A Structural Theory of Emergence, Lifelines, and Divine Action
Abstract
This chapter explores a structural theory of the emergence of life by integrating the punctuated equilibrium theory of conserved core processes (as developed by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart) with the autopoietic theory of lifelines (as proposed by Steven Rose). This synthesis complements systems-theoretical epistemology by emphasizing the significance of chromatic regulatory structures—an essential example of conserved core processes—along with facilitated variation and epigenetic constellations. Therefore, a structural theory of autopoiesis incorporates the significance of epigenetics within chromatin remodeling complexes, along with a holistic understanding of supervenience. An enactive concept of ‘bringing forth a world’ is further elucidated through the lens of proleptic intentionality within a phenomenological and emergent context. This approach, in turn, highlights the ongoing relevance of the lifeworld and prolepsis, particularly when considered in the context of divine action.
Autopoietic View of Life and Dissipative Structures
I aim to articulate a structural theory of cells and lifelines that aligns with a systemic-ecological view of life. This view encompasses epigenetic constellations and proleptic practices that contribute to the bringing forth of a meaningful world. Ultimately, this phenomenology of lifelines and their structural significance provides a critical, emancipatory foundation for a public theology of science and its proleptic praxis.
A cell—the smallest living system—is a dissipative structure that reproduces itself (via DNA replication), developing and differentiating through the self-organizing processes of transcription and translation to synthesize proteins, thereby bringing forth a world.
The concept of dissipative structures was introduced by Ilya Prigogine, who cites Joseph Needham. Needham emphasized that Western thought has historically oscillated between viewing the world as an automaton and adhering to a theology in which God governs the universe. He famously referred to this as the “characteristic European schizophrenia,” noting that an automaton, by definition, requires an external god to operate it. This dual vision profoundly shaped the character of modern European science, which emerged in the specific intellectual and cultural context of the seventeenth century.[1]
In contrast to the scientific worldview that defines the universe as a machine governed by an external deity, Prigogine proposed a new understanding of life emerging under far-from-equilibrium conditions. This view emphasizes complexity, self-organization, and the inherent creativity of matter. Under such conditions, new dynamic states of matter can emerge, making it essential to consider the interaction between a given system and its surrounding environment. These emergent configurations are known as dissipative structures, highlighting the constructive role that dissipative processes play in their formation.[2]
A living system—as a dissipative structure—is an organization that maintains itself through its own self-producing operations. It achieves this by generating components that, in turn, produce other components, enabling ongoing processes of self-organization and self-differentiation.
This epistemic stance contrasts with the central dogma of molecular biology, as articulated by Francis Crick and James Watson, which posits a linear and unilateral flow of information. According to the central dogma, genetic information is carried by DNA molecules and transmitted through replication. RNA molecules are transcribed from DNA to deliver instructions to ribosomes in the cytoplasm, where proteins and enzymes are synthesized. However, this model assumes a one-way flow of information—from DNA to RNA to protein—thereby downplaying the role of the cellular network, regulatory complexity, and feedback loops that are fundamental to living systems.[3]
The DNA-centered view is expressed in a particularly controversial way by E. O. Wilson, a prominent figure in sociobiology. He argues that “The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool.”[4]
Genetic determinism is infused with an ultra-Darwinian fundamentalism, in so doing, “the organism is only DNA’s way of making more DNA.”[5] In the genetic determinist view, the gene occupies the driver’s seat, dictating and determining the physiology of organisms and their phenotypic variations. By contrast, in cognitive science, the organism (phenotype) precedes the genotype. Through a self-referential network and embodied processes, the organism brings forth its world, co-creating life in context.
For example, in the society of bees, the honey produces the bees, and such a society refers to a third-order self-referring system. A circular organization is superimposed on the second-order self-referring system, such as the bees, which, in turn, have a circular organization superimposed on the first-order living system, such as the cell. These multiple levels of organization contradict the theory of genetic reductionism, and this self-referential complexity is essential to understanding the autopoietic living system along with structural coupling, interaction and co-constitution in the history of evolution.[6]
According to Maturana, living systems are units of interaction, characterized by the circularity of their organization. This self-referential domain of interaction operates at the cellular level. A living system exists in an ambient environment, marked by exergonic metabolism, which involves catabolic pathways that break down complex molecules into simpler components, releasing free energy.
This energy is then harnessed by the cell to synthesize adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Using the energy from ATP, larger and more complex structures are built—processes essential for cell growth, molecular replication, and maintenance. All of these processes are organized in a closed causal circularity within a self-referential framework.
In this cyclic process, circularity is maintained, enabling evolutionary change. Enzymes are necessary for both exergonic metabolism and the synthesis of specific polymers. Exergonic metabolism provides the energy required for the endergonic synthesis of these polymers (proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids). The anabolic processes that build larger and more complex molecules are crucial for growth, repair, function, and replication. This circular organization constitutes a homeostatic system that preserves its own continuous circularity.
“Reproduction and evolution are not essential for the living organization,” but “evolutionary change in living systems is the result of that aspect of their circular organization which secures maintenance of their basic circularity…”[7]
This self-organizing system emphasizes autonomy and the multiplicity of networks, characterized by operational closure—systems that are organizationally closed yet open to the flow of energy and matter from the environment. Autopoietic operations are embedded within open, dynamic networks that regulate gene expression inside the cell, always in relation to the surrounding environment.
In this view, the cellular network “holds the genes on a leash,” reversing the one-way determinism of classical genetics. Thus, I argue that there is no organism without an environment—and no environment without an organism. “The environment of an organism is the penumbra of external conditions that are relevant to it because it has effective interactions with those aspects of the outer world.”[8]
Human beings, as autopoietic living beings, exist within a network of social systems in which they operate as language-centered social entities. They become observers of metadomains or multiple realities within an ensemble of social relations, embodying and interacting with others for constructivism and co-constitution through structural coupling.
Conserved Core Processes and Chromatin-Regulating Structures
I aim to redefine the autopoietic network through the lens of a structural theory of conserved core processes—specifically examining how chromatin regulatory structures function analogously to downward causation in the life processes of organisms at the cellular level. It is essential, in my view, to integrate the theory of conserved core processes, facilitated variation, and social epigenetics into a phenomenology of lifelines, thus addressing certain limitations of systems-theoretical epistemology, which often remains narrowly focused on self-referential systems and operations.
According to leading systems biologists Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, cellular life comprises hundreds of conserved core processes that structure cellular organization. These processes preserve essential cellular functions and protein structures over evolutionary time. They frame the theory within the concept of punctuated equilibrium, where long periods of evolutionary stasis are interrupted by short bursts of innovation. In this model, cellular innovation is characterized by both the conservation and diversification of organismal structures and behaviors.
Conserved core processes function as a kind of deep structure, remaining relatively unchanged across evolutionary time—the “equilibrium” or “stasis” phases of development. In contrast, the novel deployment of cellular behaviors gives rise to new phenotypes. The construction and integration of these core processes facilitate phenotypic variation by serving as flexible building blocks. Conserved components and processes are organized into functioning pathways, including metabolic circuits, where even the enzymes involved in metabolism are integral elements of the core processes.[9]
This structural theory of punctuated innovation in life aligns with the theory of dissipative structures, offering an epistemic framework of deep structure for understanding autopoietic living organisms and their embodiment. A structure-oriented theory does not necessarily stand in opposition to a system-oriented model; rather, it complements it through the concepts of evolvability, lifelines, and embodied cognition, as they are refined within the autopoietic self-referential circularity. These concepts operate in constant interaction with the environment to bring forth new forms of life at higher levels of organization.
For example, chromatin remodeling within cellular networks exemplifies a conserved core process that alters the structure of chromatin to regulate fundamental cellular functions, such as gene expression, DNA replication, RNA transcription and translation (i.e., protein synthesis), DNA repair (by enabling repair proteins to access damaged sites), and cell division.
Chromatin remodeling complexes operate in conjunction with post-translational modifications (PTMs), which play a critical role in DNA repair by recruiting and activating repair proteins and modifying chromatin structure. These processes, embedded in a self-referential system, reflect coordination between structural and systemic levels. This orchestration enables the cellular transformations that give rise to a new, meaningful world at a higher organizational level—whether as proteins, skin cells, neurons, or cardiac cells.
A structural theory of chromatin remodeling can be employed as a form of non-reductive physicalism in terms of autopoietic supervenience, originating from within a given network to bring forth a meaningful world, incorporating the possibility of downward causality.[10]
Given these autopoietic operations, many components participate through the chromatin regulatory structure within the network of cellular dynamics. DNA, in its basic structural configurations, is conserved as a core process from generation to generation, while structural aspects continually vary (facilitated variation). The types of proteins synthesized have evolved significantly throughout the history of these lineages and the organism’s development.
Therefore, the biological roots are grasped through the participation of all components and structural variations, operating within the network of interactions that, in its entirety, constitutes and specifies the characteristics of a particular cell. Similarly, in the operation of distinction, the political constitution defines its identity, becoming an essential component in any social history. However, it does not contain any specific information that specifies or determines the history and social structure.[11]
In the autopoietic system, the ensemble of relations is deeply connected to the structure of chromatin regulation, in which all other components participate, enabling facilitated variation. This is characteristic of the structural-systemic view of the organization of living beings.
According to the Santiago Theory of cognition, the brain functions as a highly cooperative system that acquires internal coherence through intricate patterns and embodiment. This theory emphasizes structural coupling, wherein the organism undergoes continual structural changes in response to recurrent interactions with its environment. These interactions do not determine outcomes in a linear fashion but instead trigger internal changes in accordance with the system’s own organizational logic. An autopoietic living system thus determines which perturbations from the environment will affect it, continually bringing forth a world through the very process of living.
In this framework, autopoietic cognitive science highlights perception and embodied action as fundamental drivers of world construction. Cognition is understood not as the passive reception of information, but as active engagement—constructing a lived world (oikos) in accordance with the organism’s structural configuration.[12]
This autopoietic phenomenology is based on operational closure through boundary maintenance, embodied cognition, and the enactive practice of bringing forth a form of life. Through the flesh of the world, one can perceive and understand the lived body, which is shared by the world. The visible body is pregnant with the invisible lifeworld, which serves as the ground for intersubjectivity, or intercorporeality. It carries a religious meaning: the Word made flesh, where the visible is pregnant with the invisible. We exist within humanity as a horizon of the lifeworld surrounding us, as a horizontal generality and structure of meaning.[13]
Autopoiesis, Process Metaphysics and Supervenience
The system’s structure of operational closure, boundaries, and lifeworld distinguishes the autopoietic system from process metaphysics, which encompasses all of reality through universally interrelated actual entities, without distinguishing operations.
In the metaphysics of process philosophy, concrescence emphasizes that each new moment of experience (an “actual occasion”) subjectively synthesizes past data into a unified, fully actual event, embodying the creative advance of the universe through a dynamic, unfolding process of continuous creation. Darwin’s theory of evolution is reinterpreted in Whitehead’s theory of concrescence, which highlights the co-creative relationship between the organism and its environment.
If concrescence is universally applied to the process of living autopoiesis, its subjective side integrates past data and various elements (prehensions, feelings, perceptions) into a single unified experience for full actualization (actual occasion). This position tends to undermine multiple realities and their respective systemic realities, functional differentiations, and distinct language games, particularly in the context of self-referential circularity and its associated form of life.
The subjectivist-experiential synthesis cannot be neatly conceptualized in a generalizing and universalizing sense, nor can it be confined to an environment governed by a persuasive God. Rather, it requires an epistemic procedure that involves embodiment, suspension, adumbration, intentionality in correlation with noesis and noema, and a synthesis of meaning open to the transcendental reality of the lifeworld.
Process thinking is less concerned with the structural side of systemic reality, which is characterized by self-referential circularity, cybernetics, operational closure, epigenetic correlation with the social-ecological environment, and functional differentiation. The synthesis of past data into a unified, fully actual event toward creative advance or progress presupposes the reality of absence or extinction—often through violence—as a stepping stone. In other words, this process inherently justifies a regime of historical erasure and marginalization, where those victimized and marginalized are rendered as stepping stones in the name of the civilizing mission.
The process view of reality contrasts with a politics of autopoiesis, which advocates for an ethical revolution, participatory democracy, and politics of recognition in organic solidarity with those victimized by mechanisms of scapegoating. The process view of more civilizing mission is vulnerable to the political ideology of creative advance and better progress, often at the expense of the marginalized.
Furthermore, the idea of concrescence includes the reciprocal co-creation between God and the world: the world’s creativity creates God, while God’s creativity enriches the world through a cycle of becoming. In other words, God’s dipolar nature exists between God’s primordial nature (which offers creative potential to the world through persuasion) and God’s consequent nature (the temporal, receptive side of God that underlies constant change and grows with the world).[14]
If God is the primordial potential, awaiting the world to create and complete God’s consequent nature through the process of becoming, could a human being be envisioned as a sort of Übermensch (Overman)—categorizing God as primordial potential and observing this operation in mutual co-creation? If the actual occasion receives a subjective aim influenced by God’s persuasion, should God justify violence as a necessary stepping stone to realize the actual occasion for better advance and progress?
In contrast to the metadiscourse of process thought, a structural theory of autopoiesis is inherently self-referential, with operational closure that brings forth a meaningful world. God is immanent within the life of process through divine concursus, while not justifying the reality of the victim or evil as an inevitable stepping stone, but transforming it through the cross and resurrection—awakening prophetic praxis of the new heaven and earth in our midst.
God’s transcendence implies God’s coming future, challenging the reality of the impersonal forces that prevail in our midst. This stands in contrast to process thinking, which emphasizes mutual co-creation, as well as Darwinian concepts of natural selection. In a theological context, a structural theory of autopoiesis aligns with God’s concursus with living systems through ongoing creation. It explains how God supports and stimulates the self-creation of the universe, guiding the emergence of life at higher levels through God’s grace, love, and prolepsis, all in light of new creation through divine action, proleptic supervenience, and downward causation.
This autopoietic understanding of divine action seeks to provide a thick description of a Lutheran classic theory of God’s concursus, particularly within the framework of a supervenience theory. It comes to terms with a contextual coherence theory for the science-religion dialogue, as it “steers a middle path between the Scylla of radical mind-body dualism and the Charybdis of reductive physicalism.”[15]
Autopoietic Phenomenology and Chromatin Remodeling Complexes
Autopoietic phenomenology, viewed through the lens of chromatin remodeling complexes, highlights how function, pattern, and structure are fundamental to the survival and propagation of all eukaryotic organisms. These elements have been conserved over millions of years, representing states of equilibrium or stasis, while simultaneously facilitating phenotypic variation. This perspective emphasizes symbiotic collaboration within ecological systems and acknowledges the reality of natural selection, while critically challenging the ideologically loaded discourse of “survival of the fittest.”
Chromatin remodeling represents a specific and essential process within the broader category of conserved core processes. After DNA replication, chromatin forms with the assistance of histone proteins. It consists of DNA combined with two main classes of proteins: histones and non-histone chromatin proteins. This structural organization is crucial for regulating access to genetic information.
During meiosis (for sexual reproduction) or mitosis (for the growth and repair of somatic cells), DNA housed within the nucleus is replicated and tightly organized into chromosomes composed of both DNA and protein. This condensed form is essential for accurate cell division. However, during interphase—the non-dividing phase of the cell cycle—chromatin adopts a more relaxed structure. In this euchromatic state (the less-condensed form of chromatin), DNA becomes accessible to the transcriptional machinery. This accessibility allows RNA polymerase and associated factors to bind to DNA and initiate transcription, a critical step in gene expression.[16]
RNA is synthesized in the nucleus through a process called transcription, during which genetic information from a DNA sequence is copied into messenger RNA (mRNA) with the help of the enzyme RNA polymerase. This enzyme initiates transcription by binding to the DNA and elongating the RNA strand as it synthesizes the mRNA transcript.
In many protein-coding genes, the genetic sequence is divided into exons (coding regions contributing to protein synthesis) and introns (non-coding regions). During transcription, both exons and introns are transcribed into a precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA). Before this molecule can be translated into protein, a process called RNA splicing removes the introns, leaving only the exons. This splicing process plays a crucial role in determining which proteins are produced, as different splicing patterns can generate multiple protein variants from a single gene.
In RNA, the base thymine (T) found in DNA is replaced by uracil (U). There are three major types of RNA: messenger RNA (mRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA), and ribosomal RNA (rRNA). A gene is considered to be expressed when its genetic information is first transcribed into mRNA and then translated into protein.
During translation, each amino acid is carried to the mRNA chain by a specific tRNA molecule. Each tRNA contains an anticodon—a sequence of three bases that is complementary to a codon on the mRNA. Binding occurs between codons and anticodons through base pairing, allowing the tRNA to position the correct amino acid in the growing peptide chain. A sequence of amino acids is linked together by peptide bonds, forming the primary structure of a protein—the fundamental building block of all proteins. This process occurs within the ribosome, which serves as the cell’s protein synthesis machinery.
Although there are 20 different amino acids used in proteins, only four nucleotide bases in DNA—adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G)—are involved. Each amino acid is encoded by a codon, a sequence of three nucleotide bases, which form the basis of the genetic code. With four bases and codons made of three bases each, there are 64 possible codon combinations. Specific codons, such as AUG, signal the start of translation, while others—UAG, UAA, and UGA—serve as stop codons, signaling the ribosome to terminate protein synthesis.[17]
Ribosomes are located in the cytoplasm, where they read mRNA codons in sequence. With the help of tRNA, they assemble the corresponding amino acids into a polypeptide chain. This process is vital for cellular growth, repair, and metabolism. Moreover, ribosomal components and the synthesized proteins often undergo post-translational modifications—chemical changes catalyzed by enzymes. These modifications enhance protein functionality, affect folding, regulate enzyme activity, influence cell signaling pathways, and contribute to protein stability. Even after translation, gene expression continues to be regulated through these chemical modifications, making post-translational activity a crucial layer of genetic control.
Given the complexity and coordination of these processes, function within a living system is both differentiated and deeply integrated within self-referential circularity and networks, as conserved deep structure underlying the autopietic self-creation. These differentiated functions operate collaboratively within the system’s boundary, enacting—or bringing forth—the protein world through embodied action.
Central to this autopoietic, self-referential system is the deep structure of conserved core processes, which underpins networks of facilitated variation embedded with functionality, differentiation, process, pattern, and structural regulation. These elements form the foundation of catalytic networks, such as enzymes, feedback loops, and regulatory pathways, which are operationally closed—maintaining internal coherence—while remaining open to the flow of energy and matter from the environment.
This dynamic interplay within the deep structure underscores the enduring significance of cybernetics, revealing a general pattern of organization common to all living systems. It emphasizes the participation of each component in the network of interactions, ultimately forming a holistic view of downward causation and supervenience within a non-reductionist framework.
This structural theory of autopoietic system, situated within a phenomenological and emergent framework, cannot be reduced to the process metaphysics of concrescence. Instead, a new process thinking is linked to the autopoietic network. As Fritjof Capra cites from Maturana and Varela: “In a living system, the product of its operation is its own organization.”[18]
This insight captures the essence of autopoiesis—a system that not only sustains itself but continuously regenerates through its own processes of organization and interaction with the world. Capra attempts to expand the structural models of self-organization by merging Ilya Prigogine’s theory of dissipative structures with the organization-oriented autopoietic model developed by Maturana and Varela. In doing so, Capra aims to forge a more unified and coherent theory of living systems.[19]
The unification of these perspectives creates a bridge between dynamic self-organization and the interplay of systems in far-from-equilibrium conditions. Dissipative structures, as outlined by Prigogine, offer a framework for understanding how systems, when far from thermodynamic equilibrium, maintain their organization and evolve through constant exchanges of energy and matter. Meanwhile, autopoiesis, as described by Maturana and Varela, emphasizes the system’s internal coherence—its ability to self-regulate, self-produce, and maintain its own boundaries and organization.
Together, these theories present a more holistic understanding of living systems, where both the system’s internal processes and its relationship with the environment are seen as equally essential for its continued existence and evolution. This integrated view not only challenges reductionist approaches to biology but also embraces the complex, interdependent nature of life itself. It transcends the limitations of the subjectivist-experiential idea of concrescence, yet it sidesteps the significance of phenomenology in Varela’s autopoietic embodiment and the critical constructive idea of the lifeworld, as well as the ethical revolution within cybernetic epistemology.
Given this context, my concern is to conceptualize a structural theory of the chromatin regulatory system in terms of the deep structure of the lifeworld, through a punctual theory of conserved core processes and facilitated variations. This focus centers on embodiment, the shared commonality enacted among components, and the interface between self-referential operations and other-referential influences, particularly as mediated through the epigenetic spectrum.
The autopoietic organization intersects with epigenetic modifications within the structural regulatory system of chromatin, in terms of structural determination, coupling and irritation. Since each living organism begins with an initial structure, that structure determines the course of interaction between the organism and its environment, constraining the structural changes triggered by these interactions. Systemic thinking is embedded within structural congruence, because it is the “structure of the disturbed system” that determines the changes in the living organism.[20]
This characterizes a structural theory of autopoiesis that incorporates the significance of epigenetics within chromatin remodeling complexes, alongside a holistic understanding of supervenience. The complex reality of living systems cannot be adequately described in physicalist terms, nor can it be reduced to a mere physical state.
Instead, the dynamic circularity of autopoietic self-referentiality becomes crucial in its structural coupling throughout evolutionary history, particularly in terms of the punctuated equilibrium theory, which emphasizes conserved core processes (deep structure) and facilitated variation (strengthening evolvability and diversification). These elements underpin the co-constitution between organism and environment.
This structural episteme facilitates the emergence of multiple layers of order within living systems—such as the societies of bees, neurons, and cells—each articulated within their distinctive realms, recognizing their own set of rules and regulations, as well as their own arrow of time, rhythm, and form of life, rather than being reducible to a metadomain under process-network thinking.
Autopoiesis, Lifelines, and Proleptic Life
To strengthen the connection between autopoiesis and social epigenetic factors, I reinterpret Francisco Varela’s concept of autopoiesis through the dual lenses of the phenomenology of lifelines and proleptic intentionality—within the open horizon of the lifeworld as given in all conscious acts. This reinterpretation draws on the temporal structure of experience shaped by protentionality and the anticipatory movement of prolepsis, which orients life toward emergent novelty and embodied action.
Varela frames autopoiesis not only as a biological process rooted in cellular self-organization but also as integrally linked to neuroscientific and phenomenological lifelines—particularly those advanced by the prominent British neuroscientist Steven Rose, whose work challenges the dominant genetic reductionism in biology.
In Lifelines: Life Beyond the Gene (2003), Rose advocates for a relational and processual biology that takes seriously the embeddedness of organisms in developmental, ecological, and social time. He proposes a shift from a mechanistic view of genetic determinism to a more holistic, dynamic understanding of living systems through the concept of homeodynamics.[21]
This homeodynamic perspective reconfigures our understanding of biological life—not as the linear unfolding of a genetic blueprint, but as a temporally situated, context-sensitive process where genes participate without dictating the totality of life. Organisms—and ecosystems—evolve, mature, and adapt through the arrow of time, shaped not by isolated genes but by developmental trajectories within relational networks. The key property of life, in this view, is autopoiesis: the capacity of a system to build, sustain, and continually renew itself through embodiment and enaction, bringing forth a world through its own organization.[22]
This philosophical framework aligns with the phenomenological notion of life’s intentionality—the idea that life is not merely reactive but inherently anticipatory, future-directed, and meaning-constituting. Proleptic intentionality captures this forward-looking dynamism, where living systems are shaped not only by past causes and actual occasions but also by future-directed sense-making. Autopoiesis, then, is not simply a biological mechanism but a temporal and existential structure, wherein metabolic and molecular feedback loops (such as those seen in chromatin regulatory structures) function as embodied enactments of life’s becoming. This becoming, or evolvability, is embedded in an epigenetic ontology that interfaces with the social-ecological landscape, reinforcing proleptic intentionality and its world-transforming praxis.
Critically, this proleptic view challenges the ultra-Darwinian assumptions that privilege genes as the central agents of evolution and individuality. Instead, it centers cells and organisms within metabolic and ecological networks as the fundamental units of biological life, viewed through the lens of lifeworld.
Metabolic complexity—emerging from catalytic feedback loops and conserved core processes—serves as a heuristic for understanding gene function as embedded within multilayered biological systems, rather than being separable from them. Chromatin remodeling and epigenetic regulation illustrate how environmental signals, social structures, and material conditions participate in gene expression and organismal behavior, thus bridging the biological and social worlds. All living creatures, in their autopoiesis, cannot dispense with the form of life they bring about through structural coupling, irritation, and rupture in the evolutionary history of interaction and co-constitution.
By synthesizing autopoiesis with a theory of lifelines, I aim to deepen the socio-critical and phenomenological dimensions of systems theory. This synthesis emphasizes agency, multiplicity, and intentionality as co-constitutive of life and cognition. The epigenetic interface becomes the site where biological structure and social environment meet, challenging any strict separation between natural and cultural systems.
A discourse of multiplicity—rooted in the open horizon of the lifeworld—underscores how meanings, bodies, and intentions are always co-formed through language, history, and public discourse. While computational or neurodynamic models may attempt to simulate aspects of these processes, they often fall short of capturing the full depth of embodied, anticipatory, and intersubjective life. Metaphors such as “selfish genes” or the moral economy of eusocial insects may provide limited insights but ultimately risk obfuscating the complex, situated, and emergent nature of life, especially in its entanglement with social and ecological conditions.
Theological Coda
A genealogy of the past is necessary not only to reinterpret our present but also to critically engage with the socio-cultural dimensions of collective behavior in order to rewrite our history of the present. Through an immanent critique of the regime of effective history, we can begin to unearth and emancipate ourselves from entrenched prejudices, habitual obscurities, and inherited epistemologies that constrain both biological and social historical understanding.
This historical-social spectrum offers more than just a retrospective—it illuminates the evolutionary horizon of organismal development, where biology and the meaning of life are co-constituted throughout the punctuated discourse between conserved core processes and facilitated variation that underlie the ecological web of life. The lifeworld, as a shared ground of experience and meaning, becomes the site where the evolutionary, ecological, and existential converge.
In agreement with Merleau-Ponty, history does not walk on its head, nor with its feet—but with its body. It is through bodily intentionality that meaning is not only formed but enacted—through gestures, perception, memory, and anticipation. The body is not an object in history but its very medium: a living archive and expressive agent of temporality.
In this embodied context, prolepsis is not merely a rhetorical device but a phenomenological orientation—an anticipatory intentionality that constitutes the horizon of experience and opens us to the transformation of the world. It is through such proleptic consciousness that we become capable of bringing forth a new world—as embodied in evolutionary time, in ecological relation, and in ethical practice for the common good between organism and environment.
Steven Rose integrates the notion of autopoiesis into his science of lifelines, seeking to transcend traditional dichotomies by emphasizing the plasticity of living organisms and the epigenetic landscape. His theory of the lifelines of living systems highlights the continuous, indeterminate processes by which organisms construct their own futures.
Given this, I propose a phenomenology of lifelines informed by proleptic intentionality, situated within an ecological-systemic framework that challenges the reductionism inherent in DNA-centered conceptions of living systems, cutting through the limitations of process metaphysics.
A phenomenological “thick description” of prolepsis—understood as a forward-leaning intentionality or propension for rational, reflective, and practical orientation—can be developed within the genre of discourse and narrative, encompassing past, present, and future. Such a proleptic orientation is vital for articulating the significance of epigenetics through a public theology of prolepsis and lifelines—one that anticipates the eschatological reality of a “new heaven and new earth” already breaking into our midst. This epistemic stance comes to terms with holistic supervenience and divine concursus, strengthening anticipatory praxis grounded in God’s embodiment in Jesus Christ and his event of resurrection through the power of the Holy Spirit; a prolepsis arrived in Jesus Christ.
The biblical narrative of kairos and prolepsis resonates with an autopoietic approach to language and communication, wherein behavior among living organisms is mutually coordinated through structural coupling. Our linguistic distinctions emerge within networks of structural coupling, woven through communicative acts. Meaning arises from these distinctions and interactions—through self-reflection, language, and embodied engagement with others.
To be human is to dwell in language and communication, coordinating our behavior with others and bringing forth a world together—an intersubjective world rooted in embodiment shared in the lifeworld.[23]
In the autopoietic discussion of language and communication, I observe a punctuated innovation of language emerging from periods of long stasis. This innovation forms the foundation for creating a meaningful world through lived experience and intersubjective communication, which underpin autopoietic living systems according to structural coupling, irritation, and rupture for co-constitution. This structural theory of evolution and emergence does not justify natural selection and survival of the fittest as the sole narrative of evolution.
The bringing forth of a world (externalization) is structurally coupled with the lifeworld, through self-referential circularity (conserved core processes or deep structure) and cybernetics of networks and linkages (facilitated variations). These dynamics shape our understanding of the phenomenon of lifelines, as they interface with the social-ecological landscape. It cannot dispense with the reality of the shared lifeworld, which is foundational for proleptic intentionality and communicative practices in society, culture, and the web of life.
This epistemic stance facilitates a public theology of nature in constructing a social epistemology—one concerned with articulating the relationship between religious discourse, human agency, and social systems in conditions of functional differentiation.
Additionally, this perspective foregrounds the significance of postsocial (non-human) relations, where object-centered environments play a defining role in shaping individual identity and mediating human relationships. This perspective characterizes emerging epistemic cultures through what may be termed a methodological epigenetic ontology, contrasting with the process metaphysics of concrescence in its subjectivist-experiential framework.
If process philosophy sees the process as the becoming of the future through the present, then prolepsis—within the open horizon of the lifeworld—is not merely reducible to process, actual occasion, or mutual creation between God and the world. Rather, a structural theory of systemic life is pre- and extra-scientific in nature; it encompasses scientific thought but also contains within it all aspects of actual life. Prolepsis carries the intentionality of a transcendental-immanent horizon of the lifeworld—one that can only be opened through radical reflection, grounded in human rationality and the systemic construction of life’s reality and its differentiation.
Prolepsis emerges from the future of the lifeworld, exerting a radioactive (i.e., transformative and often disruptive) impact on the contaminated realities of the present. Through an immanent critique of sedimented past realities, it strives toward a project of emancipation for the future.
The autopoietic nature of epistemic culture manifests in its production, dissemination, and expansion within a globalized knowledge society—alongside transformations of object-centered environments embedded in networks of power relations. Systems evolve according to symbolic-material interests, while structures shift in hierarchical stratifications, shaped by these very power dynamics.
Epistemic holism does not inherently oppose evolution (as functional differentiation and self-organization) to revolution (as structural transformation through innovation and the emergence of dissipative structures). Instead, it clarifies both as complementary through embodied enaction—the lived bringing forth of a meaningful world through proleptic intentionality in view of the epigenetic interface between biological life and social-ecological factors.
The plot of elective affinities (as in Goethe’s novella, 1809) parallels theories of chemical reactions—marked by attraction, conflict, substitution, degeneration, and even tragic resolution. Indeed, chemical affinity can be reimagined within human social systems as collective catalytic reactions, offering a compelling model for cybernetic-phenomenological reasoning.
Luhmann, while critiquing Enlightenment rationality, does not dismiss self-critical reason. He describes it as the ironic reason of the gypsies, constantly wandering around Europe in opposition to Habermas’s concept of the completion of Enlightenment as an incomplete mission of modernity. This image places Luhmann within the tent of postmodernity and its project of deconstruction, rather than endorsing actual structural change. His second-order observation reflects elements of deconstruction and contingency, akin to Hegel’s logic of negation and sublation. Contingency and the logic of deconstruction thus become central to his universal evolutionary supertheory.[24]
Accordingly, I adopt and reinforce this postmodern discourse of the gypsy of reason and Hegelian theory of sublation by reconstructing a problematic regime of effective history through the notion of elective affinities and a politics of recognition for restorative justice. For Luhmann, the human subject is like an observer in the crow’s nest. While meaning is constructed from within the system, it always emerges through elective relationality with the world.
Yet, the lived experience of the human subject not only observes from the crow’s nest but also steers the boat in collaboration. The role of the public intellectual does not separate observer-agency from lived experience. Rather, it examines the reality of elective affinities among discourse, material interests, and power relations—guided by immanent critique and the vision of emancipation.
This implies a profound struggle against the impersonal forces that colonize the lifeworld through epigenetic stratification—forces inscribed within social, cultural, and ecological realities. In this context, the God of life moves in concursus with living creatures—granting freedom, autonomy, and creativity as gracious gifts of divine love and accompaniment. Yet, this same God also awakens us to resist and struggle against the impersonal forces of epigenetic pollutants—stratified and sedimented across layers of society, culture, and ecology.
[1] Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam, 1984), 7.
[2] Ibid., 12.
[3] Nobel, The Music of Life, 18.
[4] Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass.,: Harvard University Press, 1978), 167.
[5] E.O, Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass.,: Harvard University Press, 2000), 3.
[6] Maturana and Valera, Autopiesis and Cognition, 11.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Lewontin, The Triple Helix, 48-9.
[9] Kirschner and Gehart, The Plausibility of Life, 45. 68.
[10] Niels H. Gregersen, “God’s Public Traffic: Holist versus Physicalist Supervenience,” in The Human Person in Science and Theology, ed. Niels H. Gregersen et al. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), 158.
[11] Maturana and Varlera, The Tree of Knowledge, 69-70.
[12] Valera et al., The Embodied Mind, 140.
[13] Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 216, 237.
[14] Barbour, Religion and Science, 293-4.
[15] Niels H. Gregersen, “God’s Public Traffic: Holist versus Physicalist Supervenience,” in The Human Person in Science and Theology, ed. Gregersen et al., 155.
[16] Lauren Dalton and Robin Young, Fundamentals of Cell Biology (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2024), 65.
[17] Ibid., 83-4.
[18] Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 98.
[19] Ibid. 99.
[20] Maturana and Valera, The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: Shambhala, 1987), 95.
[21] Steven Rose, Lifelines: Biology beyond Determinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
[22] Steven Rose, “Précis of Lifelines: Biology, freedom, determinism” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1999) 22:5, 871–921.
[23] Maturana and Valera, The Tree of Knowledge, 244.
[24] Moeller, Luhmann Explained: Form Souls to Systems, 193.