distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches to minimal life, where top-down means starting from existing cells and stripping them down to a viable minimum.

  14. Cf., e.g., Metaphysics 1033b18: “That which is spoken of as form or substance is not produced, but the concrete thing which gets its name from this is produced” (Aristotle 1984).

  15. For a recent systematic criticism of the machine conception of the organism, see Nicholson (2013).

  16. “In our explanation of the organization of living systems, we shall be dealing with the relations which the actual physical components must satisfy to constitute [a living system], not with the identification of these components” (76).

  17. The passage is worth quoting in full: “To explain the movement of a falling body one resorts to properties of matter, and to laws that describe the conduct of material bodies according to these properties (kinetic and gravitational laws), while to explain the organization of a control plant one resorts to relations and laws that describe the conduct of relations. In the first case, the elements used in the explanation are bodies and their properties; in the second case, they are relations and their relations, independently of the nature of the bodies that satisfy them” (75–76).

  18. “The organization of a machine (or system) does not specify the properties of the components which realize the machine as a concrete system, it only specifies the relations which these must generate to constitute the machine or system as a unity. Therefore, the organization of a machine is independent of the properties of its components” (Maturana and Varela 1980: 77). Cf. also Maturana (1980: 48).

  19. “They subordinate all changes to the maintenance of their own organization, independently of how profoundly they may otherwise be transformed in the process” (1980: 80).

  20. Cf., Wiener (1961).

  21. “It is thus clear that the fact that autopoietic systems are homeostatic systems which have their own organization as the variable that they maintain constant, is a necessary consequence of the autopoietic organization” (1980: 80).

  22. “The establishment of an autopoietic system cannot be a gradual process; either a system is an autopoietic system or it is not…. Accordingly there are not and there cannot be intermediate systems” (1980: 94). This aspect is criticized in Collier (2000), who substitutes a dynamic concept of “cohesion” for autopoiesis because it admits of degrees and does not sacrifice interaction with the environment in the explanation of autonomy.

  23. Swenson (1992: 209) Cf., ibid., on the “tautological” character of explanation in the theory of autopoiesis.

  24. These two steps correspond to Newton’s first and second law, respectively. The third law allows for the composition of multiparticle systems from the rules governing single-particle systems.

  25. Of course, category theory is more complex than this, and Rosen’s treatment of category theory in Life Itself (1991) is arguably somewhat basic. Readers interested in looking into category theory in greater depth are referred to textbooks on the subject: Lawvere and Schanuel (1997) and Pierce (1991).

  26. This notion of “components” is distinct from “components” in the autopoietic theory, which were the same as “parts.” Here, they are to be understood like the autopoietic “processes of production,” or more generally as “relations” among parts.

  27. The formal cause is not given much explicit treatment, but it would be represented by the whole group of mappings like f in which b is embedded (if there is such a group).

  28. Rosen also writes, “throwing away the physics and keeping the underlying organization” (1991: 280).

  29. Here, as per Rosen’s suggestion, a component such as f may be regarded as a set of catalysts facilitating the transformation of chemical sets A → B. Note that Rosen’s notion of repair has nothing to do with DNA repair, and it has been suggested to call this “replacement” instead in Letelier et al. (2006: 950). The notion of replication also differs from how that word is used today in connection with DNA replication.

  30. This distinction between syntax and reference, or formalism and realization, is otherwise expressed in a later essay of Rosen’s in Essays on Life Itself (2000) in terms of the philosophical distinction between essence and existence. Whereas in science one usually starts from the existence of some natural phenomenon and tries to determine its properties (essence), with (M, R) systems we start from the essence, or the formalism, and try to either show how it exists or make it exist (256–264). This unequivocally underscores Rosen’s implicit hylomorphism, in which the essence of the individual consists in its form.

  31. This is, to some extent, an approach exhibited in Morowitz and Smith (2007), and also Gánti (1997).

  32. Letelier et al. (2003) write: “Neither Autopoietic systems nor (M, R) systems have been used to explain any experimental findings or to predict new biological phenomena in an unambiguous way. It is not surprising then that these theoretical models have been neglected by the vast majority of experimental biologists. This neglect may reflect the fact that both theories are incomplete in the fundamental aspect of how to map their theoretical concepts (structure, organization, Φ, circularity, etc.) with experimental entities” (267). A similar reservation is expressed in Soto-Andrade et al. (2011).

  33. Some prominent attempts in the twentieth century to bridge this gap—Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s work on “open systems,” Prigogine’s nonlinear thermodynamics, and René Thom’s “catastrophe theory”—are denounced by Rosen as being metaphorical (1991: 65).

  34. Cf., Leibniz (1925), §64.

  35. The crucial difference would be of course that the evolution of a chemical system would be thermodynamically irreversible and stochastic, whereas that of a purely mechanical system would be reversible and deterministic.

  36. Cf., Griesemer (2003: 185).

  37. As Szathmáry points out in his commentary, “One could argue that [a system with only the metabolism and membrane subsystems] could be regarded as an ‘even more minimal’ model for life than the chemoton” (2003: 162). If the membrane function were provided by abiotic features of the environment, moreover, we would have a purely metabolic system, which it is difficult to decide whether it would be living or not.

  38. Cf., Griesemer (2003: 173–175).

  39. The notion of “essence” here should not be rejected out of hand on the basis of non-necessary metaphysical connotations. In order for there to be an essence of life, it is enough that there should be at least one property common to all living things but absent from non-living things. Whether there is such an essence is a matter of how well-defined in nature the division is between life and non-life, and need not involve any non-naturalistic or otherworldly assumptions. Of the different accounts of essential properties, our use of the notion is closest to the explanatory account (cf. Gorman 2005; Copi 1954), which is arguably the most appropriate for natural entities such as living systems, rather than the definitional account or the more common modal account. According to this explanatory account, the essential properties of an entity are those that are most fundamental, such that they ground and explain its other distinctive properties.

  40. Cf., Morange (2008), Luisi (1998), Bedau (1996), etc. for a useful classification and critical assessment of different definitions.

  41. cf. Griesemer (2003: 180–181).

  42. Cf., Gánti (1997).

  43. Cf., Simondon (2005: 23).

  44. Cf., Simondon (2005), 363.

  45. In fact, according to one interpretation, this idea lies at the root of Aristotle’s conception of final causality (Gotthelf 1976). Cf. also McCall (2012), 183–184.

References

  • Aristotle (1984) The complete works of Aristotle: the revised Oxford translation, Barnes J (rev). Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Atlan H, Bousquet C (1994) Questions de Vie. Seuil, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes G (2003) The paradoxes of hylomorphism. Rev Metaphys 56:501–523

    Google Scholar 

  • Bedau M (1996) The nature of life. In: Boden M (ed) The philosophy of artificial life. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 332–360

    Google Scholar 

  • Cárdenas ML, Letelier JC, Cornish-Bowden A, Gutierrez C, Soto-Andrade J (2010) Closure to efficient causation, computability, and artificial life. J Theor Biol 263:79–92. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.01.030

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chandler J, Van de Vijver G (eds) (2000) Closure: emergent organizations and their dynamics. New York Academy of Sciences, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Chyba CF, Mcdonald GD (1995) The origins of life in the solar system: current issues. Annu Rev Earth Planet Sci 23:215–249. doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.23.1.215

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cleland CE, Chyba CF (2002) Defining life. Origins Life Evol B 32:387–393

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collier J (2000) Autonomy and process closure as the basis for functionality. In: Chandler J, Van de Vijver G (eds) Closure: emergent organizations and their dynamics. New York Academy of Sciences, New York. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2000.tb06287.x

    Google Scholar 

  • Copi I (1954) Essence and accident. J Philos 51:706–719. doi:10.2307/2021504

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cornish-Bowden A, Cárdenas M, Letelier JC, Soto-Andrade J (2007) Beyond reductionism: metabolic circularity as a guiding vision for a real biology of systems. Proteomics 7:839–845. doi:10.1002/pmic.200600431

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cottam R, Ranson W, Vounckx R (2007) Re-mapping Robert Rosen’s (M, R)-systems. Chem Biodivers 4:2352–2368. doi:10.1002/cbdv.200790192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dennett D (2011) Shall we tango? No, but thanks for asking. J Conscious Stud 18:23–34

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett D (2013) Aching voids and making voids, a review of incomplete nature: how mind emerged from matter by Terrence W. Deacon. Q Rev Biol 88:321–324. doi:10.1086/673760

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eigen M, Schuster P (1977) The hypercycle: a principle of natural self-organization. Part A: emergence of the hypercycle. Naturwissenschaften 11:541–565. doi:10.1007/BF00450633

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Etxeberria A (2004) Autopoiesis and natural drift: genetic information, reproduction, and evolution revisited. Artif Life 10:347–360. doi:10.1162/1064546041255575

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gánti T (1971) Az élet princípuma. Gondolat, Budapest

    Google Scholar 

  • Gánti T (1975) Organization of chemical reactions into dividing and metabolizing units: the chemotons. Biosystems 7:15–21. doi:10.1016/0303-2647(75)90038-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gánti T (1997) Biogenesis itself. J Theor Biol 187:583–593. doi:10.1006/jtbi.1996.0391

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gánti T (2003) The principles of life. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gorman M (2005) The essential and the accidental. Ratio 18:276–289. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9329.2005.00290.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gotthelf A (1976) Aristotle’s conception of final causality. Rev Metaphys 30:226–254

    Google Scholar 

  • Griesemer J (2003) The philosophical significance of Gánti’s work. In: The principles of life. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 169–186

  • Hordijk W, Steel M (2004) Detecting autocatalytic, self-sustaining sets in chemical reaction systems. J Theor Biol 227:451–461. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2003.11.020

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacob F (1970) La Logique du Vivant. Gallimard, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston M (2006) Hylomorphism. J Philos 103:652–698

    Google Scholar 

  • Kauffman SA (1993) The origins of order. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawvere F, Schanuel S (1997) Conceptual mathematics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Leibniz GW (1925) The monadology, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford Latta R (ed and trans) (first published 1898)

    Google Scholar 

  • Letelier JC, Marín G, Mpodozis J (2003) Autopoietic and (M, R) systems. J Theor Biol 222:261–272. doi:10.1016/S0022-5193(03)00034-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Letelier JC, Soto-Andrade J, Guíñez Abarzúa J, Cornish-Bowden A, Cárdenas ML (2006) Organizational invariance and metabolic closure: analysis in terms of (M, R) systems. J Theor Biol 238:949–961. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.07.007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Letelier JC, Cárdenas ML, Cornish-Bowden A (2011) From L’Homme Machine to metabolic closure: steps towards understanding life. J Theor Biol 286:100–113. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.06.033

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luisi P (1998) About various definitions of life. Origins Life Evol B 28:613–622. doi:10.1023/A:1006517315105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Machery E (2012) Why I stopped worrying about the definition of life… And why you should as well. Synthese 185:145–164. doi:10.1007/s11229-011-9880-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maturana H (1980) Autopoiesis: reproduction, heredity and evolution. In: Zelený M (ed) Autopoiesis, dissipative structures, and spontaneous social orders. Westview, Boulder, pp 45–79

    Google Scholar 

  • Maturana H, Varela F (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living. In: Boston studies in the philosophy of science, vol 42. D. Reidl, Dordrecht

  • Maynard Smith J, Szathmáry E (1995) The major transitions in evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • McCall S (2012) The origin of life and the definition of life. In: Tahko T (ed) Contemporary Aristotelian metaphysics. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 176–186

    Google Scholar 

  • Morange M (2008) Life explained. Cobb, M and Debevoise, M (trans). Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Morowitz H, Smith E (2007) Energy flow and the organization of life. 13(1). doi:10.1002/cplx.20191

  • Mossio M, Moreno A (2010) Organisational closure in biological organisms. Hist Philos Life Sci 32:269–288

    Google Scholar 

  • Mossio M, Longo G, Stewart J (2009) A computable expression of closure to efficient causation. J Theor Biol 257(3):489–498. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.12.012

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nicholson D (2013) Organisms ≠ machines. Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 44:669–678

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oyama S (2000) The ontogeny of information. Duke, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pierce B (1991) Basic category theory for computer scientists. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Prigogine I, Nicolis G (1977) Self-organization in nonequilibrium systems. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Rea M (2011) Hylomorphism reconditioned. Philos Perspect 25:341–358. doi:10.1111/j.1520-8583.2011.00219.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosen R (1972) Some relational cell models: the metabolism-repair system. In: Rosen R (ed) Foundations of mathematical biology. Academic Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosen R (1991) Life itself. Columbia University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosen R (2000) Essays on life itself. Columbia University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruiz-Mirazo K, Moreno A (2012) Autonomy in evolution: from minimal to complex life. Synthese 185(1):21–52. doi:10.1007/s11229-011-9874-z

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simondon G (1995) L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique. Jérôme Millon, Grenoble

    Google Scholar 

  • Simondon G (2005) L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information. Jérôme Millon, Grenoble

    Google Scholar 

  • Soto-Andrade J, Jaramillo S, Gutiérrez C, Letelier JC (2011) Ouroboros avatars: a mathematical exploration of self-reference and metabolic closure. In: Lenaerts T, Giacobini M, Bersini H, Bourgine P, Dorigo M, Doursat R (eds) Advances in artificial life, ECAL 2011: proceedings of the eleventh European conference on the synthesis and simulation of living systems. The MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 763–770

  • Swenson R (1992) Autocatakinetics: yes—autopoiesis, no: steps toward a unified theory of evolutionary ordering. Int J Gen Syst 21:207–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szathmáry E (2003) The biological significance of Gánti’s work in 1971 and today. In: The principles of life. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 157–168

  • Szathmáry E (2005) In search of the simplest cell. Nature 433:469–470. doi:10.1038/433469a

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szostak J, Artel D, Luisi P (2001) Synthesizing life. Nature 409:387–390. doi:10.1038/35053176

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tahko T (ed) (2012) Contemporary Aristotelian metaphysics. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Varela F (1994) Autopoiesis and a biology of intentionality. In: McMullin B, Murphy N (eds) Autopoiesis and perception, Proceedings of a workshop held at Dublin City University on August 25 and 26, 1992

  • Varela F (2000) El fenomeno de la vida. Dolmen Esayo, Santiago

    Google Scholar 

  • Wiener N (1961) Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine, 2nd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Woese C (2004) A new biology for a new century. Microbiol Mol Biol R 68:173–186. doi:10.1128/MMBR.68.2.173-186.2004

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was made possible by a grant from the Scientific Research Fund of Flanders (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek—FWO).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven, Kardinaal Mercierplein 2, Box 3200, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    James DiFrisco

Authors
  1. James DiFrisco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James DiFrisco.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

DiFrisco, J. Hylomorphism and the Metabolic Closure Conception of Life. Acta Biotheor 62, 499–525 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-014-9233-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-014-9233-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation