What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon
is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently
considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete
biological questions. Their analysis is bold and provocative, for the authors
have constructed a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define
living systems not as objects of observation and description, nor even as
interacting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to
themselves. The consequence of their investigations and of their living systems
as self-making, self-referring autonomous unities, is that they discovered that
the two questions have a common answer: living