Selftranscendence and Symmetrybreak: Some Notes on Cognition and Selforganization in Erich Jantsch’s Theory of Natural Systems

Abstract

Erich Jantsch’s theory of natural systems might be summarized in the following three interconnected major propositions: 1 natural systems are evolving systems; 2 natural systems are dissipative selforganizing systems; 3 natural systems are selftranscending systems.

The main thrust of the first proposition is that the vision on reality, beautifully voiced by Lessing as ‘a pulsing swirl of all being, continually changing, moving, dancing...’ (Lessing, 1976) has been founded scientifically by the selforganization paradigm of the 1970’s. The second proposition regards his own specific interpretation of the process resp. evolution or self organization drawing on a bold synthesis of some major scientific achievements of the above 1970’s. The third one might be viewed as the proposition regarding the inside of these dissipative selforganizing systems.¹)

In this article I will confine myself to the third proposition: what does the fuzzy inside of the dissipative selforganizing systems look like at closer investigation, what is ‘cognition’ which seems to be the ‘imponderable’ within selforganization, what exactly is ‘knowing’ which seems to be coiled in the heart of ‘becoming’, what precisely are those ‘fluctuations’ which seem to be webbed in the ‘dissipative structure’, just to allude to the fundamental idea in the sartrean ontology (Sartre, 1943) and to Monod’s natural philosophy (Monod, 1979). As distinct however from the cartesian dualism inherent in Sartre’s and Monod’s philosophy ‘knowing’ and ‘being’ seem to be each other’s complementary part in many theories of the non-standard systemsscience. For this ‘knowing’ seems to be the hidden trigger of the fluctuations and indirectly of evolution in general and of the evolution of the evolutionary organization in particular. The key-concept involved in this state of affairs is called selftranscendence.

The basic references used in this article are Jantsch’s most important publications (Jantsch, 1976; 1980a; 1980b; 1981a; 1981b). For the sake of and due to simple concept explication, some reconstructions differ from these basic text, just to render more exact some fuzzy aspects of his theory. Some provisional conclusions regarding this third proposition might be summarized as follows: a)The big puzzle of how to interpret the two ‘time arrows’ (viz. the entropy vs. the evolution) as one system, seems to present itself, disguisedly and analogously, again in the universe of evolution, in the form of the two basic opposite principles viz. that of selfreference and of selftranscendence. It is one of Jantsch’s merits to have called attention to this; b)Jantsch’s attempt to explain the relation between these principles as complementary disregards the serious -(at least) theoretical-problems inherent in the incompatibility of these principles. I think this is connected with his ambiguous assumption with regard to the beginning and the end (i.e. the purpose) of the universe; c)Jantsch’s theory seems to be predicated not only upon the now accepted assumption (e.g. among the autopoieticians) of the naturalization of cognition, but also upon the asserted anomaly (e.g. among the standard systemsscientists and even among some autopoieticians) of the cognitivization of nature. The puzzling synthesis of these two ‘opposites’ however has been never elaborated explicitly in his theory.