Subject: [SANET-MG] sustainable systems as organisms

From: jcummins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 07:38:57 -0400

Biosystems
Volume 82, Issue 1 , October 2005, Pages 39-51

Sustainable systems as organisms?

Mae-Wan Hoa, , and Robert Ulanowiczb,
Abstract
Schrödinger [Schrödinger, E., 1944. What is Life? Cambridge University 
Press, Cambridge] marvelled at how the organism is able to use metabolic 
energy to maintain and even increase its organisation, which could not 
be understood in terms of classical statistical thermodynamics. Ho [Ho, 
M.W., 1993. The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, World 
Scientific, Singapore; Ho, M.W., 1998a. The Rainbow and the Worm, The 
Physics of Organisms, 2nd (enlarged) ed., reprinted 1999, 2001, 2003 
(available online from ISIS website www.i- sis.org.uk)] outlined a novel 
“thermodynamics of organised complexity” based on a nested dynamical 
structure that enables the organism to maintain its organisation and 
simultaneously achieve non-equilibrium and equilibrium energy transfer 
at maximum efficiency. This thermodynamic model of the organism is 
reminiscent of the dynamical structure of steady state ecosystems 
identified by Ulanowicz [Ulanowicz, R.E., 1983. Identifying the 
structure of cycling in ecosystems. Math. Biosci. 65, 210–237; 
Ulanowicz, R.E., 2003. Some steps towards a central theory of ecosystem 
dynamics. Comput. Biol. Chem. 27, 523–530].

The healthy organism excels in maintaining its organisation and keeping 
away from thermodynamic equilibrium – death by another name – and in 
reproducing and providing for future generations. In those respects, it 
is the ideal sustainable system. We propose therefore to explore the 
common features between organisms and ecosystems, to see how far we can 
analyse sustainable systems in agriculture, ecology and economics as 
organisms, and to extract indicators of the system's health or 
sustainability.

We find that looking at sustainable systems as organisms provides fresh 
insights on sustainability, and offers diagnostic criteria for 
sustainability that reflect the system's health.

In the case of ecosystems, those diagnostic criteria of health translate 
into properties such as biodiversity and productivity, the richness of 
cycles, the efficiency of energy use and minimum dissipation. In the 
case of economic systems, they translate into space-time differentiation 
or organised heterogeneity, local autonomy and sufficiency at 
appropriate levels, reciprocity and equality of exchange, and most of 
all, balancing the exploitation of natural resources – real input into 
the system – against the ability of the ecosystem to regenerate itself.

Keywords: Thermodynamics; Organised complexity; Cycles; Coherent energy 
storage; Indicators of sustainability; Minimum dissipation

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