And yet the Newtonian Paradigm proffers no help whatsoever in the small matter of "closing the circle." Yet "strong Newtonians" will demonize you as some kind of deranged mystic for even noticing the problem. Notwithstanding, it is STILL THERE: If you can't "close the circle," you cannot avoid the perils of the problem of infinite regress. Nothing infinitely regressive can ever mean anything.
On the other hand, one cannot "close the circle" absent the idea of final cause.
How can such a trusty old friend as Newtonian mechanics be so silent on the question, What is life? As Robert Rosen suggests, it lacks the universality it claims because of the constraints of its own self-imposed formalism. This formalism requires us to view Nature as a syntactical system.
To put "syntactical system" into context: Under the auspices of Natural Law, we are entitled to "deconstruct" any natural language into two separable components, semantics and syntax.
Very crudely put, semantics pertains to meaning — it associates a word directly with an external referrent (something in Nature that we try to establish cognitively by defining it, in communicable terms to others who speak/read the Natural Language). Once this association is established, the meaning of the word is established.
Syntax, on the other hand, is directly associated with the idea of grammar in a natural language: The "rules of the road" that specify how the parts of natural speech (e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, articles, prepositions, et al.) can be fittingly combined so to effectively convey semantic meaning in the given Natural Language. This is, in fact, a pretty "universal idea" — provided it can be isolated from the context of Nature altogether (i.e., from the context of meaning). Which is done implicitly by "pulling Nature itself" into the formalism. Nature then becomes, not a system containing inorganic and organic objects, but a set of syntactical rules.
When we speak of a "syntactical" approach or formalized model of Nature — as Newton evidently was glad to do (he said he was only interested in "descriptions" anyway) — we are already dealing with a world of total abstraction from Nature. We have withdrawn into the mental world of the formal construction, because we clearly understood that, if you want to have a "universal" law, it must be independent of any of its particular realizations. Only then can we say an observation is perfectly "objective" — because all the "baggage" of subjective engagement of questions precisely about meaning have been forbidden. The price one pays for this "objectivity" is: the abolition of all "external referents" by which "meaning" can be "entailed!" But we do get our "universality" that way.
As an observer from the semantic universe, I see how all this fails. The semantic aspect of meaning is never reducible to syntax. Therefore, I would expect all syntactical formalizations seeking to give a "universal" answer to the question, What is Life?, to fail against the tests of Nature.
Somehow Nature is meaningful. Natural Law already states this.
Rosen has certainly raised some interesting problems for me, dearest sister in Christ! And you also it appears! Thank you so very much for the excerpt from Athel Cornish-Bowden. He does manage to take away the "sting" of the seemingly relentless math of Rosen's reasoning, boiling it down to more intuitive concepts. Still, I believe Rosen ultimately must speak for himself, and in the terms he has chosen.
I'm no great mathematical genius myself when you come right down to it. Rosen relies heavily on set theory and (above all) Category Theory — pretty "high-level maths" for your average bear. But I could follow him throughout. He made sure of it — what with his graphs and his relational diagrams, married to excellent communication skills. :^)
In closing, just a remarkably astute comment from the sainted Einstein on this very point: "One can best feel in dealing with living things how primitive physics still is."
To God be the Glory!
Closing the circle would be like perpetual motion, it is disallowed. Energy comes from the Sun and 'Enzymes' come from the environment. A good example would be that ATP cycle.
Truly, if the universe were altogether a clockwork, a mechanism as contemporary science approaches it, then the semantics could be modeled by syntax universally, including living systems. That which is analyzed can be synthesized, etc.
But life isn't and cannot be modeled that way. The dead rabbit we broke apart earlier cannot be put together again.
Organization which must be addressed as a "thing" in itself plays no role in the Newtonian approach which partitions "the ambience into systems and environments, phases and forces, states and dynamical laws." (quoting Rosen "Life Itself" pg 117)
LeGrande's objection in his reply to yours is the same, it approaches the subject as if it were a mechanism, a clockwork; the efficient cause of a clockwork is a clockmaker which is necessarily outside the clockwork itself.
The material cause, LeGrande, is not at issue.
The final cause of the clock is to keep time. In life the final cause is the organism or subordinately, the function within the organism.
Life avoids (external) efficient causation (e.g. maintenance and repair) because of its circular organization.