It also seems important to recognize that unreliability or conflict within systems can be goods in themselves, not just ways of providing fault tolerance or adaptability. The example of subunits acting against the goals of the larger system can be destructive, as in cancer, but it can also be transformative. Sometimes misaligned actions are actually better actions. I’m thinking of conversion moments: a self-described selfish person experiencing an unpremeditated act of kindness. The larger organism’s goal (selfishness) is disrupted by the smaller unit’s behavior (kindness), but that misalignment creates the possibility of reflection and a new cohesion built on deeper values.
In fact, I think all moments of creativity, insight, grace, novelty, revelation, and transformation depend on something being introduced into the larger system that was not there before—something the system itself could not predict or control. At the limit, all learning, growth, and creativity require a new, “unpredictable” attitude arising to the larger system. If the world were entirely mechanized, predictable, and controllable, then there could be no more of those good things: no insight, no grace, no transformation, etc
This feels a lot like the difference between improvisational collaboration and choreographed collaboration! In choreographed collaboration, you focus on doing *your* part exactly as planned and you trust others to do theirs as well. In improvisational collaboration, you are constantly attuned to *others*, paying attention to what they need, or how you can do something to enhance or support what they're doing, or how you can be inspired to act based on the structure they've created for you
Thanks for this, to say the least it is a very stimulating article. Now that you have opened the can of fault tolerance worms, it strikes me that the difference is actually degree of fault tolerance rather than reliability of parts. The parts of a mechanical system must be designed with high levels of precision because we have not yet mastered the art of fault tolerance to the degree that is found in nature. The reason that commercial airliners are so safe is not because their parts almost never fail, but rather because we have been able to design the system to continue functioning even when parts fail, as they often do. I suspect that if airplanes could be designed with the level of fault tolerance found in nature, air travel would be even safer and designing airplanes would be a somewhat less exacting process. Essentially, a high level of precision in design of parts is something forced upon engineers because of the relatively primitive state of our understanding of fault tolerance.
In "How Life Works' Philip Ball points out the problems with using metaphors (like machines) to describe biological processes & why this has proved to be a limitation.
We are taught that cells are machines, though no machine we have invented behaves like the simplest cell; that DNA is a code or blueprint, though it is neither; that the brain is a computer, though no computer behaves like a brain at all.
After reading your piece, I think it's time I revisit the topic, as I've learned a lot from your exposition. I see the idea of biological and human systems as mechanisms as a misleading metaphor, a projection of our way of doing things on the rest of the world. You have filled in some essential detail for me.
woah, so cool that you were exploring this in 2010! also, I love "philosophical anthropology" as a concept.
there's so much literature about the machines vs life question now also, it's a great time to revisit it!
and the limits of "mechanism" has been a big interest lately. a quick rec in case you're interested: the book The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (1997) has a chapter, "The Mechanical Philosophy", which is quite good, and was really helpful for me understanding what mechanistic thinking is all about, and its predecessor in the Aristotelian view. I heard about it from Peter Godfrey-Smith's intro to philosophy of science book, which also discusses mechanism although very briefly.
Great piece but incorrect in every element. Machines are evolved perhaps more than designed... look at the bicycle, the product of a million minds. The fittest cycles that survive are replicated, the failures go to the wall. Computer memory has faults yet works perfectly through checksums. Aircraft software has mistakes, but multiple systems are in place and vote out errors. Meanwhile we have multiple single point failures.... our hearts must beat 2.5 billion times to feed the brain with oxygen
very interesting. it seems like both machines and organisms have fault-tolerance, but I still feel like biology has "more" of it somehow. as a simple example, biology is self-healing – you can scrape parts of your body and they'll grow back. if you scrape of parts of a computer or car, they won't.
to be fair, it does depend on the technology too. self-healing concrete is a good counterexample. and likewise, some organism are better at regeneration than others!
It strikes me that bureaucracies can be anywhere along this continuum. Some bureaucratic systems are designed with a kind of robustness against misbehavior, and give discretion to the individuals that work in them. Others require people to do their precisely specified role. (Some of this is likely along the lines of the improvisational and choreographed collaboration that Harry mentions.)
exactly! this paper takes this in an interesting direction, where they argue that delegating control to the lower levels helps make the entire system more adaptive: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02325
great post. I've been getting interested in the 'new school of biology' stuff after reading Philip Ball's book and listening to a podcast on Michael levin's research, but have only scratched the surface so far. Any people/books/blogs you recommend checking out?
- Denis Noble's ideas, like his talk "Free will is not an illusion" https://iai.tv/video/free-will-is-not-an-illusion (I think some people consider him a bit of a crank? but very interesting nonetheless)
Yo dude sorry got sick and just coming back to this. Thank you for the excellent list of resources! Looking forward to digging in + will report back if I find anything good.
Edit: I just remembered the podcast that turned me onto Levin was Bruce Nielson's Theory of Anything. I assume you're already familiar but just in case, one of the only crit rats worthy of the title imo.
It also seems important to recognize that unreliability or conflict within systems can be goods in themselves, not just ways of providing fault tolerance or adaptability. The example of subunits acting against the goals of the larger system can be destructive, as in cancer, but it can also be transformative. Sometimes misaligned actions are actually better actions. I’m thinking of conversion moments: a self-described selfish person experiencing an unpremeditated act of kindness. The larger organism’s goal (selfishness) is disrupted by the smaller unit’s behavior (kindness), but that misalignment creates the possibility of reflection and a new cohesion built on deeper values.
In fact, I think all moments of creativity, insight, grace, novelty, revelation, and transformation depend on something being introduced into the larger system that was not there before—something the system itself could not predict or control. At the limit, all learning, growth, and creativity require a new, “unpredictable” attitude arising to the larger system. If the world were entirely mechanized, predictable, and controllable, then there could be no more of those good things: no insight, no grace, no transformation, etc
well said
This is a pithy banger of a piece. Really appreciate it as it helps me think through the biological underpinning of Internal Family Systems.
that's high praise, thank you!
This feels a lot like the difference between improvisational collaboration and choreographed collaboration! In choreographed collaboration, you focus on doing *your* part exactly as planned and you trust others to do theirs as well. In improvisational collaboration, you are constantly attuned to *others*, paying attention to what they need, or how you can do something to enhance or support what they're doing, or how you can be inspired to act based on the structure they've created for you
Thanks for this, to say the least it is a very stimulating article. Now that you have opened the can of fault tolerance worms, it strikes me that the difference is actually degree of fault tolerance rather than reliability of parts. The parts of a mechanical system must be designed with high levels of precision because we have not yet mastered the art of fault tolerance to the degree that is found in nature. The reason that commercial airliners are so safe is not because their parts almost never fail, but rather because we have been able to design the system to continue functioning even when parts fail, as they often do. I suspect that if airplanes could be designed with the level of fault tolerance found in nature, air travel would be even safer and designing airplanes would be a somewhat less exacting process. Essentially, a high level of precision in design of parts is something forced upon engineers because of the relatively primitive state of our understanding of fault tolerance.
well said. fault tolerance does seem to be a crucial component here
In "How Life Works' Philip Ball points out the problems with using metaphors (like machines) to describe biological processes & why this has proved to be a limitation.
We are taught that cells are machines, though no machine we have invented behaves like the simplest cell; that DNA is a code or blueprint, though it is neither; that the brain is a computer, though no computer behaves like a brain at all.
I covered this is more detail over an year ago - maybe of interest to you: https://rajeshachanta.substack.com/p/more-than-a-box-of-chocolates
awesome post!
Super interesting piece! It does a great job of outlining a key difference between organisms and machines.
Excellent piece of writing! I wrote on a similar topic, originally in 2010, and then republished on my blog in 2019. https://philosopherjustice.blogspot.com/2019/06/machines-humans-and-god.html
After reading your piece, I think it's time I revisit the topic, as I've learned a lot from your exposition. I see the idea of biological and human systems as mechanisms as a misleading metaphor, a projection of our way of doing things on the rest of the world. You have filled in some essential detail for me.
woah, so cool that you were exploring this in 2010! also, I love "philosophical anthropology" as a concept.
there's so much literature about the machines vs life question now also, it's a great time to revisit it!
and the limits of "mechanism" has been a big interest lately. a quick rec in case you're interested: the book The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (1997) has a chapter, "The Mechanical Philosophy", which is quite good, and was really helpful for me understanding what mechanistic thinking is all about, and its predecessor in the Aristotelian view. I heard about it from Peter Godfrey-Smith's intro to philosophy of science book, which also discusses mechanism although very briefly.
Thanks for that reference. The concept of "philosophical anthropology" originally comes from Kant.
Great piece but incorrect in every element. Machines are evolved perhaps more than designed... look at the bicycle, the product of a million minds. The fittest cycles that survive are replicated, the failures go to the wall. Computer memory has faults yet works perfectly through checksums. Aircraft software has mistakes, but multiple systems are in place and vote out errors. Meanwhile we have multiple single point failures.... our hearts must beat 2.5 billion times to feed the brain with oxygen
very interesting. it seems like both machines and organisms have fault-tolerance, but I still feel like biology has "more" of it somehow. as a simple example, biology is self-healing – you can scrape parts of your body and they'll grow back. if you scrape of parts of a computer or car, they won't.
to be fair, it does depend on the technology too. self-healing concrete is a good counterexample. and likewise, some organism are better at regeneration than others!
This is really great!
It strikes me that bureaucracies can be anywhere along this continuum. Some bureaucratic systems are designed with a kind of robustness against misbehavior, and give discretion to the individuals that work in them. Others require people to do their precisely specified role. (Some of this is likely along the lines of the improvisational and choreographed collaboration that Harry mentions.)
exactly! this paper takes this in an interesting direction, where they argue that delegating control to the lower levels helps make the entire system more adaptive: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02325
great post. I've been getting interested in the 'new school of biology' stuff after reading Philip Ball's book and listening to a podcast on Michael levin's research, but have only scratched the surface so far. Any people/books/blogs you recommend checking out?
ah yea there's so much stuff there, I'm also just scratching the surface. Ball's Aeon essay (https://aeon.co/essays/we-need-new-metaphors-that-put-life-at-the-centre-of-biology) was a big background inspiration for this post.
a few recs that come to mind:
- Alfonso Arias's book "The Master Builder", in particular his interview with Curt Jaimungal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyZeli50nXg
- Denis Noble's ideas, like his talk "Free will is not an illusion" https://iai.tv/video/free-will-is-not-an-illusion (I think some people consider him a bit of a crank? but very interesting nonetheless)
- this fascinating debate between Noble and Dawkins https://iai.tv/video/the-gene-machine
- Richard Watson's Songs of Life and Mind series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVmJximp0I4OJdT9bsFIebu0HjPAjtlEN
- "Evolution on Purpose" book (have only read 1-2 chapters) https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546409/evolution-on-purpose/
- Levin has put out a bajillion papers you've probably seen, but some of the ones that stand out to me are Natural Induction (https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/9/765) and self-improvising memory (https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/6/481)
let me know if you find anything interesting in this area too! still a pretty active thread for me
Yo dude sorry got sick and just coming back to this. Thank you for the excellent list of resources! Looking forward to digging in + will report back if I find anything good.
Edit: I just remembered the podcast that turned me onto Levin was Bruce Nielson's Theory of Anything. I assume you're already familiar but just in case, one of the only crit rats worthy of the title imo.
haha love it, I've listened to some of his episodes but not on levin specifically