The Ecological Continuity between the inorganic, the organic and the artificial

Stanislas Bigirimana

The ecological continuity between the inorganic, the organic and the artificial can be understood by reverting to Wiener’s definition of information as an organising principle i.e. “negative entropy” hence defining information as self-organising matter and energy. This definition of information supports a cybernetic model that views “things social as interacting processing systems” and “appreciate[s] the importance of communication and control in such systems. This idea of information is linked with the fact that information appears in terms of spatial arrangements be they arrangements of molecules and their parts (eg. DNA) at the macro-molecular level, arrangements of nerve cells and impulse patterns in the vertebrate nervous system, spatial arrangements of objects in the environment, spatial arrangement of signs in mediated reality such as language (social form of language), or spatial arrangements of signs in meta-forms (personal forms of language or highly formalized languages such as rules of logical inference, mathematical operations and computer algorithms that apply only to restricted domains). There is a possibility of reaching a better understanding of the structuring and the functioning of the universe beyond mechanics and Cartesian dualism. A cybernetic model, for instance, instead of reducing natural processes to matter and motion adds order and purpose as part and parcel of natural processes and systems. When dealing with natural processes and systems using a cybernetic model, we are not dealing with “dead” matter, ever static and immutable. Matter understood this way, implies that we are not looking only at fundamental particles in motion or immutable mechanical laws but at the various ways through which material elements are set in motion (mechanical aspects) but also the various ways material elements organise themselves into structures and processes that are capable of fulfilling natural or artificial purposes in natural systems or artificial systems such as firms or farms. In addition to looking at matter from the point of its nature (substance), a cybernetic model is open for a possibility of adding structure, behaviour and function (purpose) as significant aspects of reality.  This approach challenges in an unprecedented way the conception of the relationship between human beings and other living and non-living members of nature as antagonistic. Religious traditions such as Judaism and Christianity affirm that human beings are created in God’s image and have a God-given power to subject animals, plants and inanimate matter. Even some environmentalists remain anthropocentric since they argue for the protection of the environment as a way of preventing human extinction in case natural resources are exhausted or natural disasters such as climate change or floods make human living impossible. Rationality implies not only the ability to reason – and humans deny these abilities to non-human beings – but also to subjugate nature through agriculture, the domestication of animals, industrialization and social systems. However, this approach to rationality ignores symbiotic and feedback processes embedded in natural and social processes in a way that ignoring social and ecological rationality may lead to the destruction of the universe.