That the machine is the materialisation of logic is only partially correct, no less so than its inversion, that logic is the idealisation of machine. If art mimics life, then mechanics represents life without sin or play. It is still-life. As a mimic, the logic is in error. As a model, the machine can only pose for a dystopian ideal: a path without sin is movement without transgression. Here found is a consensus between theologists and technologists: the definition of righteousness and purity is lawful obedience. One can see that the goal for science, the singularity or life as cyborg represents no divergence from that for the devout, spiritual unity, not to mention that for the politically inclined, global democracy. To homogenise milk, all fat modules are mechanically reduced to identical proportion in order to prevent separation during storage. While there is a certain nutritional loss, there is a capital gain: one can no longer make cream or butter at home. For machine logic, some sacrifice is always necessary.
Mechanical systems are inclined to produce work to fascilitate organic systems, occasionally to facsimilate them. Biological systems produce movement and reproduction of novelties. Equilibrium in the former represents a stasis of operation or thermodynamic equilibrium – no worries. When energy input stops, so does the machine. Equilibrium in the latter represents distributivity or communication. When communication stops, the organism becomes an energy source for other organisms. This metabolism is even apparent at the chemical level which we have agreed to call "inorganic" only because they are not obviously self-renewing, even when self-motivating.
While also inorganic, no machine is self-motivating. The lunar rover and drone bomber can only follow directions. Machines are stimulus-response units; organisms encourage and are discouraged. Machines may express an aesthetic to an observer, organisms express and are impressed, with or without an observer. While a machine calculates internalised input, an organism can as well explore externality. While a machine can malfunction, it cannot intentionally err or act spontaneously. Organisms play, just for the fun of it.
Mechanical output feeds back to regulate the input. Metabolic output produces perturbation or growth. Mechanical reproduction (manufacturing) produces invariant identities. Organic reproduction produces new systems altogether, where-after self-similarity dissipates. Mechanical systems grow through additive combination. Organic systems grow by symbiotic merging. Hence, machines are composed of interacting parts, bodies are wholes in themselves, even when immerged with or tending to machinic prostheses. Beyond the point of energy input, machines can function in isolation from other systems. Bodies cannot. Organisms are open systems while machines are closed. Machines are organised. Bodies self-organise.
self-organising systems have a high degree of stability, and this is where we run into difficulties with conventional language. The dictionary meanings of the word "stable" include "fixed", "not fluctuating", "unvarying," and "steady," all of which are inaccurate to describe organisms. The stability of self-organising systems is utterly dynamic and must not be confused with [thermodynamic] equilibrium. It consists in maintaining the overall structure in spite of ongoing changes and replacements of its "components".– Fritjof Capra
Because there are commonalities (feeding and feedback, flows and circulation, inhalation and exhalation), they can be compared. One can be described in terms of the other, but they are never wholly or exclusively interchangeable. Organics can proceed autonomously with regard to mechanics. The reverse does not hold water. The machine is at the mercy of environmental feedbacks, having limited behavioural options; the organism maintains its own internal feedbacks by deviating with regard to environmental irregularity. This multiplicity of options is called adaptability.
Transgression is essential to organic systems, it is catastrophe for the mechanical. Flexible conditions place stress on machines but allow bodies to thrive. One can still say the machine, in many respects, mimics the organism and therefore, can aid in its function. The inversion of this sentence can only produce a tragedy or comedy.
Comparison or analogy is a means of approach. Outside of political arrangements (a mechanisation of society), it is not a logical or mathematical deduction for categorical property or in/exclusion. Overlapping patterns, like mathematical correlations, do not demand the imposition of linear causality or genetic (in the broad sense, taxonomic) relation. When a metaphor or analogy repeats itself or is repeated, it warrants a common name. That is all. Consensual agreement has no bearing on the truth of identities when the actual birth has not been witnessed. Truth is irrelevant when common sense is overwhelmed by resemblance, just as genetics is irrelevant with regard to the adoption of orphans: kinship is not a mechanical process.
Prayer is not a spare wheel that you pull out when you're in trouble. Use it as a steering wheel that keeps you on the right path...– Muhammad Najaath
...but unless you transgress and explore the margins and side streets, your path will take you (or something else will), rendering you inexhorably tactless and easily preyed upon. Even for the raven, there are neither straight lines nor smooth surfaces, just as there is no objective detachment.– Achmed Hibaab Azzizi Homeini
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