#Book #Systems #2021/5 *May 29, 2021* ![[web-of-life.png|400]] [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Web-Life-Scientific-Understanding-Systems/dp/0385476760) ### Summary The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra summarizes developments in science from roughly the 1940s to the 1980s. Capra presents the fields of cybernetics, dynamic systems, chaos, ecology, and biology as a paradigm shift thanks to their use of [[Systems Thinking]]. Some of the best discussion in the book comes towards the beginning as Capra summarizes systems and complexity theory. Around the middle of the book, Capra offers a theory of what it means for an organism to be a living system: 1. Living systems exhibit [[Autopoiesis]]; 2. Living systems are [[Dissipative Structures]]; 3. Living systems are cognitive systems. The first condition describes what pattern living systems take. The pattern a system can take is similar to the pattern music can take; the same song can be played on a guitar or a piano (at least in theory) since the musical pattern is the same. The piano or the guitar is the structure in which the pattern is realized, and in the same way, dissipative structures are the structures that autopoietic systems are realized on. The final bit of the book deals with what it means to say that all systems are cognitive systems. Capra subscribes to the [[Santiago Theory of Cognition]], named for Santiago, Chile, where Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana developed the theory. In short, the Santiago theory claims that any act in which a living system changes its network pattern is a cognitive act. This is so broadly defined that it includes self-initiated changes in bacteria all the way up to the most abstract cognition seen in humans. Such a broad definition is advantageous because it describes essentially what it means for living systems to "compute" or to "cognize," such acts are the organism changing its network structure in response to environmental perturbations. In so doing, at least an external world is *created* by the living system. Such an external world is not *the* world, but is a world reflective of the relevant features of the world for the organism. Some of the empirical facts that Capra draws on are obscure; a big deal is made of peptides and neural oscillations without a very clear link to his theory. In my opinion, this causes the end of the book to fall apart quite a bit. Capra's characterization of autopoiesis and of dissipative structures is compelling and fits perfectly with the summary of the scientific fields such concepts are drawn from at the beginning of the book, but the discussion of cognition comes kind of out of left field and relies heavily on the work of Varela and Maturana. As a result, I have some skepticism about the cognitive theory Capra offers, but my interest is piqued and I will move on to take a look at the work of the Santiago neuroscientists.