Abstract
The respondent agrees with William Grassie that many windows on nature are possible; that emphasis must remain on the generation of order; that “chance” would better be recast as “contingency”; and that the ecological metaphysic has wide implications for a “politics of nature”. He accepts the challenge by Pedro Sotolongo to extend his metaphysic into the realm of pan-semiotics and agrees that an ecological perspective offers the best hope for solving the world’s inequities. He replies to Stanley Salthe that he now agrees that the second law of thermodynamics is the overarching law of nature, but only when the duality inherent in of the concept of entropy is widely recognized. The respondent is enthusiastic over Jeffrey Lockwood’s extrapolation of process ecology to include the concept of “species” and over John Haught’s description of how the construct paves the way for a “theology of evolution” by recasting evolution as an unfolding “drama”.
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Notes
Relativistic effects at the scales of biology appear negligible.
Systems engineers often talk about “driving” a model via temporally varying boundary circumstances.
In keeping with the Newtonian exclusion of the observer, the boundary problem has been marginalized and the focus of causality has been fixed upon the constraint of law.
Many biologists will object that the process approach ignores the material universality of DNA in life processes. While DNA/RNA does appear to be common to all life on earth, it is questionable whether it was always ubiquitous. Deacon (2006), for example, argues how molecular genomes could have evolved for dynamical reasons out of pre-existing configurations of early biochemical processes and became universal only after displacing earlier, less effective forms of memory.
Perpetual harmonies inevitably remind one of Thielhard de Chardin’s Omega Point. Not that it is easy to imagine what could possibly be the harmonious outcome of this chaotic dissipative structure called human society, but more importantly, that, as I mentioned in the last sentence of 3W, pessimism is no longer the only attitude possible.
The conundrum over “dark” energy and matter prompts the speculation that one or more additional forces may be at work in the cosmos and remain to be formulated in terms of new law.
Data show that most ecosystems cluster around a ratio of 60% dissipation versus 40% effective work (Ulanowicz 2009b).
Rosen’s entailment does not apply to other forms of causality—material, formal or final.
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Acknowledgments
I am exceedingly grateful to Editor Roberto Poli for suggesting this format for discussing the ideas I advanced in my latest book. I am also most indebted to the five commentators for their queries, challenges and bold extrapolations. The considerable time that each devoted to reading and commenting is most appreciated. I hope it will become evident to anyone reading my reactions how instrumental their contributions have been towards helping to open yet wider the Third Window.
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Ulanowicz, R.E. Widening the Third Window. Axiomathes 22, 269–289 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9181-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9181-9