Erich Jantsch

Erich Jantsch, "From Self-Reference to Self-Transcendence: The Evolution of Self-Organization Dynamics," Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982.

Symbiosis is usually defined in structural terms, that is to say, by the relations between two or more entities such as organisms. If, however, we look at a symbiosis of processes instead, we arrive at the notion of coevolution. In a predator-prey relation, the entities of the prey species are destroyed, but not its evolutionary process. On the contrary, both predator and prey species benefit in a dynamic view and expand their niches.
Coevolution also means that even cooperating entities never totally adapt to each other. Evolution always involves destabilization, the reaching out, the self-presentation which offers new symbiotic relations, the risk accompanying all innovation. Evolution at all levels involves the freedom of action as well as the recognition of a ubiquitous systemic interconnectedness - in short, the joy as well as the meaning of life. Total adaptation implies equilibrium, the principle of death. The basic principle of life, nonequilibrium, which the theory of dissipative structures recognizes as an intrasystemic condition for self-organization and evolution, reappears as an intersystemic condition for symbiosis and coevolution. [347]

If the output of a system's self-organization dynamics enters again a self-organization configuration (basically, hypercycle), higher-level self-organization structures may result. The level of the original dynamic system is thereby transcended. In this way, dissipative processes at different levels may be linked together and form a hierarchy involving several levels. [348]

It seems that we frequently confuse indeterminacy and chance. Indeterminacy is the freedom available at each level which, however, cannot jump over the shadow of its own history. Evolution is the open history of an unfolding complexity, not the history of random processes. What emerges are the contours of a world in which life (if anything) is purely random, but much is indetermined and shaped by a creativity that transcends the systems which are its vehicles. [352]