https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/814238
"So life controls itself in the form of the development and stabilization of density concentrations at the respective stage of evolution." ↪Wolfgang
If you want to study self-organisation more formally, SO in physics is best approached through dissipative structure theory, as part of thermodynamics. SO as life and mind is best described by biosemiosis. — apokrisis
Wolfgang seems to be talking about "self-organization" in a cosmic sense, to raise the question of how living creatures could be assembled out of non-living matter. He attributes that creative & organizing ability to the "four fundamental forces that govern the universe"*1. He didn't itemize those forces, but I assume he's referring to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Those binding & repelling forces certainly have something to do with organization of matter into aggregations, but exactly how lumping & clumping results in the holistic function we call Life remains unclear.
A different life-force was recently proposed by an MIT physicist*2, but it does just the opposite of aggregating & organizing compulsions. Instead of those clumping forces, he postulates that unbinding & dis-organizing Entropy may have a role in releasing Life from bondage to lumps of matter. "Life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, but until recently, physicists were unable to use thermodynamics to explain why it should arise in the first place" Apparently, Life emerges on the cusp between rigid order and random disorder, in "dissipative structures" that exist "far from equilibrium".
As you noted, another recent approach to the Life question is Biosemiosis (biology + semiotics ; lit. life-signs). This theory proposes that organisms exchange information via "pre-lingustic" signs & symbols. It assumes that some kind of Information carriers, like symbols or codes, exist in cellular biology. And DNA is one such corporeal repository of information that seems to be encoded with algorithms to organize proteins into forms that are suitable for animation. But it omits the Frankenstein lightning-bolt jolt that magically completes the circuit to animate dead flesh --- as-if raw energy was enough to do the job. If you describe that encoded matter as "Enformed Energy" though, you combine the jolt with the data.
That's why I prefer to go back to the beginning of the whole shebang, in search of the Life-source. It's what I call, in various contexts, "Primordial Energy" or "enforming energy" or "Causal Information" or "EnFormAction". That's not a physical substance, but merely a meta-physical (not-yet-physical) Potential. As we know, a complete electrical circuit does nothing until it is charged with electric Potential --- which again is not a substance, but a statistical tendency in a particular causal direction. I can't produce tangible evidence for such a Potential to Enform, but merely philosophical conjectures, analogies & metaphors. Yet a few avant-garde scientists have been expanding on Shannon's inert Information Theory --- e.g. dynamic or causal EnFormAction --- in order to explain such scientific & philosophical mysteries as Life & Mind.
In physicist Paul Davies 1989 book, The Cosmic Blueprint, he says "a completely new view of nature is emerging which recognizes that many phenomena fall outside the conventional framework". Yet he discusses several conventional candidates for causing self-organization. "The simplest type of self-organization in physics is a phase transition". Indeed a change of physical phase is an instance of almost instantaneous re-organization of a substance, such as H2O to water to gas to ice. And it might serve as a model for phase transition from protein cell to living organism to thinking thing. But by itself, it omits the enlivening force that causes such a major organizational leap.
Davies discusses many of the items considered by previous theories : fundamental forces, dissipative forces, cellular codes, and such. But he finally comes down to one key feature of those candidates : Disequilibrium*3, which is not a physical thing, but a relationship between things. We find that causal imbalance in all kinds of changes & transitions from Thermodynamics to Information Asymmetry. In my thesis I sometimes call that state of precarious tipping-point Potential : Platonic First Cause or Aristotelian Prime Mover. But in more technical terms, it could be called "Primordial Energy", or "Vacuum Energy", or simply "the generic power to transform & enform".
*1. The Four Fundamental Forces :
They understand that there are four fundamental forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces — that are responsible for shaping the universe we inhabit.
https://universe.nasa.gov/universe/forces/
*2. A New Physics Theory of Life :
An MIT physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire lifelike physical properties.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-th ... -20140122/
*3. Davies on Self Organization :
"Disequilibrium, claims Prigogine, ‘is the source of order’ in the universe; it brings ‘order out of chaos’."
https://sciphilos.info/docs_pages/docs_ ... n_css.html
↪Wolfgang
