On trouvera ci-dessous un résumé en anglais du métamodèle développé au CIES. Ce métamodèle, ou langage, holistique, permet d'interpréter plus facilement que les modèles mécanistes dualistes, l'auto-organisation et l'évolution des systèmes naturels vers la complexité et l'autonomie.

* Excerpts from:

"The Future Evolution of Consciousness as a Dialogue between Individuals and Society. Application of a Holistic Metamodel to the Emergence of a Global Human System." by Eric Schwarz.

Proceedings. of the 40th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Science, Budapest 1996. Editor J. M. Wilby. Published by ISSS, P.O. Box 6808, Louisville, KY 40206-0808, USA.

One of the most important (and neglected) point in the process of understanding nature is the set of conceptual tools used to express the features of the observed phenomena and their evolution. As is well known, Newton chose to express the observed movements of objects in space and time by a relation between their masses, their acceleration and the forces to which they are submitted (F=ma). This original choice influenced mechanics and the mechanistic natural sciences for centuries.

In the "non-mechanized" human sciences, epistemologies are as numerous as the schools of thought. For instance and to be short, in the single field of psychology, the psychoanalyst understands his patient in terms of more or less repressed unconscious pulsions, the neuro-physiologist, uses neural electro-chemical processes, the behaviorist, stimulus-response pairs, the computationist cognitivist information processing, not to mention the phenomenologist's, the connectionist's or the constructivist's points of view.

While the different historical disciplines of the sciences have developed their specific conceptual tools and rules, systems science holds that the large diversity of observable phenomena around us, can be made intelligible by using a limited number of abstract, primordial, and universal invariants and of relations between them. The aim of systems science is therefore the development of a general systems theory with a wider range of applicability, a greater ontological depth than the disciplinary sciences and, hopefully, a closer crrelation with the phenomena of nature.

In our systemic work, we also assume that below the diversity of the manifested objects and phenomena studied by the different disciplines, some regularities and invariants can be recognized. For example, two well known invariants are energy, which is conserved (in atoms as well as in brains and in socio-economical systems), and the homeostatic property of the negative feedback loop, which is a relational feature, independent of the material that constitutes the loop. We suspect that the effort of abstraction made in the choice of primordial categories will be rewarded by a greater simplicity, universality and symmetry in the representation and understanding of a wide range of natural systems (physical, biological, social or cognitive).

In the holistic systemic epistemology proposed here, whose purpose is to interpret systems of all kinds, any concrete system is seen as an instanciation of a prototypical non-separable entity, a kind of symbolic elemental system, constituted of parts (objects) in transaction (relations). As a non-separable entity cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts and as relations cannot be reduced to objects, we are led to three basic, primordial and irreducible categories: objects, relations and whole. The first corresponds to the usual plane of matter-energy of conventional physics (called the physical plane) (containing objects like a stone or an organism); it is the plane of the usual phenomena which we can perceive with our senses. The second is the plane of information, as considered in cybernetics; it is a logical plane, as for example the network of causal relations between variables and parameters in Forrester's models of a city, a country or of the world ("Systems Dynamics")); a relation is what we express with mathematical equations, logical propositions, boolean tables of truth or even with verbs in ordinary language (he gave her a jewel). The third plane is the plane of what exists, the totality of the interacting objects and their network of causality; it is the existential plane of wholeness, the existential plane of what is (for example a human being including his holistic attributes like consciousness and his/her singular identity or the public opinion in a society). On fig.1. are represented the prototypical simplest system, made of two interacting components (basic ontology), and the corresponding three primal categories used in our metamodel to describe the sensible world (basic epistemology).

The next step in the construction of the model is to describe the birth and development of a system, to identify the regularities, if any, in the emergence of a system in nature. Careful consideration of the creation of the forms in many types of systems (emergence of a convection cell, of a dissipative structure, of a new living species, of a new social structure, of a new paradigm, of a new level of consciousness, etc.) led us to recognize, the frequent occurence of the same sequence of phases in the self-organization of a new system: precursor tensions (non-linear conditions), instability (possible amplification of fluctuations), morphogenesis (Prigogine's order through fluctuations, 1984), and stabilization. Some additional explanations can be found on fig.2a.

0. Every self-organization starts in non-linear conditions (conditions far from equilibrium), which often follows the entropic drift or the actualization of potentialities of some decaying parent system.

1. In far from equilibrium conditions, fluctuations can be amplified and give rise to a differentiation of the medium (dissipative structures, order through fluctuations) by triggering morphogenetic local positive feedback loops.

2. Fluxes appear between differentiated dynamical structures giving rise to communication.

3. These physical interactions set up a network of causal relations, which influences the subsequent development of the processes (appearance of the cybernetical level).

4. The dialogue between the causal network and the physical processes become self-productive (autopoïesis).

5. The autopoïetic cycle become more and more self-referential: the machine (the object) and the network (the image) become more similar.

6. The new system reaches some level of autonomy and then drifts according its own rules (actualization of probabilities or potentialities).

Let us notice that the bifurcation (1) can also lead to the destructuration of the system, or to the recovery of the preceding stable configuration.

Fig2a:

In some cases, the sequence of four steps in the spiral described above, can be travelled several times, giving rise to a multi-turn spiral-shaped pattern representing both the periodic and the irreversible components of the dynamic. Each turn increases the structural complexity of the system, therefore also the the complexity of the network of its logical organization.

It is then tempting to try to combine the spiral pattern of fig2a with the three plane pattern (physical, logical and existential planes) of fig.1., and to represent the long range evolution of a system, not as a spiral in one plane, but as a helix in three dimensions, starting as a spiral in the physical plane and then rising through the relational plane to finally reach the existential plane. We make the additional assumption that the evolution of a system in the information and in the existential planes can also be represented by a spiral. Furthermore, we suppose that similar four phases of (en)tropic drift, discontinuity (alea), metamorphosis (self-organization) and stability (corresponding to some degree of autonomy) are present in the three spirals. Integrating the consequences of these suppositions, we end up with a unified global picture of the generic evolution of natural systems, from thermo-chemical auto-organization of dissipative structures to autonomization of conscious systems. More details on the evolution helix can be found in fig.2b.

The process starts with the omnipresent entropic drift (Label 0), followed soon or later by tensions between the system and its environment or between the system and its own parts. In these non-equilibrium conditions, a fluctuation can trigger a self-organizing process symbolized by a positive feedback loop (metamorphosis, Label 1). The bifurcation can also lead to minor changes or , as is more frequent, to destruction of the previous structures (if any). When the system has structures and fluxes (in particular vortices, Label 2), its state is also characterized by some point in the relational plane; a notable point is that of homeostasis whih correponds to functional stability (Label 3). The spiral of self-organization in the physical plane can be travelled several time increasing thus the complexity of the system. This feature is symbolized on the helix by the section called information drift, the tropic drift in the relational plane. The pattern chosen in this metamodel allows one to interpret in a coherent manner both the entropic drift toward uniformity and disorder and the information drift toward complexity. When the complexity reaches some given high level, a new feature can happen: self-production, or autopoiesis. (Label 4), which means that the material structures and processes in the system build up an immaterial network of causality which produces the structures and processes that gave rise to it: that is self-production. This ontological dialogue between a space-time structure and its corresponding functional organization also means that the system is self-referential (Label 5): it is its own reference, its laws come from itself. The next possible step in the evolution of a self-organizing system is the referential drift, which means that the systems becomes more and more self-referential. We suspect that this process corresponds to the emergence of the ontological identity of the system, which manifests itself by what we call consciousness. The continuation of this evolutive process points toward increased autonomy.

In summary, the following features can be noticed in this helical pattern:

1. Three cycles corresponding to the stability conditions of the system for each of the three planes: spatial vortices (or time pulsations) in the physical plane, homeostasy in the functional plane, and self-reference in the existential plane (Labels 2, 3, 5).

2. Three cycles corresponding to change: morphogenesis for creation (of forms) in space-time, autopoïesis for creation of self-productive (living) systems, and autogenesis for creation of self-knowing (conscious) identities (Labels 1, 4, 6).

3. This representation also allows one to interpret the three apparently paradoxical trends: entropic drift toward uniformity, informational drift toward complexity and existential drift toward identity.

Fig.2b:

In summary, the helix representation gives a unitary and coherent global picture of the generic evolution of natural systems, containing the following main stages (the numbers in round brackets correspond to the numbers in fig. 2b):

To make somewhat more explicit the interplay between these six cycles which characterize the functioning of viable systems that have reached the last stage on the helix of evolution, autogenesis, we can use the three plane representation, and place them in a consistent manner, where they belong: within the three planes or between them. Some additional comments can be found on fig. 2c.

In view of the applications of the model, a closer look at the structure of the seven steps of the emergence and development of the triad is needed. A more detailed study of the left half of the spiral on fig.2a shows that each of the six steps (Nos. 1-6) following the entropic drift (No. 0) and the alea corresponds to the appearance and intervention of a new cycle, until the six cycles found on fig.2c are activated.

Let us make some more comments on these six cycles.

0) The entropic drift of the medium is the natural trend of the preceding (parent) system, which may drive it far from its stable point ("far from equilibrium"), where a fluctuation can be amplified and start a catastrophic cascade of changes. This natural drift corresponds to the trend toward the more probable formalized by the increase of entropy for the most simple systems; for more complex cases this same drift can be more adequatly called actualization of potentialities.

1) Morphogenesis. The first of the six cycles can be visualized as a positive feedback loop between two (or several) mutually produced variables or parameters of the medium far from equilibrium, with the effect of differentiating the medium (dissipative structures, cancerous cells or demographic proliferation for example).

2) Vortices. The second cycle is a physical cycle in space and time, like vortices in a moving fluid, ecological recycling of matter, or oscillations like heart beats. A valid relation must be circular; it is the first necessary condition for perennity. This step corresponds to the first apparition of relations.

3) Feedback, Homeostasis. The next step in the developement of a viable system is the possibility of being stable. This feature requires the compatibility between the fluxes and exchanges in the physical plane (vortices, physiology) and the correponding network of causality, that can be seen as an abstract image of the concrete processes. This connection means that the system starts to exist as a whole, as a system, and not only as an aggregate of parts.

4) Autopoïesis. When a homeostatic system complexifies for billions of years like it was the case for the prebiotic evolution, it may reach a level where there is not only compatibility between the physical structure and the logical organization, but self-production: the organism incarnates a causality network which produces the organism that incarnated it. This new super-circularity is pictured by another ontological loop that connects the producing process (the dialogue between the material organism and the immaterial network) and the entity produced, the undivided individual. This step corresponds to logic of life.

5) Self-reference. Autopoïesis is the beginning of self-reference: the system is its own reference. The system is operationally closed; a completely autopoïetic system does not need any logical connection from the outside. Self-reference can be seen as the overlapping between the object and the image, the two terms in relation in the holistic plane. The object can be seen as the organism (the brain, for example) and the image as the immaterial network ("the mind" in traditional parlance). In this metamodel, the degree of self-reference of a system is interpreted as its level of self-knowledge that is of consciousness.

6) Autogenesis. The ultimate cycle represents the impact of the system as a whole on its producing dialogue; in other words autogenesis, self-creation, is what makes a system autonomous: an autonomous system is able to create its own laws. The autonomous system can be visualized as a whole in creative dialogue with itself.