THEORY-514: Self-maintenance through closure of constraints does not single out organisms, since colonies, holobionts, symbioses and ecosystems meet it too, so a persister criterion applied at whatever level meets it turns organisms into parts; what is proposed to mark organisms is that they can also induce, control and come through phases of destabilised organisation and reach a new closure regime, though that only organisms can do so is asserted

Source

Jan Baedke (2025), The Organism, Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Biology, LIT-167, read in full in NOTE-148.

What was actually shown

The problem (p. 24). An Inward Challenge, what internal organisation makes something an organism rather than another unit, and an Outward Challenge, how to separate an organism from an environment it co-constructs.

Persistence is not enough (pp. 28–34). Godfrey-Smith’s “Organisms are essentially persisters”, Smith’s version, and the metabolic, thermodynamic and closure views all admit too much. Closure has been applied to symbioses, ecosystems and eusocial colonies; Smith applies persistence to siphonophores, beehives and holobionts; Mossio concedes that organised systems are not necessarily organisms (fn. 22). Applied at whatever level meets it, the criterion makes every contributing unit “a mere part” (p. 31): either humans are parts of holobionts, or “organisms can be made up of organisms” (fn. 23).

Overcomers (pp. 38–45). Against the view that a system goes from one closed regime to another or dies, Baedke claims that organisms tolerate and actively induce deorganisation and reorganisation, as a non-pathological part of life cycles, and that change need not be a continuous series of states of closure. Cases: anglerfish sexual parasitism (loss of adaptive-immunity genes, fusion into “a new metabolic and morphological whole”); Elysia marginata regenerating a whole body from its head within about 20 days; Harpegnathos saltator gamergates (brain volume −20%, ovaries 5×, lifespan from about six months to three years or more, reversibly).

The verdicts (pp. 43, 48–49). The Harpegnathos colony is a “functionally immortal persister” that “is not an organism”; the individual ant is the overcomer. Ruminant microbes are distinct organisms with the rumen as their environment, not parts of a holobiont individual.

What could have come out otherwise. The negative half could have failed if closure criteria, applied carefully, ranked colonies below their members. The literature Baedke surveys applies them to colonies without such a ranking.

What this does not say

• That only organisms overcome. “Only organisms can” (pp. 39–40) is asserted. No non-organismal persister is examined; a colony that loses its queen and reorganises through a tournament is a plausible candidate, and is described only as persisting.
• That the cases show organisms acting. The anglerfish’s immune-gene loss happened over evolutionary time in lineages; the gamergate transition is triggered by the colony context. “Deliberately”, in the earlier skim, is not Baedke’s word.
• A definition. Persister, overcomer and bounded locus of causation are listed as features (Box 3), with no sufficient condition.
• That collectives are not individuals of any kind. Organismality and individuality are separate questions here (fn. 13): a colony can be an evolutionary individual and not an organism.
• How to individuate against the environment. That is done by a separate, relational model, the unrolled organism–environment graph of LIT-110, which picks out boundaries relative to an explanation; “unambiguously” (pp. 3, 46) claims more than it gives.
• Which piece of an autotomised slug, or which of a fused anglerfish pair, is the organism. The part–whole puzzles the cases raise are left open.

Connections

• Organisational differentiation (THEORY-072, from LIT-570 and LIT-582) separates organisms from dissipative structures such as a flame. It says itself that it does not answer this objection, which is about which living individual counts as the organism, and that nested closures are its preliminary answer. The two are not rivals.
• Biological individuality (THEORY-443, from LIT-168). Wilson and Barker’s evolutionary and physiological individuality come apart and are found among parts and groups of organisms; Baedke’s separation of organismality from individuality is what lets him deny colonies organism status while allowing them individuality.
• Reciprocal causation unrolled (THEORY-446, from LIT-110) is the relational half of Baedke’s account, re-presented here with two worked cases.
• What Lives? (LIT-211, NOTE-109). Its largest consensus definitions of life are persister criteria, so it shows how common the criterion Baedke criticises is. It does not answer him.
• QUESTION-035 asks when a combined form is one system; this account bears on it by denying that self-maintenance settles it, but answers a different question, which system is the organism, so no answers is declared.