He saw metabolism, repair, and replication. And there it is! The key to a system evolving to become an organism is that it must reach some point where it achieves all three of these functions. We have never designed a machine like this and for very good reason. We build machines to last. One of the first and most crucial aspects of the evolving living system was its failure to last! It was in a condition of being torn down as fast as it was being built up and this is what allowed it to evolve. Stability is the return to a condition after being perturbed from it. How much more stable could something be than to have both its construction and destruction under strict limits? Both construction and destruction are systems properties. The systematic tearing down allows rebuilding, replication and evolution. The details we know, but the strategy was masked by the details. Molecular biology is indeed an oxymoron. Biology is the study of life and life does not exist at the molecular level.
Mikuleky
“Metabolism, repair and replication”….In those three words lie the key to understanding why human beings are not machine like. We are not assembled from a collection of independent different objects. Disease is not a wonky part or a piece needing replaced. You can’t maintain health the way you maintain a machine.
We have never invented a machine which can achieve all three of these processes – metabolism (the assimilation of, transformation of, and breaking down of nutrients), repair (the only healing which exists is that delivered by the self repairing capacity of the living organism) and replication (not just reproduction but making new cells in order to grow and develop).
This passage adds a further important insight though. When you buy a lawnmower it stays a lawnmower. It doesn’t grow into a bigger lawnmower. When you buy a car, it stays a car. It doesn’t grow into a stronger, larger car. But when an egg is fertilised and an embryo grows into a baby in the womb, and that baby is born, it never ceases to change. It grows and develops into a child, an adult, a mature person.
Over a lifetime every single cell of the billions in the body die and are replaced by new ones. This happens several times over.
Machines are built to “do what it says on the box” and to stay the same.
Living creatures never stay the same. Not for a moment. Without that triad of metabolism, repair and replication there would be no growth, no development, no evolution.
Living cells are designed to constantly create and constantly tear down.
Astonishing, isn’t it?
We need to rid ourselves of the mechanical models of reductionist materialism if we are to create health and healing. We need to see that Life is nothing like an assembly of separate bits.
Life is, rather, a constant flow of energy, information and materials. Wholly interconnected, inextricably embedded in contexts, environments and relationships. Every organism unique but interdependent living a singular life which is unpredictable but not random.
Beautiful, awe inspiring, wonderful.
Heroes Not Zombies 
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