Biological Forms
Alexander Liss
Realized
and Potential Stable States
Oscillations
of Characteristics
Crucial
Phenomenon of Oscillation
Illusion
of Guided Development
It is relatively easy to group biological
organisms according to their appearances, behavior, etc. There are easily
discernible patterns, and often there are some clear boundaries between such
groups, for example breeding could be impossible between individuals belonging
to different groups.
A good example of such grouping is a set of
breeds of dogs. Dogs of different breeds are clearly different in their
appearances, skills, character, patterns of their interactions with their
owners, etc.
Because different breeds of dogs could
inter-breed and some breeds require assistance of veterinarian to breed, this
stable separation of all dogs on distinctive forms could be explained only in
context of dog-owners, and hence the system of dogs and their owners has a
specific pattern – a set of stable breeds of dogs.
In this case, it is obvious, why such
stable groups exist – they are consciously maintained. Other cases, as stable
groups in the wild, require analysis.
In complex dynamic systems, there are states
of the system, which are “stable”. Knowing such states is useful in prediction
and control of the system.
Biological forms are stable states in the
bio-system. These stable states exist because of the relatively stable
geographic and weather environment, limited set of combinations of biological
mechanisms, which could be deployed in a biological unit, limitations on
possible forms of interactions between biological units, etc.
One has to specify, what a biological form
is, i.e. one has to specify which stable states of the bio-system are of
interest.
One dimension of this specification is
obvious – it should be a group of creatures recreating itself through some mechanism
(division, sexual procreation). Sometimes, one has to combine similar groups of
this type, even when they never interact with each other, if they are similar.
In
many cases, another dimension has to be added. Many creatures live in close
symbiosis. They do not exist in separation, as some types of yeasts exist only
in some plants, or some bacteria exist only in guts of some animals (baby
elephants have to pick up these bacteria from dung of their mothers). In such
cases, it makes sense to define a biological form as a group of such symbiotic
creatures.
Some
creatures exist in communities or colonies, as ants or bacteria in a mouth. In
communities, there is specialization of creatures or variation of functioning
depending on a place in the colony, which makes functioning of community not
reducible to functioning of its members. In such cases, the community of
creatures should be viewed a biological form. This is a third dimension of
classification.
One
could extend this reasoning to complex creatures, which are a system of
different specialized cells functioning in concert.
An
organism, community or colony could have its own stable states – variants of
functioning, but this is level of detail, which is beyond interest at this
point.
To
discover stable states, one has to specify stable circumstances of the biological
form, which sometimes is not easy, because living creatures change their
environment and interact with each other. In many respects, the definition of
the biological form relies heavily on the definition of circumstances, which
are perceived as invariant.
A
biological form is a group of reproducing and interacting units (cells,
organisms, etc.), which could be subdivided onto sub-groups of units
functioning in a different way, for example specialized. These units cooperate
(in different degree in different biological forms). Inclusion of each
sub-group in a biological form is essential to understanding of functioning of
the system. It could be because such sub-group cannot function in isolation, as
gut bacteria, or because it is impossible to understand functioning of the
group without inclusion of such sub-group, as in case of colony of bacteria. As
an extension of this idea, complex organisms are also presented as a “community”
of specialized units.
Biological
forms are compared in two dimensions: structure and functioning of their units
and structure and functioning of the community of these units.
Transition
from one biological form to another is also viewed in same dimensions:
transformation of units and transformation of communities.
Some
biological forms cannot be defined in isolation from their social organization,
ants for example. Different “units” of ants could look differently, but they
are simply specialized units of the same biological form.
In
the wild, one simply observes living creatures and their interactions and makes
decision how they have to be grouped to define a smallest possible group, which
is a meaningful biological form.
Breeders
go beyond that descriptive approach; they make mental images, models of
potential groups and through experimentation find which variants are actually
potential stable states of the bio-system.
Consistent
separation of potential stable states of the bio-system, states in which creatures
could exist, and realized stable states, where real creatures do exist, is a
powerful tool of analysis and classification of the biological forms.
With
this separation comes specific analysis of conditions, when a potential stable
state could become a realized one and vice versa.
Hence,
it is important to include potential stable states into definition of
biological form.
Note
that inclusion in analysis of potential biological forms implies that at least
theoretically the same type of a biological form could emerge in different
places, which have no direct contact.
The
first task of analysis of biological forms is classification – finding
biological forms and establishment relationships between them. As it was
emphasized above, realized and potential biological forms have to be taken in
consideration.
It
is obvious that at current state of science, studying of potential biological
forms is difficult, but the fact that their existence is assumed provides
proper methodological approach in such classification.
The
macro tasks of classification are:
·
finding a
set of potential stable states for a given set of conditions
·
finding
how this set changes with the changes of conditions
·
finding
a set of realized stable states
The
detailed tasks of classification are:
·
finding
conditions of transitions from one stable state to another, and describing
realized transitions, where creatures actually underwent such transition
·
finding
conditions of emergence of new potential stable states and their disappearance,
and describing emergence and disappearance of realized stable states
·
finding
conditions of splitting of a potential stable state into a group of new potential
stable states and coalescence of a group of potential stable states into one
potential stable state, and describing of splitting and coalescence of realized
stable states
Proper selection of
characteristics of biological forms and analysis of their oscillations is
crucial not only for proper classification but also in some practical
applications
George Sugihara observed that rules of
fishing, where only fish above some size could be harvested, established to
preserve fisheries, lead to opposite consequences. In the time of resources
stress, fish population without large resilient individuals diminishes in size
much quicker than without such rules and in times of abundant resources young
fish multiplies fast, population grows quickly and depletes resources.
This shows how lack of understanding of the
dynamic of a biological form – of a stable state in the biological system,
leads to bad management and endangerment of the stability of the form.
To assert that a state is stable means
asserting that its vital characteristics oscillate. There boundaries of such
oscillations, beyond which the stable state unravels. It transitions in
something else – dissipates, flips into another stable state, or splits into a
few new stable states.
In this case, a vital characteristic is the
size of the population of fish. Oscillation of this characteristic is affected
by fishing, and cited above rules of fishing lead to high amplitude in oscillation
of the size of population and hence sometimes dangerously low size of
population.
There is a clear correlation between
oscillation of sizes of populations of the biological form and oscillation of
the size of renewable resource (grass, prey, etc.), which this form consumes.
When vital characteristics of a biological
form oscillate, they could reach an area, where the survival of this form
becomes questionable, i.e. the stable state reaches transition from realized
state to not realized one.
Hence, some stable states could be more
stable than the other. Some biological forms have smaller probability of
self-destructive internal development and could survive broader variations of
environment than the others.
George Sugihara noted that relatively small
changes in circumstances of the biological form (introduction of “novel” way of
fishing, not taking catch, which is easier to take as small fish, but leaving
out small fish) could lead to potentially self-destructive oscillations of the
characteristics of the biological form.
To have high degree of stability, a
biological form has to have some damper, which moderates oscillations of its
vital characteristics.
In the case of fish, large fish, which
limits procreation of small fish in times of plenty and have better chances to
survive in bad times, plays the role of such damper.
Fishing rules caused changes of average
size of fish – it became smaller. The rule of fishing created new environment,
where the stable state corresponds to smaller average size of fish. This shows
how important it is to define the relatively invariant environment to define
the biological form. Change of the environment leads to the change of the form.
Hence, what is changing fast because it is
affected by the creatures should not be viewed as environment of the biological
form. When the environment of the biological form is changed externally, one
should anticipate new characteristics of the form or even change of the form.
Usually one monitors characteristics of
realized stable states of the system and makes conclusions about potential
states and states transitions.
One uses a set of characteristics to
differentiate biological forms.
There
is an important type of characteristic of biological forms – a combinatorial
characteristic, when one simply asserts that the form has some set of features
or does not have it. These characteristics are easy to “measure”, hence they
are broadly used.
Note
that these characteristics could describe physical appearances of units of the
form or their social organization.
When
conditions change, it could be that in a changed system instead of some stable
state one finds a set of new stable states, which emerged from the original
one, or the original state transitions into another stable state with different
characteristics.
Some
such transitions are more probable than others. When one follows only
combinatorial characteristics, transitions, where only one characteristic
changes (a new feature appears or an old feature disappears) are more likely
than transitions with multiple changes.
One
could imagine environment with a set of stable states and a new biological form
placed in it. Over time, the system will change and instead of one biological
form a few new forms appear through the series of above described “split” and
“flip” transitions.
Observer
of this development could develop an illusion that this is a guided
development, an illusion that an original biological form is “adjusting” to
changing conditions. While in fact, this is only the manifestation of the set
of stable states in the system. These states are exposed through a very
“artificial” setting, where at some point one biological form is introduced in
the system.
Transitions
of biological forms in the case of dogs breeding are guided. In the wild, we
have to assume that they are not predictable. Series of unpredictable influences
on the system – circumstances, genome, etc. sometimes lead to changes in the
set of realized stable states and sometimes even lead to changes in not
realized stable states.
The
idea of large number of small random changes is a broadly used idea (see for
example concept of Shoretz on this site) and it is a
useful element of a macro model describing changes in the observed set of
biological forms.
Focus
on combinatorial characteristics and above example of introduction of one
biological form into environment could lead to illusion that there is a
“guiding principle” of development of biological forms, of “adjustment” of
biological forms to their environment, of development of biological in a form
of a “family tree”. This is only an illusion.
There is no meaningful way to describe
humans as a biological form.
The essential characteristic of humans is
that humans are social creatures; hence social characteristics are essential
characteristics, when one tries to define a form.
As social creatures humans perpetually
change their environment.
Hence, it is impossible to define invariant
environment, which allows finding a stable state, which could be called a
biological form.
Concept of species is less flexible than
presented here concept of biological form. If there is no meaningful way to
define humans as a biological form, then there is no way to define humans as
species.
Note that there are many misguided attempts
to fit humans in limited definition of species on par with animals; they
inevitably lead to bizarre conclusions, as the need to limit reproduction of
humans to provide space for animals.
This inability to understand that humans
perpetually restructure biological system and as result change biological forms
stem from methodological mistake, from an attempt to squeeze humans into
classification, where there is no place for the phenomenon of social creatures,
which control environment.