13 found
Order:
  1. Biological regulation: controlling the system from within.Leonardo Bich, Matteo Mossio, Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo & Alvaro Moreno - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (2):237-265.
    Biological regulation is what allows an organism to handle the effects of a perturbation, modulating its own constitutive dynamics in response to particular changes in internal and external conditions. With the central focus of analysis on the case of minimal living systems, we argue that regulation consists in a specific form of second-order control, exerted over the core regime of production and maintenance of the components that actually put together the organism. The main argument is that regulation requires a distinctive (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  2. Autonomy in evolution: from minimal to complex life.Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo & Alvaro Moreno - 2012 - Synthese 185 (1):21-52.
    Our aim in the present paper is to approach the nature of life from the perspective of autonomy, showing that this perspective can be helpful for overcoming the traditional Cartesian gap between the physical and cognitive domains. We first argue that, although the phenomenon of life manifests itself as highly complex and multidimensional, requiring various levels of description, individual organisms constitute the core of this multifarious phenomenology. Thereafter, our discussion focuses on the nature of the organization of individual living entities, (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  3.  75
    Organizational requirements for multicellular autonomy: insights from a comparative case study.Argyris Arnellos, Alvaro Moreno & Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo - 2014 - Biology and Philosophy 29 (6):851-884.
    In this paper we explore the organizational conditions underlying the emergence of organisms at the multicellular level. More specifically, we shall propose a general theoretical scheme according to which a multicellular organism is an ensemble of cells that effectively regulates its own development through collective mechanisms of control of cell differentiation and cell division processes. This theoretical result derives from the detailed study of the ontogenetic development of three multicellular systems and, in particular, of their corresponding cell-to-cell signaling networks. The (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  4.  59
    Synthetic Biology: Challenging Life in Order to Grasp, Use, or Extend It.Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo & Alvaro Moreno - 2013 - Biological Theory 8 (4):376-382.
    In this short contribution we explore the historical roots of recent synthetic approaches in biology and try to assess their real potential, as well as identify future hurdles or the reasons behind some of the main difficulties they currently face. We suggest that part of these difficulties might not be just the result of our present lack of adequate technical skills or understanding, but could spring directly from the nature of the biological phenomenon itself. In particular, if life is conceived (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  5. The problem of the emergence of functional diversity in prebiotic evolution.Alvaro Moreno & Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo - 2009 - Biology and Philosophy 24 (5):585-605.
    Since Darwin it is widely accepted that natural selection (NS) is the most important mechanism to explain how biological organisms—in their amazing variety—evolve and, therefore, also how the complexity of certain natural systems can increase over time, creating ever new functions or functional structures/relationships. Nevertheless, the way in which NS is conceived within Darwinian Theory already requires an open, wide enough, functional domain where selective forces may act. And, as the present paper will try to show, this becomes even more (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  6.  41
    Definitions of life as epistemic tools that reflect and foster the advance of biological knowledge.Alba Amilburu, Álvaro Moreno & Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo - 2020 - Synthese 198 (11):10565-10585.
    During the last decades the question of defining life has gained increased interest but, at the same time, the difficulty in reaching consensus on a possible answer has led many to skeptical positions. This, in turn, has raised a wider debate about why defining life is so hard and controversial. Such a debate introduces additional aspects to be considered, like the role and nature of a definition of life itself. In this paper, we will focus on those aspects, arguing that (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  7. Searching for the roots of autonomy: The natural and artificial paradigms revisited.Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo & Alvaro Moreno - 2000 - Communication and Cognition-Artificial Intelligence 17 (3-4):209-228.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  8. Enabling conditions for 'open-ended evolution'.Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo, Jon Umerez & Alvaro Moreno - 2008 - Biology and Philosophy 23 (1):67-85.
    In this paper we review and argue for the relevance of the concept of open-ended evolution in biological theory. Defining it as a process in which a set of chemical systems bring about an unlimited variety of equivalent systems that are not subject to any pre-determined upper bound of organizational complexity, we explain why only a special type of self-constructing, autonomous systems can actually implement it. We further argue that this capacity derives from the ‘dynamic decoupling’ (in its minimal or (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  9.  43
    On the Evolutionary Development of Biological Organization from Complex Prebiotic Chemistry.Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo & Alvaro Moreno - 2023 - In Matteo Mossio (ed.), Organization in Biology. Springer. pp. 187-218.
    In this chapter we offer a critical analysis of organizational models about the process of origins of life and, thereby, a reflection about life itself (understood in a general, minimal sense). We begin by demarcating the idea of organization as an explanatory construct, linking it to the complex relationships and transformations that the material parts of (proto-)biological systems establish to maintain themselves under non-equilibrium dynamic conditions. The diverse ways in which this basic idea has been applied within the prebiotic field (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10.  59
    On the Origins of Information and Its Relevance for Biological Complexity.Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo & Alvaro Moreno - 2006 - Biological Theory 1 (3):227-229.
  11.  20
    “Minimal metabolism”: A key concept to investigate the origins and nature of biological systems.Nino Lauber, Christoph Flamm & Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo - 2021 - Bioessays 43 (10):2100103.
    The systems view on life and its emergence from complex chemistry has remarkably increased the scientific attention on metabolism in the last two decades. However, during this time there has not been much theoretical discussion on what constitutes a metabolism and what role it actually played in biogenesis. A critical and updated review on the topic is here offered, including some references to classical models from last century, but focusing more on current and future research. Metabolism is considered as intrinsically (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12.  20
    La biología sintética como desafío para comprender la autonomía de lo vivo.Sara Murillo-Sánchez & Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo - 2016 - Isegoría 55:551.
    En este artículo se ofrece una visión de la biología sintética alternativa a los planteamientos ingenieriles que marcan gran parte de la agenda de investigación del campo. Nuestro análisis se centra en enfoques, teóricos y experimentales, cuyo objetivo fundamental es la comprensión del fenómeno de la vida per se. Una revisión detallada de varios casos de implementación artificial, in vitro, de sistemas químicos ‘auto-productivos’ nos ayudará a reflexionar sobre el enorme reto que supone transformar una disciplina científica eminentemente descriptiva, como (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13.  7
    In search of conceptual bridges: a review of Krohs, U. & Kroes, P. "Functions in Biological and Artificial Worlds".Cristian Saborido, Matteo Mossio & Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo - 2010 - Artificial Life 16 (4):337-340.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark