Process Ecology: An Ontology of Life?
Robert E. Ulanowicz
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory
Solomons, MD 20688-0038 USA
Email: ulan@cbl.umces.edu
Prepared for:
Science and Spirit
Shepherd University
March 22, 2006
Thank you Dr. Mahootian! This is my first professional trip to West Virginia, and
I am most pleased to be here at Shepherd. Dr. Mahootian and I go back over 20 years
together when we were both founding members of the Washington Evolutionary Systems
Society. I draw your attention to the word “Evolutionary”, because there is so much in
the news today about potential conflicts between religious belief and evolution. Yet as I
think back to my fellow founding members of WESS, I am impressed by the number of
fellow theists among them. I would like to think their membership bespeaks of a hope
that once both evolution and faith are examined at a deeper level than characterizes so
many debates today, we will discover that for some believers a fruitful mutualism is a
more accurate description of the dialogue, and it is that hope that motivates my talk
tonight.
Ladies & Gentlemen, I wish to begin my talk by citing the pronouncement of the
late Gregory Bateson to the effect that our current attitude towards the way science looks
at life is radically wrong and ultimately self-destructive. Bateson felt that the only way to
avoid a bad end was to pursue what he called “an ecology of mind”. Now two questions
immediately arise concerning Bateson’s attitude, (1) Was Bateson simply a misanthrope,
who was ungrateful for all that the scientific perspective has wrought for humankind?
And (2) why “ecology”? Why not physics or his own anthropology?
Anyone who has read Bateson would perhaps agree with me when I count him
among one of the pre-eminent intellects of the last Century. It is noteworthy that he
declined to enter a modern hospital to treat his terminal cancer and chose instead to spend
his final months among a Zen commune. Although he was an avowed agnostic, Bateson
found the metaphysical stance of the community that nursed him closer to his own
thinking than that of modern science. It was his way of making the strongest statement
possible that our modern vision of nature is seriously flawed. As for his reference to
ecology, Bateson was not simply counting himself among the nascent environmental
movement. Rather he was pointing to ecology as affording the only perspective that could
turn the human enterprise around. In effect, Bateson was saying we need to look to
ecology for a new metaphysic with which to view the world.
1
Today it is not difficult to see examples of needless conflicts that arise from our
adherence to the Modern metaphysic. In the ongoing cultural warfare between Naturalism
and Creationism, for example, much is said (too often with malicious intent) about the
facts and theories surrounding evolution. It is rare, however, that the underlying clash of
metaphysics is discussed, and yet there lie the fears and suspicions that drive the
controversy. For example, many metaphysical naturalists are convinced that the body of
evidence supporting evolution confirms their basic assumptions regarding the nature of
reality. They simply cannot conceive of evolution resting upon any other metaphysic. On
the other side, some theists are concerned about how evolution is being taught in schools,
not because they contest the phenomenology of evolution, but because they worry that
these facts will be used as a Trojan Horse to conceal and foist rigid materialism upon
students. Such are the fears of many who attempted to introduce Intelligent Design into
the curricula of public education. Now, if we are to entertain any hope of defusing this
noisy clash, we had best heed Bateson and pay at least some attention to the tacit
assumptions that fuel it.
It is curious that while books on the scientific method are legion, works that
articulate the core scientific assumptions about reality are surprisingly rare. This is
possibly because a contemporary consensus on the fundamentals is lacking. In fact, one
must go back in history to the early Nineteenth Century before one encounters near
unanimity about the nature of reality. Depew and Weber (1995) in their tome, Darwinism
Evolving, enumerate those assumptions:
1. Newtonian systems are causally closed. That is, only mechanical or material
causes are legitimate. Other forms of action are proscribed, especially any
reference to Aristotle's "final", or top- down causality.
2. Newtonian systems are atomistic. They are strongly decomposable into stable
least units, which can be built up and taken apart again. Atomism combined
with closure gives rise to the notion of reductionism, whereby only those
agencies at the smallest scales are of any importance. Whence, Carl Sagan, in
summarizing his television show on biological evolution saw no
inconsistency whatsoever in his declaration, "These are some of the things
that molecules do!"
3. Newtonian systems are reversible. Laws governing behavior work the same
in both temporal directions. This is a consequence of the symmetry of time in
all Newtonian laws.
4. Newtonian systems are deterministic. Given precise initial conditions, the
future (and past) states of a system can be specified with arbitrary precision.
5. Physical laws are universal. They apply everywhere, at all times and all
scales. The key adverb here is "everywhere". In combination with
determinism, universality says that nothing occurs except that it be elicited
2
by a fundamental physical law. Philip Hefner (2000) once wistfully
expressed his doubts by saying that God just doesn't have enough "wiggleroom" to act in the world. Steven Hawking (1988) in “A Brief History of
Time” asserted that “There is nothing left for a Creator to do.”
Now, you might immediately object that no one today believes fully in the
validity of all five tenets. For example, very soon after LaPlace (1814) had exulted in the
absolute power of Newtonian laws, Sadi Carnot (1824) initiated the science of
thermodynamics with his demonstration of the irreversible nature of physical processes.
Later, Charles Darwin (1859) would introduce history (irreversibility and indeterminism)
into the scientific narrative. Perhaps the final blows to the ascendancy of Newtonianism
were made at the beginning of the 20th Century when relativity and quantum theories
surfaced to throw universality and determinism gravely into doubt.
After nearly two centuries of such erosion, the fabric of these classical
assumptions lies in tatters. Still, almost every scientist clings to at least one or more of its
dangling threads. While that may not seem surprising to you, what seems to me passing
strange is how some individuals in fields where the mechanical worldview would appear
least applicable cling desperately to aspects of the metaphysic. Thus it is that closure is
strictly enforced in the neo-Darwinian scenario of evolution. Dawkins (1976) and
Dennett (1995), for example, are scrupulous in making reference to only material and
mechanical causes. Atomism (reductionism) continues to dominate biology -- witness the
prevalence of molecular biology today. How often does one hear about the discovery of
some that directs a particular trait? Daily, it seems, one hears echoes of Sagan about more
of the many things that molecules do. Regarding determinism, a surprising fraction of
scientists today continues to deny the reality of chance in the world, contending instead
that probability simply papers over an underlying determinacy.
One wonders what motivates such devotion to worn assumptions? Biologist
Richard Lewontin (1997) gives us a clue,
“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its
constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of
health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for
unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science
somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world,
but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material
causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce
material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying
to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow
a Divine Foot in the door.”
Such devotion, however, carries an inherent danger, namely that we are clinging to an
adumbrated and distorted view of reality. As a bit character in the movie “The Mosquito
Coast” said to the son of the devoutly modernist main character,
3
“Your father is a dangerous man. He thinks he has all the answers, and he’s
right some of the time.” (Schrader 1986)
Or, as physicist Oliver Penrose (2005) recently put it in Nature magazine,
“If you look at the world through rose-coloured spectacles, you cannot tell
which parts of it really are rosy and which parts just look rosy.”
Lest the naturalists among you think that I am headed off into some theistic
exegesis such as characterizes the Intelligent Design initiative, I would answer that to do
so would be inadvisable from a theological perspective and would do a disservice to
metaphysical naturalists, like Bateson, who sought a wholly natural, but alternative
perspective.
It’s not as though philosophers have not attempted to describe a more neutral
playing field. As the Newtonian metaphysic waned, several philosophers have moved
against some of its more entrenched aspects. Thus, Charles Saunders Peirce (1892),
Alfred North Whitehead (1929), Karl Popper (1982,1990) and Robert Rosen (1991) have
all attributed some form of causal openness to nature. Perhaps none has argued with as
much rigor and relevance, however, as Walter Elsasser (1981), an erstwhile physicist,
who set himself to developing a consistent logic for biological systems. In particular,
Elsasser has labeled as patently illogical the widespread attempts to apply the notion of
“law” as used in physics to biological phenomena.
Elsasser’s assault upon the notion that there are “laws” for biology similar to
those found in physics focusses upon the obvious heterogeneity in biological systems.
That biological entities all differ in at least minor ways from each other limits what kinds
of interactions can occur between groupings of objects. Elsasser points to the distinction
that physics deals with a continuum, whereas in biology, the dominant concept is that of a
class (as in taxonomy.) Philosophers and logicians Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand
Russell (1913) demonstrated that the way physics deals with a continuum can be reduced
to operations between perfectly homogeneous sets, i.e., groupings of entities that are
totally indistinguishable from each other. Examples of such perfectly homogeneous
classes are a collection of electrons or hydrogen atoms. We have no means available to us
of labeling one electron as different from another.
Although I am not equipped to go into the actual logical arguments of Whitehead
and Russell, their basic idea can be conveyed by very simplistic examples. Consider, for
example homogeneous sets of integers. The first set consists of five tokens of the integer
1, the second contains five tokens of the integer 2, the third contains 3’s, etc. Now we let
the set of twos interact with the set of fours according to some strict operation (Figure 1.)
For example, each of the tokens in the first set could be multiplied by any corresponding
member of the second. The result would be another homogeneous set of five eights. The
determinate result is a single homogeneous set.
4
2 2
2
2
2
4
x
4
4
4
8
=
8
4
8
8
8
Figure 1 – A fixed operation upon two homogeneous sets. The result is a single
homogeneous set.
Now we look at sets of integers grouped by fives according to magnitude. That is,
the first set contains the integers 1 through 5, the second six through 10, the third 11
through 15, etc. Let us let the first set operate on itself according to the same rule as was
used in the first example. One possible result would be the integers 4, 5, 6, 8, and 15.
These integers are scattered across three separate sets (Figure 2.) Other combinations
would yield similar “indeterminate” results in the sense that they would be scattered over
several groupings.
3 2
4
1
5
5
2
x
4
3
1
=
6
4
5
8
15
6
Figure 2 – The same operation as in Figure 1 carried out on a heterogeneous grouping of
integers yields results in several different groups.
Elsasser’s conclusion is that determinism among heterogeneous groupings is a
logical contradiction. No laws, as we know them from physics, are forthcoming in
biology (Lewontin 2000.) As Karl Popper (1982, 1990) also opined, one must be
prepared to generalize concepts to make them applicable to systems that exhibit
indeterminacy and interference.
Well, you might say, that’s what keeps statisticians employed in biology. And so
it is that one does see statistical regularities throughout the living realm. But does that
mean that we, like our hero of The Mosquito Coast, can rest assured that we now have
access to all the answers? “Hardly!” Elsasser would say, because he was able to show
that probability theory could not be applied universally to chance phenomena.
5
Conventional treatments of chance events invariably make the tacit assumption
that they are simple, generic and repeatable. Elsasser (1969), however, demonstrated that
the overwhelming majority of stochastic events in biology are totally unique, never again
to be repeated. Such an assertion sounds absurd at first, given the enormity and age of our
universe, but it is surprisingly easy to defend. Elsasser did so by defining the concept of
an "enormous" number. An enormous number of possibilities is one so large that it must
be excluded from physical consideration, simply because it greatly exceeds the number of
physical events that possibly could have occurred since the Big Bang. As an estimate of
the latter, Elsasser multiplied the estimated number of fundamental particles in the entire
known universe by the number of nanoseconds that have transpired since the Big Bang.
Any number of possibilities much larger than this product simply transcends physical
reality.
Now, those familiar with combinatorics will immediately recognize that it doesn't
take very many distinct elements or processes before the number of possible
configurations among them becomes enormous. One doesn't require billions of entities to
pose a number of combinations that exceeds Elsasser’s limit on physical events. A system
with merely 80 or so identifiable components will suffice! Any event randomly
comprised of more than 80 separate elements is almost certain never to have occurred
earlier in the history of the universe. It follows, then, that in ecosystems comprised of
hundreds or thousands of distinguishable organisms, one must reckon not just with the
occasional unique event, but with legions of them. Unique, singular events are occurring
all the time, everywhere! In the face of this situation, determinism as a universal
characteristic of nature becomes an absurdity.
A necessary condition for applying probability theory to chance events is that
those events occur at least several times, so that a legitimate frequency can be estimated.
Singular events, however, occur only once, never to be repeated. Probabilities cannot be
assigned to them. Furthermore, I lay particular stress on the fact that those singular events
constitute actual holes or gaps in the causal fabric. Akin to Heisenberg uncertainties, they
are a necessary part of nature, not some epistemological lacuna awaiting theoretical
elaboration.
First we dispense with the possibility of laws, and then we are confronted with the
inadequacies of probability theory. At this point many of you may be growing impatient
with the deconstructivist thrust of my talk thus far. You might be eager to point out to me
that lots of biological phenomena patently do recur with significant regularity. If not
laws, then what principles might account for such regularities?
To cut to the chase, I would suggest that regularities are being created and
maintained by processes, and the outcomes of a process are indeterminate. A useful
example of a simple artificial process is Polya’s Urn (Cohen 1976.) This exercise begins
with a collection of red and blue balls and an urn containing one red ball and one blue
ball. The urn is shaken and a ball is blindly drawn from it. If that ball is the blue one, a
blue ball from the collection is added to it and both are returned to the urn. The urn is
shaken and another draw is made. If a ball drawn is red, it and another red ball are placed
6
into the urn, etc. A first question arises as to whether a long sequence of such draws and
additions would cause the ratio of red to blue balls to converge to a limit. It is rather easy
to demonstrate that after many draws, the ratio does converge to some constant, say
0.46967135. A second question asks what would happen if the urn were emptied and the
starting configuration recreated? Would the subsequent series of draws converge to the
same limit as the first? It is easy to demonstrate that it will not. The second time it might
converge to 0.81427465. One soon discovers that the ratio of balls is progressively
constrained by the particular series of draws that have already occurred. It eventually
becomes clear that the limiting ratio for any long sequence of draws and replacements
can be any fraction between zero and one.
Before proceeding, it behooves us to note three features possessed by even the
artificial and simplistic Polya process:
(1) It involves chance.
(2) It involves self- reference.
(3) The history of draws is crucial to any particular series.
It was part of Bateson’s (1972) genius to have noticed how regularity could be
imparted to nature via feedbacks. He said that the outcome of random noise acting upon a
feedback circuit is generally non-random. I now draw your attention to one particular
form of feedback – autocatalysis (Ulanowicz 1997.) By "autocatalysis" is meant here any
instance of a positive feedback loop wherein the direct effect of every link on its
downstream neighbor is positive. Without loss of generality, let us focus our attention on
the serial, circular conjunction of three processes A, B, and C (Figure 3) Any increase in
A has a likelihood to induce a corresponding increase in B, which in turn could elicit an
increase in C, and whence back to A.
Figure 3. A simple example of autocatalysis.
A didactic example of autocatalysis in ecology is the community that forms
around the aquatic macrophyte, Utricularia (Ulanowicz 1995.) All members of the genus
Utricularia are carnivorous plants. Scattered along its feather- like stems and leaves are
small bladders, called utricles (Fig. 4a.) Each utricle has a few hair- like triggers at its
terminal end, which, when touched by a feeding zooplankter, opens the end of the
bladder, and the animal is sucked into the utricle by a negative osmotic pressure
maintained inside the bladder. In nature the surface of Utricularia plants is always host
to a film of algal growth known as periphyton. This periphyton serves in turn as food for
7
any number of species of small zooplankton. The autocatalytic cycle is closed when the
Utricularia captures and absorbs many of the zooplankton (Fig. 4b.)
(a)
(b)
Figure 2. (a) Utricularia, a carnivorous plant. (b) The cycle of rewards in the
Utricularia system.
In chemistry, where reactants are simple and fixed, autocatalysis may be
considered just another mechanism. As soon as one or more participant is able to undergo
small, incremental alterations in response to stochastic events, the picture changes
dramatically, and a number of decidedly non- mechanical behaviors can arise (Ulanowicz
1997.) I will discuss but a few:
Of primary importance, autocatalysis is capable of exerting selection pressure
upon its ever-changing, malleable constituents. Consider, for example, a small
spontaneous change in process B. If that change either makes B more sensitive to A or a
more effective catalyst of C, then the transition will receive enhanced stimulus from A.
Conversely, if the change in B either makes it either less sensitive to the effects of A or a
weaker catalyst of C, then that perturbation will likely receive diminished support from
A. That is to say that there is a preferred direction inherent in autocatalysis -- that of
increasing autocatalytic participation. Such asymmetric direction violates the assumption
of reversibility. Furthermore, as components increasingly engage in autocatalysis, or
mutually adapt to the cycle, they may lose the capability of acting on their own. Should
they be separated from the cycle and survive, they would behave radically differently
from how they did as part of the autocatalytic scheme. That is, the full cycle manifests an
organic nature that belies the assumption of Atomism.
One notes in particular that any change in B is likely to involve a change in the
amounts of material and energy that are required to sustain process B. As a corollary to
selection pressure we immediately recognize the tendency to reward and support any
changes that serve to bring ever more resources into B. Because this circumstance
pertains to any and all members of the feedback loop, any autocatalytic cycle becomes
the epi-center of a centripetal pattern of flows towards which as many resources as
possible will converge (Figure 5.)
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Figure 5. Centripetal action as engendered by autocatalysis.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of centripetality to the phenomenon of
life. Conventional Darwinism conveniently overlooks the role of “striving” in evolution.
All these various organisms are engaged in an epic struggle, competing with each other,
red in tooth and claw. But what accounts for this drive? In other words, how do we
demystify Darwinism? Here’s what Bertrand Russell (1960) had to say on the topic:
“Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much
as possible of its environment into itself and its seed....We may regard the
whole of evolution as flowing from this "chemical imperialism" of living
matter.” (Emphasis mine)
It is clear that by “chemical imperialism” Russell is identifying centripetality, and he
correctly places it at the core of evolution.
Conventional Darwinism considers competition central to evolution. Some
contend that this is a consequence of the social and economic milieu in which Darwin
lived (Salthe 2006.) Instead, we see here that competition is corollary to centripetality
(which, recall, rests upon notions of mutuality.) To see this we note how whenever two
loops partially overlap, the outcome could be the exclusion of one of the loops. In Figure
6, for example, element D is assumed to appear spontaneously in conjunction with A and
C. If D is more sensitive to A and/or a better catalyst of C, then there is a likelihood that
the ensuing dynamics will so favor D over B, that B will either fade into the background
or disappear altogether. That is, selection pressure and centripetality can guide the
replacement of elements. Please note in passing that the same tendency to replace B with
D could as readily replace a defective or destroyed B with another similar component B’,
i.e., the system can repair itself.
9
Figure 6 (a) Original configuration. (b) Competition between component B and a
new component D, which is either more sensitive to catalysis by A or a better
catalyst of C. (c) B is replaced by D, and the loop section A-B-C by that of AD-C.
Of course, if B can be replaced by D, there remains no reason why C cannot be
replaced by E and A by F, so that the cycle A,B,C could eventually transform into D,E,F,
and one concludes that the characteristic lifetime of the autocatalytic form usually
exceeds that of most of its constituents. This is exceptional only in that it proceeds in
absence of any external agency of repair or development. With the exception of our
neurons, virtually none of the cells that composed our bodies seven years ago remain as
parts of us today. A very small fraction of the atoms in our body were in us eighteen
months ago. Yet if our mothers were to see us for the first time in ten years, she would
recognize us immediately.
More generally, we note how autocatalytic selection sometimes acts to stabilize,
compartmentalize and regularize behaviors across the hierarchy of scales. Unlike the
rigidity of Newtonian universality, an event or behavior anywhere will rarely propagate
up and down the hierarchy without attenuation. For example, the consequences of noise
at one level are usually mitigated by autocatalytic selection at higher levels and by
energetic culling at lower levels. The action of process on nature induces it to take on
"habits" (Hoffmeyer 1993) and exhibit regularities, but the effects of such are limited in
time and space so that the universality of Newtonian laws is replaced by a granularity in
the real world (Allen and Starr 1982.)
Please note how the autocatalytic selection pressure that drives centripetality is
exerted in top- down fashion -- an agency proper to the macroscopic ensemble that
actively influences its constituent elements. Not only does this action directly contradict
the Newtonian proscription of closure, but it also reveals that the real agency behind the
creation of new objects is not another object. Rather it is a configuration of processes.
When Karl Popper (1990) recognized the centrality of configurations of processes, he
exulted,
"Heraclitus was right: We are not things, but flames. Or a little more
prosaically, we are, like all cells, processes of metabolism; nets of chemical
pathways."
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This view that configurations of processes constitute the proper agencies in living
systems I have called process ecology.
Enzo Tiezzi (2005) provided an example of how configurations of processes are
central to life. He asked the reader to consider a dead deer that had just been killed by a
hunter. It has the same mass, the same bound energy, the same genomes, the same
microscopic and (almost) the same macroscopic structure that it possessed a few minutes
ago when it was fully alive. What is missing is that the configuration of processes has
vanished.
Another very significant aspect of process ecology is how new form can emerge
quite naturally. That is, a major conundrum under the Newtonian scenario was how new
modes of behavior and forms could possibly emerge from existing ones? Such mystery
simply vanishes with the new scenario: The autocatalytic configuration of processes is
constantly being impacted by a vast stream of complex singular events. By virtue of its
coherence, the system is simply indifferent to the vast majority of such events. A very
small minority will negatively impact the operation of the system, which will have to
reconfigure itself so as to adjust to that impact and to similar ones that might follow. In
exceedingly rare circumstances a form of complex chance will match with the existing
configuration of processes in just such a way as to throw the system into a wholly new
mode of behavior. While the actual arrival of such a form-changing event cannot be
predicted, there are ways to delimit what kinds of perturbations might be capable of
doing so (Ulanowicz and Baird 1999.) Emergence fits neatly into the scheme of process
ecology.
In case you haven't been keeping count, I note how the action of singular chance
upon autocatalytic causal loops has been shown to violate all five of the Newtonian
postulates. To put it bluntly, the remnants of the Newtonian metaphysic are wholly
inappropriate to the description of living dynamics! It is necessary to identify an entirely
new, but wholly naturalistic, metaphysic – an ecological metaphysic, if you will. The key
to formulating the new metaphysic follows from the shift from law to process.
Historically, we began with Newtonian laws and prescribed a coherent framework within
which such laws could operate. In a similar way, we now ask ourselves what sort of
framework of postulates would be coherent with the operation of a process? I gave three
hints earlier in my discussion of the features of Polya’s Urn – namely that it required
chance, self-influence and history. Two of these we have discussed in some detail. The
first is what makes real change possible, or
(1) Radical Contingency: Nature in its complexity is rife with singular events. Most
do not upset the prevailing regularities, but a very few occasionally carry a system
into wholly different modes of emergent behavior.
The second involves how systems can maintain their integrities and grow. At its root we
identified autocatalytic action, which is a particular form of
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(2) Self-Influence: A process in nature, via its interaction with other natural processes,
can influence itself.
Thirdly, the system must retain some record of its past configurations, or a
(3) History: The effects of self-influence are usually constrained by the cumulation of
past such changes as recorded in the configurations of living matter. Such
configurations could be static material forms, as in the genomes of Darwinian
theory, but could just as well be inherent in the topologies of interacting
processes.
Upon these three postulates, it is possible to build in logico-deductive fashion most of the
key organic behaviors exhibited by ensemble living systems, such as ecosystems,
immune systems, social and economic systems, etc. (Ulanowicz In preparation.)
I wish to stress emphatically the fact that these three postulates lie wholly within
the natural realm. There is nothing whatsoever transcendental or supernatural about them.
They afford a seamless and far more coherent description of the life process than can be
achieved using the conventional metaphysics. Nevertheless, as the earlier quote by
Lewontin suggests, we should anticipate their vehement rejection by any number of
philosophers of science, simply because they do not sustain an unnecessarily rigid
materialistic ideology. As physicist Leonard Susskind (The Landscape <www.edge.org>)
recently remarked,
“From a political, cultural point of view, it's not that these arguments are religious
but that they denude us from our historical strength in opposing religion.”
One must bear in mind that the Newtonian consensus precipitated during an era of
overweening clericalism. Out of fear, some formulators were keen to separate their neoscientific activities from the supernatural, lest they risk excommunication or even
extermination. Others aggressively sought to undermine the very authority of the clerics.
The common effort was to create a chasm so deep as to separate irrevocably scientific
work and observation from anything even remotely connected with the supernatural, and
that included the living domain. As a result, we have inherited what Paul Tillich called
“an ontology of death”, from which it has become nearly impossible to make the
transition into a full understanding of the phenomenon of life. For the most part we have
convinced ourselves that the poorly-delineated mechanical connection between specific
genes and their consequent traits will provide all the answers to life, and, of course, we
are right some of the time.
But the circumstances of the 17th and 18th Centuries no longer prevail. In Western
society, at least, it is not religious clerics who are impeding our pathway to a richer
understanding of life. As Bateson implied, it is the self-ordained high priests of scientific
orthodoxy who cling rigidly to ideas that point us diametrically in the wrong direction.
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For we have seen how the three postulates of process ecology each contradict one of the
earlier Newtonian tenets, and that the remaining two remnants simply do not apply.
The new vision requires us to face up to openness. In Hefner’s terms, nature is
now seen to be rich in “wiggle room”. To those who would persist in thinking the world
to be closed, I would paraphrase Popper (1990) in the phraseology of Eddington (1928)
and say,
"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of evolution is in
disagreement with Fisher's equations, then so much the worse for Fisher's
equations. And if your theory contradicts the facts, well, sometimes these
experimentalists bungle things sometimes. But if your theory cannot
accommodate gaps in the causal structure of living systems, I can give you
no hope; there is nothing for it but to fall grievously short of providing full
understanding of how living systems evolve.”1
I would also caution those who use the adjective “blind” in reference to all chance. While
simple chance events may be blind, complex chance will almost always engender some
local directionality. The metaphysical naturalist is free to insist that such directionality be
considered entirely acausal. There is nothing to prevent the theist, however, from the
belief that other agency might lie behind some such events. The very nature of complex
chance assures that an “epistemological veil” precludes us from ever putting these
opposing assumptions to the test.
So to return to our questions about Bateson” (1) Was he a disgruntled crank? (2)
Does ecology somehow afford a more revealing perspective on nature? We have seen
how process ecology suggests

that we need to make the transition from law to process,

that we need to reverse the fundamental postulates about the nature of
reality,

that we need to adopt a simpler metaphysic,

that we need to focus on configurations of processes rather than on
objects.
It would seem that Bateson was more of a seer than a crank.
Eddington’s original warning read, "If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in
disagreement with Maxwell's equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to
be contradicted by observation, well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory
is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but
to collapse in deepest humiliation”.
1
13
I would like to end by suggesting that process ecology substantially obviates some
of the nagging conflicts between science and religion (Ulanowicz 2004.) With the
recognition of singular and complex chance comes the realization that it is impossible to
decide whether or not any further agency lies behind these ontic gaps. The metaphysical
naturalist is free to continue to maintain that such holes constitute a veritable dead end,
whereas the theist logically cannot be denied the opinion that some further agency,
possibly immanent divine intervention, is sometimes at work. Nor need such a god be a
“tinkerer”, fiddling with micro events that eventually propagate up the hierarchy of scale
(Penrose 1994.) Complex chance can exist at all scales, and in a causal fabric that is
replete with holes, nature becomes permeable to coordinated actions over all spatial and
temporal scales (not excluding the future).
As a corollary to the possibility of divine intervention, intercessory prayer no
longer appears perforce to be absurd.
That coherent thought is separated by several functional layers from synaptic
interactions lends the necessary degrees of freedom for an individual to exercise topdown free “will”.
Even theodicy, although remaining a formidable challenge to belief, loses its
absolute character, because the ecological worldview accepts the stochastic, the
inefficient, the redundant, and the incoherent as necessary for creativity. Without
marginal perturbations, disruptions and petty evils, systems simply cannot improve their
performance. They cannot become better organized. So theodicy becomes less the
ontological issue of why any evil is allowed, and the question becomes more one of
magnitude: Why is great evil allowed to persist?
Returning finally to life, process ecology provides a more satisfying pathway for
its introduction (Ulanowicz 2002.) Researchers on the origin of life have heretofore
focused on creating the right constituents, assuming that once these were available, they
would suddenly spring to life, much like Ezekiel’s dry bones putting on flesh and starting
to dance. Ecologists, such as H. T. Odum (1971), by contrast, have suggested that a
proto-ecosystem had to be in place before organisms could have evolved. His suggestion
was that at least two opposing (agonistic) reactions (like oxidation-reduction) had to be
separated and actively transported across a spatial domain that consisted of a region
containing a source of energy and another where the entropy created by use of the source
can be conveyed out of the system. Such a configuration of processes could then
engender more complicated but smaller cyclical configurations (proto-organisms) to
arise.
In summary, process ecology lays down a new ontology of life, and the ensuing
good news is that, in the scheme of matters evolving, a divinity would be free to act,
humans would be free to love, and scientists, at least those who so desire, would be free
to believe!
Thank you for your kind attention!
14
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