>And what exactly is aging?
Both apoptosis and body death have something in common they are both "aging"
processes. (occuring on different levels of autopoiesis). Aging is the ceasure
of autopoietic compensation processes. The cell "deliberately" stops
compensating
its natural degeneration, and so does the body. In other words, aging is a kind
of large-scale second order apoptosis. The body commits suicide. Purely in terms
of autopoiesis this is very hard to understand since an autopoietic system is by
definition a perpetual motion machine. (not thermodynamically speaking of
course!) To understand this behavior we have cannot see the autopoietic entity
in isolation, but in relation to its environment. Apoptosis is clearly a product
of the larger order autopoiesis of the multicellular organism. In other words,
the directed death of cells brings life to a higher order organism or organic
matrix. This is not unthinkable to be the case on larger scales too. So body
death is probably naturally imposed on organisms by evolution, just like
apoptosis once was.
>changeless change.
Now we're talking!
Onar.