Chapter 5

Expectation Without a Spectator

Paulo J. Negro

Abstract

Cellular organization provides the fundamental platform for exchanges between life’s integrated processes and the environment. Cellular processes convey adaptive information about the environment. Time-organized processes and information contained within living organisms are a source of fitness. The energy flow between single cells and the world forms a communication channel indissociably made of organic matter and information. This flow occurs under the informational principles of natural selection. However, the information built up into biological systems needs to become information informing about itself to transcend across levels of abstraction, such as described in Hofstadter’s strange loops. A working car engine expresses the “processual” expectation of its human designers: gas flows, then ignites, pistons move and so forth. The engine has no awareness of these expectations. The expectations are implicit to the designed physical structure. The processes that mediate physical and informational relationships of living organisms also have expectations built into them. Such expectations result from a selective natural history based on evolutionary constraints.

Total Pages: 25-29 (5)

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