Editing Annotation:Text:Problems of Knowledge and Cognizing Organisms/Mcuvfnmf09

|LastModificationDate=2020-07-16T19:11:14.574Z

|AnnotationMetadata=^"permissions":^"read":ӶӺ,"update":ӶӺ,"delete":ӶӺ,"admin":ӶӺ°,"user":^"id":6,"name":"Sarah Oberbichler"°,"id":"Mcuvfnmf09","ranges":Ӷ^"start":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ26Ӻ","startOffset":0,"end":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ28Ӻ","endOffset":756°Ӻ,"quote":"This point of view, in fact, is implicit in modern science. The most typical paradigm for circularity is the idea of feedback or, more generally of recursive computations. In these cases, circularity is, of course, unraveled as a temporal process through the concatenation of cause and effect involving a delay. But, beyond such simplified patterns, it is now clear that the coherence or totality we can see in natural systems of all kinds, be they cells, nervous systems, or societies, hinges on the closely knit interdependence of their components. Such interdependence, in fact, gives the system its identity. For example, a cell is a network of interconnected chemical processes forming a large number of recursive loops in many dimensions. If one takes this circularity of organization seriously, some interesting consequences follow. Consider for a moment the question: How does a molecule, say a hormone, become a message for a cell? Surely not by any specific property of its molecular configuration.\nSuch properties allow it to interact in a physical sense with the cell. Yet from this physical contact dramatic changes in the dynamics of the cell may ensue, and we usually refer to such events by saying that the hormone molecule carries “information.” However, this “informative” quality of the molecule is a quality determined and specified by the dynamics of the cell as a unit, that is, by the circular network of its chemical productions.Ӷ7Ӻ In other words, the cell’s circularity specifies a categorical classification of the events in the cell’s environment -and such a classification amounts to establishing a cognitive domain in which a hormone molecule is endowed with significance in contradistinction to other equally inde- pendent items or events. The fact that certain very precise molecular structures are of significance for some cells provides a way for these cells to be viable in their environment, but it says little about the particulars of the molecule itself. Metaphorically we may say that through the operation of their circular organization the cells “construct a reality.”\nWe have to conceive of ourselves, mutatis mutandis, as in a similar state of affairs: Whatever we interact with, we will do so relative to the coherence of our organization and, on the cognitive level, through the recursive organization of our nervous system (Maturana, 1970b, 1977). There is one fundamental difference, however, in this second-order circularity. Unlike the case of the cell, where both the observed cell and the hormone molecule are parts of the observer’s experience, we do not have simultaneous access to both our environment and our information of it. All we have is our “representation,” which is inescapably our construction. Thus, the most that an observer can say about his own environment is that it renders his experience viable.","highlights":Ӷ^"jQuery3210354372536760819032":^°°,^"jQuery3210354372536760819032":^°°,^"jQuery3210354372536760819032":^°°,^"jQuery3210354372536760819032":^°°,^"jQuery3210354372536760819032":^°°,^"jQuery3210354372536760819032":^°°Ӻ,"text":"","category":"Argumentation2","data_creacio":1594919457736°