In The Tree of Knowledge, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela set out a way of describing the nature of living things: “… organization denotes those relations that must exist among components of a system for it to be a member of a specific class. Structure denotes the components and relations that actually constitute a particular unity …” While Maturana and Varela do not pursue a specific discussion about process, they set out to understand the role of cognition as “… the universal nature of doing”. Maturana and Varela are seeking to understand what they term autopoiesis, how living things self–produce. Maturana and Varela claim: “… by realizing what characterizes living beings in their autopoietic organization, we can unify a whole lot of empirical data about their biochemistry and cellular functioning”. In this description we find that structure refers to the component parts that comprise something and organizations refers to the way these parts are assembled. In this way all real things can be described as having an organized structure. The term system can also be used for an organized structure. This idea forms the basis of Maturana and Varela’s idea of autopoiesis.
Capra
In The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra synthesized the systems theory literature and, in particular, Maturana and Varela’s contribution, by setting out three criteria for a living system — the pattern of organization, the structure and the life process:
Pattern of organization is the configuration of relationships that determines the systems essential characteristics.
Structure is the physical embodiment of the system’s pattern of organization.
Life process is the activity involved in the continual embodiment of the system’s pattern of organization..
While Capra concentrates his discussion on living things, the idea behind the concept of structure–organization–process is one in which a process organizes structure. As we can see, the definitions for these three elements are a little confusing. This is why the idea of structure–organization–process has been applied more generally by Linda Glassop.
Levels
At the level of a real thing, SOP describes:
Structure refers to the attributes distinguishing something.
Organization refers to parts that comprise something: the properties, and their relationship.
Process refers to the constitution of parts that produces a whole thing.
What we see in this description is that real things are multi–faceted and that each level needs to be considered separate and together. Glassop has utilized this framework to provide a theoretical description for the Periodic Table of Elements and the key features of DNA.
