Chapter 10. Boundaries and Systems


In his 1968 essay "Life's Irreducible Structure," M. Polanyi argued that physical laws don't determine the function of a machine, but the way those laws are harnessed do. As with machines, two principles determine the working of an organism — its structure, forming the boundary conditions, and the laws of nature harnessed by structure; the form of the organism transcends the laws it harnesses, but unlike a machine, an organism is self-generating. The boundary conditions of organisms are formed and constrained by their evolutionary history; functional competence is both an initial and a boundary condition, allowing life's complexity to increase.

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