Bio-onion

The Bio-onion

The bio-onion is the name given to the 'nested complexity layer' concept in biology. In overview, the concept says that biology can be seen as a nested set of interacting layers, each layer building on the last progressing towards ever greater complexity. Although the boundaries of each layer can be difficult to precisely define, the layers provide a framework for classifying and understanding biological information processing.

Once the general 'layered reality' framework has been seen established, the whole universe spanning sub-atomic interactions at one extreme to human interaction at the other, can be encapsulated using the bio-onion concept.

Within this framework 'evolution' in the classical (darwinian) sense is not seen as "the survival of the fittest" (a chaotic world of dog-eat-dog interactions) but rather as the self-defining, self-sustaining "survival of the stable". In this sense, stable behaviour in one layer provides the substrate for evolution within the next layer. Thus what we define as 'stable' is a self-defining attribute, the stability of one layer in the context of the next.

In this way stable patterns of interaction at the sub-atomic level lead to the 'stability' of the atoms. Atoms are only defined as stable at the next layer, which is the layer of atomic interactions. Many of the properties of the atomic interaction layer derive from the nature of the sub-atomic interactions, so this isn't a strict division. However, the atomic layer is defined by the stability of the atom-objects that are defined with reference to subsequent layers, namely (homo-centrically) the specific nature of organic chemistry.

This short progression illustrates the rising or canonical nature of the bio-onion, with each layer only being defined by reference to the next.

Chemical layers find utility in bacterial life, that form communities of eukaryotic organisms, that form ecosystems of symbiotic / dysbiotic relationships. The most complex of all being human society. By extension we can use the 'stability principle' to define the progress of human society from low-tech to high-tech.

In life we are not competing for survival in a strict sense (although that is one interpretation of the phenomenon of life), rather we are the products of and the living result of the self-defining 'continuation of the stable'.

Related people and pages
Dan Bolser: one of the biolayer onions or an onionist.