Biological complexity: Feedback loop importance (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 24, 2016, 15:29 (3135 days ago) @ dhw

https://aeon.co/essays/the-feedback-loop-is-a-better-symbol-of-life-than-the-helix?utm_... 
> dhw: read the essay and made my own list of quotes, which I then found was more or less the same as yours. There is no need to repeat them. The gist of the whole article (correct me if necessary) is that cell communities throughout Nature organize themselves to cope with the demands of the environment. The feedback loop simply tells us how they interact. Strikingly, the essay only talks about adaptation, and never about innovation, which is the great mystery underlying evolution, but in both processes there obviously has to be a physical mechanism whereby cells can make changes to themselves. Over and over again, we see the expression “self-organize” which takes place through communication between the cells. Advance planning is not possible, because organisms cannot predict environmental change. And that is as far as the essay can take us. It does not tell us that “Shapiro is wrong”, or that your theory concerning God's “guidance” is wrong. It only tells us that cell communities “self-organize” (without advance planning) to enable themselves to function, and makes no attempt to explain what directs the mechanisms that do the organizing.-I appreciate your reading it.The article is not meant to supply what you seem to hope for. It simply shows how complex the art/act of living happens to be. How well-organized cells are for cooperation in their functions and HOW automatic it all is. Those feedback loops are simply series of organic molecular reactions which lead to a chemical conclusion that the level of this or that is correct, or to produce this or that product. As an example look at this diagram of the Krebs cycle which produced energy everywhere in aerobic organisms:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle-Click on the diagram to enlarge and see the complexity. -This article illustrates the required automaticity of cell function for life to persist, while the cells are constantly replacing parts of the cells. 'Beehive of constant activity' falls short as a description of the comparison. Shapiro's bacteria are no different. I'm looking backward from the multicellular result of evolution.