musings of an itinerant lover

For the last 8 years I have been informally investigating some of the underlying organizational principles of the human body and using some of those “truths” to inform my consulting work within a business environment. Though I have been mostly a lurker on the economics forum I mentioned in a previous post (and here is to show that lurker learning is one of the value propositions of an online forum) I have been greatly inspired by the dialogue to formalize and systematize this personal exploration. Last week I reached out to a former medical school colleague of mine (whom I used to compete vigorously with mind you) and we have begun meeting on a regular basis to discuss elements of biology, physiology, embryology, etc and to attempt to use some of these principles to help us understand the dynamics of our societal systems much like a physician would use his knowledge of these fields to understand the state of a patient. We are capturing our musings on what is, for the time being, a private wiki. I wanted to share a few minutes of the conversation we had this last week while we were discussing the functioning of the cell.

As I’m sure all of you are aware, the most commonly held view of the functioning of the cell is that the nucleus, floating within a nuclear membrane within the cytoplasmic matrix full of marvelous cellular machinery, operates much like a military HQ base wherein DNA (or some other mysterious force) will issue commands and, within the confines of this relatively isolated, buffered and protected environment, will determine the course of the future of the cell (i.e. what proteins are produced, how fast the cell grows, etc). Over the course of the last few years there has been an increasingly compelling body of evidence that seems to be hinting at what both of us had felt for a long time…that much of the executive functioning of the cell happens not at the level of the nucleus, but rather at the periphery and in the membrane of the cell. Furthermore, that the ability for the membrane to become conscious of the reality of its environment (through the production of channels, receptors, etc.) is directly proportional to its ability to survive within a changing environment. That is to say, that if the environment outside the cell changes, the nucleus won’t necessarily know. Rather it is to the extent that the membrane has gained awareness of the change in environment that it is able to issue, through cascading chains of protein modification and such, commands to the nucleus to produce the structural changes necessary for progress and survival. If, indeed, many of the executive functions of the cell are held at the periphery and not, as was once thought, at the core, this could have profound implications on the way we structure organizations and systems.

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It is incredible how within the micro we can discern truths and patterns that help us make sense of the macro. Within the atom we can behold the universe and within the maturation of an individual we can clearly witness unfolding patterns of the evolution of human society. Do we not see in the individual how we begin as a single celled organism and begin to grow into a morass of undifferentiated cells subsequently evolving into organs that themselves create a higher level of organization in the form of organ systems? These organ systems, of course, then interact at a higher level of complexity and integration in the form of our bodies. What is remarkable is that at one level of organization it is virtually impossible to see the higher level if viewed from the perspective of that level alone.

From the perspective of the lungs, the existence of a cardio-pulmonary system would not be easily apparent unless view that from a higher level of order. Is it really, then, that much of a stretch to imagine that there may be even higher orders of complexity? Is it possible to think that, just as the various organs form a larger collective with abilities that could far surpass any given organ in isolation, that as a human society we could actually form this sort of a higher level of functioning far surpassing the capacity of one individual? And that perhaps the magnitude of order that separates the functioning of one individual organ from the functioning of a human body could be mirrored with the functioning of the collective human organism?

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