As a functional feature of our species, language, it is argued, cannot be understood outside the domain of biological organization. The established view of language as a tool used for communication has little to offer towards a better understanding of the nature and function of language, making it external to human biology and accounting for the language–mind dichotomy entrenched in philosophy of language and mainstream cognitive science. By contrast, biosemiotics, an interdisciplinary paradigm for the study of life as semiosis, attempts to overcome this epistemological inconsistency by positing the biological nature of signs. At the same time, the theoretical framework of biosemiotics is marked by a conceptual tension between the physicalist accounts of symbol often used in biosemiotics and the Peircean notion of symbol as a kind of sign in the semiotic hierarchy of iconic, indexical, and symbolic reference; this hierarchy is essential in understanding linguistic semiosis as a major evolutionary transition rather than a cultural invention. The firmly established belief that, evolutionarily, sapience precedes language impedes our understanding of language as human life in semiosis; such an understanding becomes possible with a systems approach to the study of our species. As situationally driven embodied interactional behavior, languaging is constitutive of the human organism-environment system as a unity. Linguistic semiosis – the development of the ability to orient others and self in their consensual domain to what is not perceptually present – is a biological adaptation that allows humans to be able to better live in their habitat and sets them apart from the rest of the living world as linguistic organisms capable of operating on first-order abstractions in co-ordinations of interactional behavior. It is hypothesized that the emergence of language was the pivoting point in the evolution of the human brain, laying the basis for abstract thought as neuronal processes that lead to the establishment of second-order consensuality and languaging as behavior in a second-order consensual domain: cognition as a biological function met language as a biological adaptation, and the ontogenesis of Homo sapiens began.

Key words: language, languaging, biosemiotics, sign, symbol, mind, evolution

The nature of life has been a topic of interest from the earliest of times, and efforts to explain it in mechanistic terms date at least from the 18th century. However, the impressive development of molecular biology since the 1950s has tended to have the question put on one side while biologists explore mechanisms in greater and greater detail, with the result that studies of life as such have been confined to a rather small group of researchers who have ignored one another’s work almost completely, often using quite different terminology to present very similar ideas. Central among these ideas is that of closure, which implies that all of the catalysts needed for an organism to stay alive must be produced by the organism itself, relying on nothing apart from food (and hence chemical energy) from outside. The theories that embody this idea to a greater or less degree are known by a variety of names, including (M, R) systems, autopoiesis, the chemoton, the hypercycle, symbiosis, autocatalytic sets, sysers and RAF sets. These are not all the same, but they are not completely different either, and in this review we examine their similarities and differences, with the aim of working towards the formulation of a unified theory of life. – Highlights: There have been many isolated attempts to define the essentials of life, A major unifying feature is metabolic closure, Metabolic closure requires some molecules to fulfill more than one function, There can be no hierarchy in the overall organization of a living system.

Key words: Origin of life, (M, R) systems, Autopoiesis, Chemoton, Self-organization

This essay concerns fractal geometry as a bridge between the imaginary and the real, mind and matter, conscious and unconscious. The logic rests upon Jungs theory of number as the most primitive archetype of order for linking observers with the observed. Whereas Jung focused upon natural numbers as the foundation for order that is already conscious, I offer fractal geometry, with its endlessly recursive iteration on the complex number plane, as the underpinning for a dynamic unconscious destined never to become fully conscious. Everywhere in nature, fractal separatrices articulate a paradoxical zone of bounded infinity that both separates and connects natures edges. By occupying the ‘space between’ dimensions and levels of existence, fractal boundaries exemplify reentry dynamics of Varela’s autonomous systems, as well as Hofstadters ever-elusive ‘tangled hierarchy’ where brain and mind are most entwined. At this second-order, cybernetic frontier, the horizon of observers observing the observation process remains infinitely complex and ever receding from view. I suggest that the property of self-similarity, by which the pattern of the whole permeates fractal parts at different scales, represents the semiotic sign of identity in nature.

This paper considers two examples of systems typologies in the light of the theory of autopoiesis. The first is Boulding’s classic typology of types of systems based on their degree of complexity. Certain inconsistencies are noted, but the main problem is that there is no definition of the underlying scale of systems complexity. The paper suggests that the underlying dimension can be seen as the types of relations upon which the different levels depend. This also allows the inconsistencies to be clarified. The second typology, presented for the first time, provides an initial classification of different types of self-referential or organizationally closed systems. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: autopoiesis, boulding’s hierarchy, complexity, organizational closure, relations, self- consciousness, self-reference, self-organization.

The first form of the inside-outside dichotomy appears as a self-encapsulated system with an active border. These systems are based on two complementary but asymmetric processes: constructive and interactive. The former physically constitute the system as a recursive network of component production, defining an inside. The maintenance of the constructive processes implies that the internal organization also constrains certain flows of matter and energy across the border of the system, generating interactive processes. These interactive processes ensure the maintenance of the constructive processes thus specifying a meaningful outside. Upon this basic form of identity formation, the evolutionary and historical domain is open for the emergence of a whole hierarchy and ecology of insides and outsides. These which mutually subsume and collaborate in the maintenance of the essential inside-outside dichotomy that defines the conditions of possibility of the subjects and the worlds they generate.

Key words: Inside-outside dichotomy, constructive and interactive loop, agency, naturalized philosophy.

Research background: Since the introduction of the concept in 1972 Autopoiesis has enjoyed great popularity among academicians representing various fields of science. However, the number of studies devoted to the investigation of factors that have an impact on the formation of autopoietic economic structures is quite limited. This paper addresses the gap in scientific research on autopoiesis of economic structures in small open markets, specifically in the Baltic States. Purpose of the article: The paper aims to identify and evaluate factors that turn on selforganization mechanisms of autopoietic economic structures in the Baltic States, in particular in Latvia. Methods: Expert survey was used to identify the most important factors affecting the formation of meso-economic entities in the Baltic States. The factors’ assessments provided by seven experts were analyzed. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with fuzzy numbers was employed to process the data. Two different scales of evaluation (inverse linear and balanced) were used. Findings & Value added: The factors influencing the process of formation of business groups were evaluated by experts. Research results allow for making conclusions regarding the causes of the business integration, and impact of diversified integrated business structures on the country’s business system in Central Europe.

Key words: autopoiesis, formation of a firm, baltic states

Key words: epistemology, process, self-reference, bateson, structuralism, embodiment, constructivism, recursive hierarchy.

Take as a premise that listening (and its circularities) becomes an essential practice for making a difference in the world and represents a critical concept in the design of a participative-dialogic society. The speaker-respondent circularity turns listening into a conversation. Participants set aside their habitual or socially prescribed ways of interacting and explore other ways to be present. This perspective on listening and difference-making suggests an alternative (not mutually exclusive, yet distinct) approach to the human attribute called consciousness, from one characterized by purposiveness to one focused on presence. I claim that the idea of a participative-dialogic society as desirable is so alien to prevailing ways of thinking about the world and how it must work that it would be dismissed as “anarchist” if openly promoted – that is, it implies an alternative to the reward-oriented hierarchy approach to the design of economic and social systems that dominates societal structures world-wide. By advancing the idea anyway, I expect to make a difference. With anarchic intentions in mind, I propose listening, thinking, and designing kinetically (in contrast to kinematically). Listening (and its circularities) replaces, or at least offers an alternative to, reward-oriented hierarchy as a way of thinking about difference-making in the world. Relevance: The paper provides, explicitly, a second-order cybernetic perspective.

Purpose: This paper aims to offer a personal reflection on the 2012 joint conference of the American Society for Cybernetics and the Bateson Idea Group, “An Ecology of Ideas.” The intent is to raise awareness, through examples, of ideas – and their associated ways of thinking – that the author tends to take for granted in the work as systems theorists as well as in everyday life, yet ideas that confound the very social issues the conferees were trying to address. Design/methodology/approach – The thoughts expressed arose after five days of listening to presentations and discussions, both formal and informal. The approach is conversational, with a desire to stimulate further conversation. Findings: Certain versions of systems theory – whole systems, purposeful systems, systems theory as ideology – rely on ideas that although written about extensively in philosophical and socio-political works go unchallenged in everyday life. Three of these ideas – hierarchy, purpose, belief – are embedded in the way of talking about, and the language used to formulate, solutions to social problems. The suggestion is to avoid or suspend these ideas so that alternatives can be considered. Originality/value – Idea avoidance offers those who study social change and/or those who participate in making it happen a way to escape the stuckness of ideas so ingrained in the everyday ways of thinking that they go unnoticed.

Key words: Systems theory, Social change, Purpose, Hierarchy, Paradigm, Belief

Excerpt: Our main hypothesis is that feeling arises in the conflictive dynamics of resistance that our brain and body proper produce when they confront the highly inertial variance that they continuously and inevitably undergo. This variance is the result of delayed auto-perturbations of the brain–body system, divergent motivational tendencies, and attentional shifts. It is not only related to random fluctuations of the system, but also to controlled functional processes, capable of affecting the system as a whole through its functional connectivity. We see the process of resistance to variance, and in particular its central attention-related profile, as delineating the dynamic locus of an internal state of tension through which subjective experience emerges. Such a dynamical structure is intrinsically related to the system’s need to engage in intentional behaviors, attend, preserve coherence, and respect the hierarchy of the various influences that affect its internal dynamics and organization. We see this general dynamics and its subjective counterpart in the framework of a monitoring and control function that lies at the core of the functionality we call consciousness.