Technical Correspondences - Coherence, Fractality, Autopoiesis

In the last blog we described three foundational qualities digitally nature products would support:wellness, beauty, and aliveness. Products should lead to greater levels of each of these in users in addition to performing their objective functions. To do this, we also need to know what features or characteristics of digital products would contribute to them. Digital Naturalness is interested in discovering these characteristics at all levels of the digital technology stack. Digital interfaces users engage with are only a thin layer of this stack - the hardware components of a laptop, the software tracking location on a smartphone, high-frequency trading algorithms, the protocols for data exchange between your solar panel and the electric utility, satellites tracking climate patterns and material resource flows, etc. are all mostly hidden from their users direct view. In order to have as much positive impact as possible, one question Digital Naturalness asks then is: are there technical design principles for digital products and features that increase wellness, beauty, and aliveness over a broad range of use cases and at many layers in the technology stack?

The following section takes a step in that direction. We propose three possible principles: coherence, fractality, and autopoiesis respectively, that might build a bridge between the relatively subjective and messy, but more meaningful, qualities of wellness, beauty, and aliveness to relatively objective and generalizable, but not overly simplistic measures which could guide digital design. Each concept was chosen somewhat at first intuitively, although informed by research connecting the paris, as well as because each can be used to describe organisms and natural systems as well as software and digital design. It may be that as wellness, beauty, and aliveness are linked subjectively, coherence, fractality, and autopoiesis may be linked mathematically to form a single whole. Developing a more rigorous mathematical description of coherence, fractality, and autopoiesis, and using this as the foundation for measuring the relative degrees of each in a digital technology product will be one of the primary objectives of the next stage of the Digital Naturalness project. Once we have a tool to measure coherence, fractality, and autopoiesis, we might be able to predict the expected impact on users’ experiences and compare products against each other. We discuss this further in later blogs.

Wellness - Coherence 

There are several disciplines that have defined coherence somewhat differently - from the physics of coherent waves (Britannica, 2011), to Antonovsky's subjective Sense of Coherence (Antonovsky, 1987), and Ervin Laszlo’s system coherence (Laszlo, 2017). 

A theme among the different definitions is a sense of complex interconnectedness. Ervin Laszlo, a Hungarian philosopher of science, systems theorist, and integral theorist with a background in physics, makes a distinction between two types of coherence:  intrinsic and extrinsic.

• Intrinsic coherence means that the parts that make up the systems are finely tuned together, so that every element is responsive to every other element.


• Extrinsic coherence means that the systems are coherently connected to other systems around them.

Laszlo suggests that coherence in a system occurs when all the elements are in tune and operating in concert with each other, thus maintaining “one non-equilibrium dissipative system.” He suggests that living systems - from molecules to cells and organ systems - resonate at compatible frequencies and interact with precise correlations. Laszlo attributes this to quantum-type entanglements in addition to biological interactions. 

There are several principles that Laszlo associates with coherence - for example, a coherent system does not only repeat structures but repeats them fractally along with some novelty at each level. He also suggests that coherent systems do not grow indefinitely. At a point of critical size and diversity, they will either de-cohere and return to stable components or they will join with other systems to create higher levels of complexity.

The human experience of wellness in nature could be related to coherence. We experience wellness when our internal systems are communicating effectively with each other and working well together, and when we perceive meaningful information from the surrounding environment and respond appropriately to them. Also, various dynamic systems in our bodies may also resonate with frequencies found most commonly in natural environments.

Beauty - Fractality

A fractal is developed through an iterative pattern in which the magnified version of the pattern is basically indistinguishable from the unmagnified version. Examples of fractals found in nature are tree branches, snowflakes, broccoli, pineapple, mountain ranges, shorelines, clouds, peacocks, lightning strikes, leaf patterns, and vein patterns in the human body.

Research into the aesthetics of fractals has been growing and has included elements such as the roughness of shape (curved versus linear) and visual complexity (Taylor et al., 2011). There is some research to suggest that people tend to prefer “mid-range fractal patterns” (Street et al, 2016) meaning a mid-range of complexity. Research has shown that at this level of complexity, the brain is better able to produce alpha brain waves, a “wakefully relaxed state” (Taylor et al, 2011). The same study further emphasized the link between our perception of fractals and our wellness: participants in his study recovered from stress 60% better when looking at fractal art.

Perceiving beauty in nature is deeply interconnected with our sense of wellness. Taylor et al suggest that the reason fractals support our sense of wellness is that our visual cortex is hardwired to view the world in a fractal pattern, and when we view nature or images with fractals, our visual cortices can operate with most ease and efficiency. 

Perception of beauty is also connected with our sense of care for nature. Ruth Richards (2001) offers a somewhat poetic way of tying together the concepts of beauty, fractals, and care for nature. 

Beauty offers us conscious awareness and resonance with deeper life patterns. We sense our interconnection and the “bounded infinities” of potentialities related to chaotic “strange attractors.” Beauty can open up our vision in an endangered world—while yielding intimacy and delight, not isolation and fear. Caring can become natural for the greater whole we all cocreate. (Richards, 2001)

Aliveness - Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis is the ability of an organism to self-organize at a level of complexity that is greater than the complexity in its environment. Autopoietic systems producing their own boundaries and coordinating the interactions among their internal components leads to the emergence of novel capabilities which none of the components have by themselves.

Autopoiesis has an autonomously regenerative capacity. This is described in the following original definition of autopoiesis by Chilean neurobiologists Maturana and Varela: 

An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network. (Maturana, 1980)

The eukaryotic cell is one of the more well known examples of autopoiesis in living systems (Zeleny, 1982). The eukaryotic cell is made up of several components, such as a nucleus, mitochondria, Golgi apparatus, vesicles, and has a definite boundary that separates it from its environment. The components have specialized functions which lead to transformations within the cell, enabled by exchanges of energy and molecules with the environment. This leads to the production of new components that continue to maintain the bounded nature of the cell (Zeleny, 1982).

Autopoiesis has been considered one of the necessary conditions of life (Bitbol, 2004). When in nature, just as we experience our own coherence with organisms and elements in nature, the autopoietic character of organisms and ecosystems, their renewal and regeneration, ‘reminds us’ of our own autopoietic capacities. Interacting with autopoietic systems may stimulate our own capacities for maintenance and renewal.

It may be possible to discover generalizable, technical characteristics of systems which contribute to increased wellness, beauty, and aliveness in the living organisms which interact with them. If so, using these principles in design processes for principles for digital products and infrastructures could go a long way toward making digital systems that have a much more deeply positive impact on us and on the natural environments with which they interface.

References

Antonovsky, Aaaron. Unraveling the mystery of health. How people manage stress and stay well. San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers, 1987. 

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Coherence.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 23 Nov. 2011, www.britannica.com/science/coherence.

Laszlo, Ervin. The Intelligence of the Cosmos: Why Are We Here?: New Answers from the Frontiers of Science. Inner Traditions, 2017.

Maturana, Humberto R. and Francisco J. Varela. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1980.

Richards, Ruth. “A New Aesthetic for Environmental Awareness: Chaos Theory, the Beauty of Nature, and Our Broader Humanistic Identity.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, vol. 41, no. 2, 2001, pp. 59–95., doi:10.1177/0022167801412006.

Street, Nichola, Alexandra M. Forsythe, Ronan Reilly, Richard Taylor, and Mai S. Helmy. “A Complex Story: Universal Preference vs. Individual Differences Shaping Aesthetic Response to Fractals Patterns.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 10, 2016, doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00213.

Taylor, Richard, Branka Spehar, Paul Van Donkelaar, and Caroline M. Hagerhall. “Perceptual and Physiological Responses to Jackson Pollock’s Fractals.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 5, no. 60, 2011. 10.3389/fnhum.2011.00060

Zelený, Milan, and Kevin D. Hufford. “The Application Of Autopoiesis In Systems Analysis: Are Autopoietic Systems Also Social Systems?” International Journal of General Systems, vol. 21, no. 2, 1992, pp. 145–160, doi:10.1080/03081079208945066.