Source
Mossio, Montévil and Longo (2016), LIT-1888, §1 (pp. 1–2) and §4 (pp. 6–9) of the authors’ HAL manuscript; read in NOTE-1461. The definitions are LIT-582’s.
What was actually shown
The status. “As theoretical principles, organization and variation constitute overarching hypotheses that frame the intelligibility of the objects within the biological domain.” They play the role space and time play in physics, or “positing a priori the phase space (i.e. the list of pertinent observables and parameters)” (p. 2).
The scope. “Biology is the science of systems meeting the principles of organization and variation, organisms being a specific, particularly relevant, class of biological systems.” Ecosystems might qualify (p. 2).
The content. “The principle of organization states that biological systems realize a closure of constraints” (p. 7). Constraints act on a process at a time scale at which they are conserved. Closure is a set in which each constraint depends directly on another member and has another member depending on it. Only thermodynamically open systems can realize it, and a closure is always relative to external constraints it does not include (pp. 6–9).
The support. A history from Kant through Bernard, Weiss, Piaget, autopoiesis, Rosen and Kauffman (§3), and examples: the vasculature and gut, enzyme synthesis, the Na⁺/K⁺ pump. Nothing is derived from the principle in this paper beyond the two implications of §5 (THEORY-1271).
What this does not say
- That closure has been observed in every organism. “Without exceptions” (p. 2) is secured by defining the domain through the principle.
- That only organisms realize closure. The paper says the opposite: the domain is presumably larger than organisms (compare THEORY-514).
- What would count against the principle. The paper does not say.
- Anything formal beyond LIT-582. The definitions are restated; the 2015 paper’s measure of a tendency to closure is not used.