A materially active account of structuration

In Lane’s attempt to make sense of how atoms can make living structures he refers to this

uncharted area where he considers that life is a side reaction to of the main energy releasing action. He identifies a physical process occurring in a natural space that slowly differentiates into a defined space, not unlike early London being territorialised by the building of a wall by the Romans in about the year 200AD following the building of the fort defining a singular point. What he finds is that electrons are physically transferred from one side of a barrier to another, as a physical and not chemical process. It is an act within physical constraints suggesting that life is a physically motivated act with physical constraints, one of which is transportability. The physical business of living is a factor that must be allowable in transport ontology as is the need for large scale energy demands for energy that is converted by a detailed mechanism that is not plain chemistry. Lane also identifies a flow and a flux in the form of mineral catalysts and natural compartmentalisation. There is not a clearly known or agreed physical/mechanical/chemical or epistemic tool that provides a lawful and disprovable basis for what he is finding. He uses ‘invent’ (Lane, p152) regarding the new pathway. He leans towards an outcome in terms of natural selection but falls short of describing what the ‘striving ‘in Darwin’s theory is in this situation. He has no clear understanding of how the apparent

F

30A

information of ‘aboutness’ of the cellular behaviour comes about. It is not information-based construction but construction coming about though transportation and flows that are physical and directional. The proposition here is that if a system is self-energy sustaining then it has an epistemic dimension and acts on information about its environment and is not just a mechanism responding to data. From this I suggest that transport as a flow mechanism is a physical enabler of both passive and active transportation within living systems. It is part of the process of the emergence of

meaning and a visceral evolution of intentionality in the epistemic dimension. The process described entails structural building of pathways and mechanisms of action and perception that maximise energy flow to the benefit of the living organism.

This lawful process does not rely on total randomness and chance in the development of structure and complexity. Systems that are successful in their development maximise opportunities open to them within the structure of that space, and in doing so exhibit a form of physical, or chemical intelligence acting on the selectiveness of systems maintained within an invariant ambient energy flow. A model of this process would merge and blur the boundaries between physics, psychology, and biology via flows of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, chemiosmosis, and physical intelligence. Transport can then be analysed and theorised in terms of the operation of the organism –

environmental system, the instantiation of self-other.

It is helpful to consider the birth and development of London as though it were a primitive

prokaryotic cell9_{. London was established on the north bank of the Thames by the Romans as it was}

controllable crossing point, as the river was narrower at that point because it flowed between two small hills. The first settlement was surrounded by a ditch and earth rampart with a wooden palisade on top. The crossing point was formalised when a bridge was built over the Thames. After being ransacked and burned to the ground by Queen Boudicca, the rebuilt town was better

protected by a wall from further invasion. A thriving port developed which saw goods imported and exported. This development, where a separated space was created by a ditch and earth walls is analogous to the development of the first physical cell. Invasion and pillaging would mean that little structure would develop at first.

The occupants now address the same questions that Lane posed about how cells keep the

differences between inside and out. This was achieved by controlled entry gates. There is no need in

9 _{The following summary of the reasons for the location of Thames is drawn from a number of sources (e.g}

this analysis to consider a neo-Darwinian focus on an informational approach to biology when explaining how the cell or the city developed. The creation of a living town is about flows, earth, and connections.

When viewing a map of the general layout of the early city of London it is hard to escape the visual form as resembling that of a cell (Figure 31). The city wall keeps the inside separate from the outside and a permeable barrier maintains

flows via the river Thames, which brings food and takes away waste. Of particular interest are the portals around the perimeter of the settlement, both on the river and as gates for transport port control. City gates regulate the flows with functions including the isolation of social parasites, in the form of gates to prison. I note also that environment considerations caused structure such as the specialised London Bridge as a gateway. Internal of the

cell we see transport and flow pathways being roads and rivers, with internal transport paths. One would think that this structure with the energy flows of the time created maximum health and power to the cell. We can view this development as geological as it concerns itself with dynamical elements (energy flow, nonlinear causality) as similar to non-living structures. For cities on the sea border an energy source for developing complexity is provided by the trade winds. I would consider early London and Venice to be ‘prokaryotic’ in their structure as they lacked mitochondrial engines: Engines that you feed. The 1800’s brought about new intensification of inflow of energy to city cell structures, through the exploitation of fossil fuel. The role of transportation quickly developed and was powered by the potential energy available to increase flows with resultant changes in form.