The system‐process view of life from the perspective of systems science and its enlightenment to artificial life

Wangjun Zhang and Dongping Fan

Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2022, vol. 39, issue 5, 978-985

Abstract: The development of systems science has provided a new interdisciplinary approach to understanding the nature of life. General system theory, developed by Bertalanffy, understands life as open, dynamic and autonomous systems. The self‐organisation theory, represented by Prigogine, takes life as a self‐organising process‐structure that obtains sufficient negative entropy by exchanging material and energy with the environment. The complex adaptive system theory proposed by Holland and others understands life as adaptive process‐systems. Krakauer's information theory of individuality construes life as a process in which ordered information propagates forward with time. By highlighting the processual dimensions of the afore‐mentioned approaches, we propose the ‘system‐process view of life’, which underscores that life is not only a structural whole, but also a functional–processual whole. The system‐process view of life provides new inspirations for the replicator hypothesis of artificial life and the new basis for the discussion of the ontological status of artificial life.

Date: 2022
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