Survival management by living systems

Abstract

To survive that is ‘to eat and not to be eaten’. A living system is part of food chains within an ecoexotope of survival (EXO) that it shares with other systems; ‘soon or late it is impossible not to be eaten.’ Their modularity allows living systems a local and a global recycling of matter and energy. The agoantagonistic relations balance leads soon or late to predators disappearance with a reduction of biodiversity. The functioning is associated with scaling independent, local and global, qualitative characteristics (gauge invariance) and quantitative power laws. The merging into ‘Associations for the Reciprocal and Mutual Sharing of Advantages and DisAdvantages’ (ARMSADA) allows a new biodiversity emergence. More and more independent of the previous local situations, in their new global level of organization, the local actors become mutually integrated into a new global Whole. And reversely (systemic constructal law), the Whole is more and more integrating local parceners. The evolution of living systems is seen as cooperative, the law of the strongest is not-at-all the best! The only way to escape from struggles is to enter into an ARMSADA. A lichen -both an organism and an ecosystem-, a cell, are ARMSADAs that emerged when the partners lose simultaneously the capacity to kill the other ones. In the new Whole, all that is an advantage for a partner is a disadvantage for other ones. They are fused ‘for the best and for the worst’. Benefits are only for the Whole which expresses new abilities. The cell emerged from Monera with the help of a RNA virus. In their new endophysiotope (ENDO), the parceners are dependent from each others. Through the iteration process of new ARMSADAs' emerging, the new more and more complex system-of-systems is more and more independent from its EXO. There are never advantages without dis-advantages! To survive that is to turn disadvantages into advantages and to avoid advantages turning to disadvantages. The cell apoptosis results from the systemic dys-functioning of its ARMSADA, the death of a partner leads to the cell death. Each partner can survive only if the other ones survive first. Cancer is a breaking of the cell's ARMSADA. Cells that should have to die, due to dangers, due to escapes of internal viruses, do not. The new ENDO survives through a metamorphosis in the previous endangered EXO.