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LIT-1888: Theoretical principles for biology: Organization

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Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-31 (NOTE-1461) from the authors' HAL deposit; worth reading for the status it gives closure of constraints, a theoretical principle that defines the domain of biology rather than an empirical finding about organisms (THEORY-1251), and for its argument that closure both removes and propagates variation (THEORY-1271). It adds no formal content to Montévil and Mossio 2015 (LIT-582), and its stability claims are argued without a model.
Version2
Tagsphilosophy-of-biology, complex-systems, philosophy-of-science
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1461 — Mossio, Montévil & Longo — organization as a theoretical principle
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1251 — Mossio, Montévil and Longo take organization, as closure of constraints, to be a theoretical principle of biology, posited a priori as physics posits its phase space and defining the domain together with variation, so that every system meeting both is biological by definition and organisms are one class of such systems; on this reading "organisms are organized" is constitutive, not an empirical finding, and the principle is to be judged by what it makes intelligible, THEORY-1271 — Mossio, Montévil and Longo argue that closure of constraints both stabilizes and propagates variation: it regenerates each constraint beyond the time scale at which it is conserved, and removes a variation only if the variation does not reach the constraints that regenerate the varied one; when it does reach them, the variation propagates and the system either loses closure and disintegrates or comes to realize a new closure, which they say a rock, a flame or a table cannot do

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Mossio, M., Montévil, M., & Longo, G. (2016). Theoretical principles for biology: Organization. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 122(1), 24–35.

Read in full in NOTE-1461.

Why this is here

A9 cited it beside Montévil and Mossio 2015 (LIT-582, read) for endogenous maintenance as closure. It states the principle the 2015 paper formalizes, and bears on TERM-070. The reading confirms both. It adds the point that a closure is always relative to external constraints it does not include. It also states the conditional that bears on the exchange’s maintenance constructions: closure removes a variation only if the variation does not reach the constraints that regenerate the varied one (THEORY-1271). It infers stability from that structure alone, which is the inference CLAIM-521 and CLAIM-522 caution against.

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