by Lucian CULDA
Social existence can be properly explained only if we interpret Existence correctly. This assumption has determined us, while analyzing the available interpretations, to sketch what we have called The processual – organic concept of existence. In what follows, I am going to outline and summarize the general traits by which the analyst can get acquainted with this issue. The latter has made possible what I have called the processual – organic ontology of social existence.[1]
- Energy manifests itself as an expression and a product of the possible connections between information processing and energy-related processes; it is not possible to draw a clear- cut borderline between the former and the latter; they occur and mutually support one another, in ways depending on their features.
- The coexistence of information processing and energy-related processes make the occurrence of predicaments impossible: i.e., the state of stabilized overall organization, deprived of processuality, and the state of generalized disorder, thus of maximum entropy. Any processing generates, by its own consequences, the conditions for its own disintegration, and its disorganizing processes foster the emergence of further organizing processes.
- Existence alters its states in ways controlled by information processing, between the two predicaments. Part of this processing is accomplished in ways which cause some forms of organization to be far from equilibrium, that becomes their specific trait; I called this kind of organization processualities.
- Under certain circumstances, information and energy-related processes can preserve their relative stability state; they produce and maintain organizations whose state is close to equilibrium. I call such organizations complexities. Their state being close to equilibrium, not only do complexities have a relative internal stability, but also enjoy a larger degree of independence as to the external processualities, the ones encompassing them from the functional viewpoint included.
Complexities, irrespective of their nature, tend to disorganize themselves while the connections made by information processing are being disintegrated. Disorganization occurs in successive stages, deriving from the complexities’ information capabilities.
- Existence is a processuality; from this perspective, it cannot be reduced to its real forms of manifestation, precisely located in space and time, which are likely to be updated in particular and, as a consequence, particularizing contexts.
- The organic connections between the information and energy-related dimensions of physical processes make possible the physical (abiotic) organization. It is in this way that what we call abiotic mega-organization exists. As the latter, as a whole, exists and is possible only in states far from equilibrium, we also call it abiotic mega-processuality.
The abiotic mega-organization can nevertheless include areas in different states, close to equilibrium. The latter states derive from the information processing specific traits and materialize into slow energy process complexities.
- Under certain circumstances, and within certain areas reaching a state close to equilibrium, it is likely to have biotic organizations inside the abiotic mega-processuality, characterized by information and energy-related processes; the latter help maintain the very states close to equilibrium. By this, biotic organizations are complexities.
- I call biotic mega-organization the range of processes caused by the biotic complexities existence, by the connections created among them in a relatively stable abiotic environment.
The biotic mega-organizations emergence - as a network of bio-organizations located in, and connected to, in space and time, the abiotic type of existence - is made possible when abiotic processing, in its turn, makes it possible for:
i) processors able to monitor energy-related processes, by this fostering the existence of encompassing complexities, endowed with reproduction capacities; we call the latter biotic complexities;
ii) biotic complexities’ information and energy-related interfaces to the environment, the functional connections included.
The biotic complexities can survive if the joint features of their processors and energy support, as well as the information links to the complexities existing in their environment make possible not only their relatively stable functionality, but also the preservation within certain limits of the internal environment traits, together with the information and energy-related climate. The biotic complexities cannot be inactive informationwise; their relative stability states do not derive from the information processing reduction, but from the latter’s features. A biotic complexity exists as long as the conditions that foster the specific information and energy-related organization are met.
As information and energy-related organizations, and being possible only if continually functioning, biotic complexities can be considered bio-hardware equipped with bio-software meant to support them. The bio-informational processing energy supply consists in biochemical and bioelectrical processes produced in bio-fields. Depending on such processes, the biotic complexities can alter certain functional parameters, but cannot be restored on other functional bases; they only can reproduce and adjust within the boundaries set by the informational bio-processors’ features. If the aforementioned hypotheses are correct, the biotic processuality they support cannot reorganize on different bases.
- Social processuality becomes possible when biotic processing makes it possible for biotic organizations, which, in their turn, foster possible processors with different features from their biotic complexities. The newly emerged processors – which I call interpreters - create discontinuities within the biotic organizations’ functioning. Just because they comprise bio-processors and interpreters, and by their specific forms of action, people function as processualities.
- If it is possible for them to be processualities, people foster organizations whose features are different from the biotic ones. I called social processuality the range of processes made possible by the co-existence of people, processes achievable by the specific information processors’ contribution. Social processuality is the output and expression of information and energy-related processes, made possible by people’s bio-processors and interpreters; the information processors and energy-related processes that maintain social processuality are connected, thus fostering organizing, disorganizing and functional processes.
The interpreters initially emerge in keeping with the local information and energy-related pressures, specific and particularizing, but they inevitably tend to more performing interpretations, as they can rebuild under their own products and consequences pressures. These interpreters’ traits cause the social existence they support to reorganize successively; the internal reconstructions are not by this random: they derive from the new processors’ interpretive possibilities enhancement and tailor according to the tensions developing between the bio-informational processors and the interpreters.
The interpretations’ dependence on criteria and rules established during the interpretive processing also causes interpretations not to be satisfactory since the very beginning; setting up the interpreters in keeping with certain states perceived as problematic fosters specialized interpreters emergence, able to initially investigate disparate interpretations, constructions and interpretive processing, and later on interpretive processuality as a whole. I call these interrogative processors. Within interpretive processing, the interrogative type processing therefore emerges, under certain circumstances; it investigates interpretations and their scope, and also the interpreters’ likeliness, features and functions. Although initially unconscious, and then erroneously made conscious, the interrogative processing’s ultimate aim is the understanding of Existence, and the latter’s traits modeling.
Interpretive processing causes social existence to be an unstable information and energy-related area inside a biotic organization characterized by relative stability. The interpreters preserve the social existence in states far from equilibrium, until interpretive processing becomes satisfactory, and people, able to properly interpret their own situation within existence, can increase their possibilities inside the biotic mega-organization functionally encompassing them.
- The statements made earlier lead us to the following plausible bottom line: in each of the three types of organizations, information and energy-related processes are taking place, sharing specific features. The abiotic mega-organization, as well as the biotic and social organization functional autonomy, derives from the latter’s self-regeneration capacity and their processes specificity; their relative autonomy is a consequence of the aforementioned encompassing relations. The three organization types have established certain relations among them: the biotic organization depends on preserving the abiotic one within certain functional states, and the social existence is dependent upon preserving the biotic organization within certain functional states as well. Such existential situations are likely as mega-processuality can comprise areas of close to equilibrium states. The biotic mega-organizations are possible in areas of abiotic existence which preserve close to equilibrium states, sharing certain features. Socio-organizations also evolve into biotic ones which remain in states close to equilibrium with specific features.
[1] Lucian Culda, Social Processuality. Bucharest, Licorna Press, 1992.