Biological information processing objects

Biological Information Processing Objects (BiO)

A Biological Information Processing Object, or BiO, is biosophy's basic unit. It is best understood as a complex feedback network that processes information and energy under mathematical rules grounded in physical principles. Genomes, cells, organisms, neural systems, computers, and ecosystems are all BiOs, distinguished by the depth and organization of their processing rather than by being separate kinds of thing.

What "bio" means here

The bio in BiO does not mean green grass on Earth. It does not mean living in the folk-biological sense of reproducing animals, plants, and microbes. Biosophy's bio means: a complex feedback network that computes — and therefore processes information — under mathematical rules grounded in physical principles.

This redefinition is deliberate. The folk-biological category — living things, by which we mean things like us — turns out to be a special case of a much broader phenomenon: substrate-independent information processing organized into recursive, environment-coupled feedback systems. Biosophy takes that broader phenomenon as its primary object of study and reserves bio for it.

By this definition:

A reproducing animal is a BiO. (Folk biology agrees.)
A genome considered as a processor, not just a molecule, is a BiO.
A computer running a sufficiently recursive program is a BiO.
A protein-folding event embedded in a signaling cascade is a BiO.
An ecosystem maintaining its own internal regulation is a BiO.
A green leaf, considered only as a chunk of chlorophyll, is not a BiO. Considered as part of a photosynthetic feedback network coupled to its environment, it is.

The category is defined by what something does, not by what kingdom of life it belongs to.

The formal definition

A BiO is a region of the biogrid organized densely enough to act as an information processor.

BiOs are not separate things placed on the biogrid; they are local condensations of the biogrid itself — regions where information flow has become organized, persistent, and self-maintaining enough to function as identifiable agents.

Every BiO exhibits four properties: partial informational closure, processing, persistence across time, and coupling to the biogrid. For the full treatment, see the longer page on Biological information processing objects.

Why this matters

Defining bio in terms of feedback, computation, and information flow — rather than in terms of carbon-based life on Earth — is what lets biosophy place humans, computers, genomes, and ecosystems on a single continuum. Without this redefinition, biosophy would either collapse into ordinary biology (if bio means life) or lose contact with biology entirely (if bio is dropped). The BiO concept is the hinge that lets biosophy be biological in a deeper sense than biology usually allows.

Biological information processing objects