Meta - theoretical Presuppositions for Autopoiesis – Self - Reference and " Autopoiesis " INTRODUCTORY

Locker's writing is complex, flowery, and often singularly poetic. The reader is invited to read Locker's last paragraph in order to appreciate the editor's task. Yet, I have interfered only minimally because Professor Locker's underlying ideas and reasoning are highly original and a price must be paid for understanding them – by the reader and the author equally. Locker turns our attention to autopoiesis again. Some of his conclusions have been characterized as "brave," or at least "boldly asserted." It will become obvious to the reader that during the process of writing and rewriting of papers, Locker and Glanville have become intellectually and mutually self-respecting unities. Essentially, Locker grapples with the problem of the origin of autopoietic systems – through partially vindicating Virchow's omnis cellula e cellula with his omne systema e systema. Another variation on this ploy (in English) would be Weiss's earlier "System begets system" and even its precursor, omnis organisatio ex organisatione. Life cannot originate "by itself." Locker reinstates the role of a "program," conceived as a creative-generative system comparable to the subject, or "self." The subject has to precede, as a creative system designer, any occurrence of "origin." Locker's attack on scientism, and his inclusion of autopoiesis within its realm, represents a metaview of considerable import. In more simple terms, autopoiesis is only a result of human reflection, a construct of the human mind, a fruit of a self-referential comprehension of ourselves. It is interesting to follow how Locker "takes on" Eigen's hypercycles, a theory that is becoming central to Jantsch and respected by both Atlan and Varela. Locker insists that nothing arises "by itself" and that the objective origin of anything is not only impossible but unthinkable: the cognizing subject is always indispensable for an origin to be recognized, and the creative subject (God?) is always indispensable for an origin to be accomplished. As Locker refers to the object of his attacks as "scientism," without specifying any of its various meanings, the reader might find it useful to recall its most common definition: an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science to explain social or psychological phenomena, to solve pressing human problems, or to provide a comprehensive unified picture of the meaning of the cosmos. The following should be pondered: Locker has used the established methods of natural science (logical reasoning, mathematics, empirical argumentation, and referencing other scientists) to reach rather unitary and systemic conclusions on the questions of cognition, self-reference, consciousness, cosmogeny, language, and origin. If we accept that there is something outside the picture derived by the methods of science and scientism, as for example Locker's logically derived implication that "nothing arises by itself," are we then justified in entertaining the opposite idea, that of spontaneous generation?