Hardback—348
pages
1996, DOUBLEDAY (Anchor Books)
Dimensions (in inches): 1.25 x 8.5 x 5.75
by Philip S. Wenz, Editor/Publisher
The greatest triumph of reductionist biology was the discover,
in 1953, of the double helical structure of the DNA molecule. The
key to unlocking life’s secretes, it was felt, had been found.
DNA served as a template on which the cell built it’s RNA which
in turn built its proteins—and the proteins, which included
enzymes, regulated all the functions of the cell. All we had to
do to understand life was analyze each organism’s DNA. In the
late 1960’s, a doctoral candidate in molecular biology told
me that within ten to fifteen years we would have a complete model
of a living cell, possibly even a fruit fly.
So molecular biology, and its offspring biotechnology rapidly became
the new scientific orthodoxy. The prospect and promise of "completely
understanding," and, shortly thereafter, completely manipulating
life forms was just too tempting for the enthusiastic scientists,
rapacious entrepreneurs and the governments and investors that financed
them. So called "genetic determinism" became the dominant
paradigm and a new era of what could best be described as "frantic
searching" for genetic "secrets" was ushered in.
As well as promising a complete description of an organism, the
genetic determinists also claimed to have solved the mystery of
evolution. The educational establishment got right in line, and
I was taught in high school biology class that evolution proceeded
step by step as random mutations induced by radiation, exposure
to certain substances and the like, prevented genes from accurately
reproducing themselves. The mutated genes, of course, produced mutated
organisms, most of which died but a few of which were better adapted
to their environment than their "competitors" and thus
survived giving rise to new forms.
Neat. Solved. Except for a little moping up operation of analyzing
the genomes of the world’s millions of organisms, or at least
those that might make money for pharmaceutical companies, we had
pretty much ended the need for new approaches to biology. Any phenomenon
that was not already explained within the confines of genetic determinism
would be revealed in due time when the detailed structures of enough
molecules had been analyzed.
Needless to say, research funding and investment was heavily weighted
toward the genetic determinists in universities and corporations.
Entire industries sprung up, while areas of research that relied
on a system’s perspective of life—ecology and developmental
biology among others—were significantly underfunded. Ecology
is troublesome anyhow. It keeps turning up problems, most of which
are created by the same institutions—government and
big business — that provide research funding.
Despite it’s dominance of the field, however, Genetic Determinism,
like all scientific paradigms eventually do, was running into trouble.
It was failing to explain a host of biological phenomena, failing
to deliver on many of the promises of biotechnology, and, ultimately,
failing to justify its relatively bloated research budgets.
Questions were arising all over the place. Since DNA cannot survive
on its own, isn’t it’s function in the cell determined
by the cell as a whole? How can random mutations to single genes
give rise, incrementally, to complex structures such as the human
eye and whole new orders of organisms throughout geological times?
(Darwin himself asked this question using different terminology.)
Is health and disease simply a matter of manipulating a few genes,
or is the organism as a whole involved? Are there any down sides
to genetic engineering? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE PLANET?
Every dominant paradigm contains the seed of its own demise. Concurrent
with the rise of Genetic Determinism was the quiet development of
several parallel strains of thought that would eventually lead,
in Capra’s words, to "a new scientific understanding of
living systems."
While mathematicians were developing theories to handle the behavior
of complex systems such as weather patterns and economies, biologists
were beginning to understand that living systems are self-organizing,
"dissipative structures." That is, cells, organisms, ecosytems
and the biosphere are energetically open systems that maintain their
pattern of organization by a constant flow of energy, the remains
of which are dissipated as entropy. Living systems are not only
self maintaining, they are autopoetic, or self-creating—within
certain constraints they build new levels of complexity on the fly,
so to speak. And at the same time the systemic bioligists were at
work, an inventor named James Lovelock proposed the radical notion
that the entire biosphere was one large living organism, analogous
to a cell in that the "metabolism" of its collective life
forms regulated it’s atmosphere and, therefore it’s temperature,
moisture and other factors that enabled life to exist. Lovelock
named his newly identified "organism" Gaia, after the
ancient goddess of the earth, and sparked an enormous scientific
controversy.
Capra’s brilliant achievement in the Web of Life is to connect
all of these threads of thought into a unified theory of living
systems. Further, he explains his synthesis and its underlying ideas
so that the attentive lay person can understand them. Finally, he
ties the entire work to the need for deep ecology and sustainable
development, clearly demonstrating why the web of life must be maintained
if life itself is to go on.
Understanding Capra’s ideas and those of others that he so
clearly elucidates will take some real effort on the part of those
not initiated in the language of contemporary systems theory. Why
should a designer undertake such a task?
To perform real ecological design, one needs to understand real
living systems. It is not good enough to jump to a solution and,
say, build a solar house, without understanding the underlying context
of the operation of the web of life and where a particular solution
fits in. In order to be ecological designers, we must first be ecologists,
must gain an understanding of how the Web of Life organizes and
maintains itself. There is no better overview of or introduction
to that topic than Capra’s.
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