A proposal : Relational theory of external factors acting upon biological systems.

Metabolism-Repair (M,R) systems were concepts of relational biology which were rarely researched since Rosen wrote its foundations from 1958 and to his death, due to a lack of infatuation from the scientific community. We aim, in this article, to represent the effects of external factors on metabolic components, one of the main notions of (M,R) systems. We will firstly study the bases of (M,R) systems, then study the concepts of environment, external factors, tolerance, optimal values, efficiency, and time lags on metabolic components. We finally introduce the principle of eternal imperfectability of diverse biological systems, demonstrating how systems will never be perfect due to external factors acting upon metabolic components.

An Integrated Account of Rosen’s Relational Biology and Peirce’s Semiosis. Part I: Components and Signs, Final Cause and Interpretation

Robert Rosen’s relational biology and biosemiotics share the claim that life cannot be explained by the laws that apply to the inanimate world alone. In this paper, an integrated account of Rosen’s relational biology and Peirce’s semiosis is proposed. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the construction of a unified framework for the definition and study of life. The relational concepts of component and mapping, and the semiotic concepts of sign and triadic relation are discussed and compared, and a representation of semiotic relations with mappings is proposed. The role of the final cause in two theories that account for what differentiates living beings, natural selection and relational biology, is analyzed. Then the presence of the final cause in Peirce’s semiosis is discussed and, with it, the similarities and differences between the theories of Rosen and Peirce are deepened. Then, a definition of a semiotic relation in an organism is proposed, and Short’s definition of interpretation is applied. Finally, a method to identify and analyze semiotic actions in an organism is proposed.