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Explaining the emergence of functional constraints through a protocell model| old_uid | 8176 |
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| title | Explaining the emergence of functional constraints through a protocell model |
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| start_date | 2010/02/16 |
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| schedule | 17h-18h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In this talk I will try to show how protocell modeling could help us tackle a difficult conceptual problem in philosophy and biology: the origin of functionality, its natural material roots. In the context of prebiotic chemical evolution, when would we be entitled (if ever) to say that a part of a system becomes functional? Could this be even before the mechanism of natural selection starts to operate? My tentative answer will be positive, relying on a ‘dispositional’ or ‘organizational’ type of approach to the concept of function, to be applied in protocell development, once clearly distinguishable parts of the system, performing clearly distinguishable constraining actions on other parts of the system, prove indispensable for the global and continuous maintenance of the whole. |
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| responsibles | Longo, Mossio |
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