Syncropy and Related Concepts
What is Syncropy?
In the theory of biomorality, syncropy is the fundamental pattern that characterizes all living beings—a special configuration of matter-energy that creates and maintains order within boundaries while increasing entropy in surroundings. It represents how life temporarily reverses entropy locally through continuous exchange with the environment.
Syncropy manifests through several key features:
- Self-maintenance: Living beings continuously rebuild and repair themselves
- Boundary creation: Living beings actively define and maintain their borders
- Temporal orientation: Living beings project themselves into the future through anticipatory adaptation
- Value generation: Living beings inherently value what supports their continued existence
- Continuous prediction: Living beings constantly predict and test interactions with their environments
Syncropy isn't a supernatural force, but the emergent pattern we observe in all life—from mitochondria to ecosystems. This pattern forms the foundation for biomorality's explanations of consciousness, morality, and humanity's place in the cosmos.
The Etymology of Syncropy
The term "syncropy" refers to the close, dependent relationship of this tendency with entropy, while signaling its opposition to it. Like the word entropy, syncropy is formed by combining two Greek elements. The first is the prefix "syn-" (συν-), meaning "together," "with," or "unified," which appears in words like synthesis, synergy, and synchrony. The second element is "tropē" (τροπή), meaning "transformation" or "turning" (the same root used in "entropy").
Etymologically, syncropy therefore means "turning together" or "organized transformation"—capturing how living systems maintain coherent, organized structures against the general tendency toward disorder. This stands in direct conceptual opposition to entropy, which describes the tendency toward disorganization or "turning outward."
Syncropy's Scientific Relatives
Syncropy builds upon and integrates insights from several established scientific concepts while offering something new. Understanding these relationships helps clarify both what syncropy shares with scientific understanding and how it extends beyond it.
Syncropy and Autopoiesis
What they share: Both recognize living systems as self-creating and self-maintaining processes rather than static objects. Both emphasize the importance of boundaries and internal organization.
How syncropy differs: While autopoiesis (developed by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela) describes how living cells maintain themselves through self-production, syncropy extends beyond biological mechanisms to provide a philosophical framework for understanding life's place in the cosmos.
Autopoiesis tells us how cells maintain themselves; syncropy helps us understand what this self-maintenance means for how we understand ourselves, our values, and our relationship with other living beings.
Philosophical scope vs. biological mechanism: Autopoiesis operates primarily as a biological description of organizational closure in living systems, while syncropy functions as a foundational philosophical concept that serves as the basis for a comprehensive worldview.
Syncropy and Homeostasis
What they share: Both recognize that living systems actively maintain internal conditions different from their surroundings. Both acknowledge the dynamic nature of this maintenance.
How syncropy differs: Homeostasis focuses primarily on maintaining current, stable internal states within acceptable parameters. Syncropy emphasizes how living systems are fundamentally future-oriented, continuously predicting and adapting to anticipated conditions.
Homeostasis describes the mechanisms of stability; syncropy reveals how this stability serves the forward-projection of life through time.
Scale of application: While homeostasis typically applies to specific regulatory mechanisms within bounded physiological systems, syncropy applies across scales from cellular organization to ecosystems to human societies, serving as a conceptual bridge that connects diverse phenomena.
Syncropy and Negentropy
What they share: Both address how living systems maintain order in a universe trending toward disorder. Both recognize the thermodynamic uniqueness of life.
How syncropy differs: Negentropy (negative entropy) is defined primarily as the opposite or reversal of entropy—what life works against. Syncropy is defined positively as what life actively creates and maintains.
Negentropy describes what doesn't happen in living systems (complete disorder); syncropy describes what does happen (active organization with purpose).
Historical connection: The concept of negentropy gained prominence through Erwin Schrödinger's influential 1944 book "What Is Life?", where he observed that living systems appear to defy the second law of thermodynamics by maintaining order. Syncropy builds upon this observation but frames it as a positive phenomenon rather than merely the negation of entropy.
The Recursivity of Syncropy
A distinctive feature of syncropy is its recursive nature. In fact, the definition of syncropy is intentionally recursive: syncropic systems maintain structures that enable the continuation of those very structures. This recursivity isn't a logical flaw but reflects the actual structure of living systems, which maintain themselves for no other purpose than to maintain themselves.
This recursive quality means that syncropic systems cannot be decoupled into components without losing the very property that makes them syncropic in the first place. This highlights what we identify as "integrity"—the essential, irreducible wholeness of living beings.
Syncropy and the Virus Question
One of the longstanding challenges in defining life has been how to classify entities like viruses—are they alive or not? Many definitions of life struggle with this boundary case. The concept of syncropy offers a clear and elegant resolution to this problem.
Under the syncropy framework, all living beings are syncropic systems, but not all biological entities qualify as syncropic systems. Viruses represent a perfect example of this distinction.
Viruses contain the molecular machinery of life (DNA or RNA) and can reproduce, but they cannot act on their own to maintain their structure. Outside a host cell, a virus is inert—unable to repair itself, maintain its boundaries, or engage in metabolic processes. It lacks the self-maintaining quality that defines syncropy.
This allows us to make a nuanced distinction: viruses are composed of living matter in the sense that they can only exist in relationship with living beings and contain biological components, but they are not themselves syncropic systems. They function as replicators that depend entirely on hijacking the syncropic systems of their hosts for maintenance and reproduction.
This distinction isn't merely taxonomic—it highlights the fundamental importance of self-maintenance to the phenomenon of life. A virus, despite its complexity and evolutionary history, remains ultimately dependent on the syncropy of other organisms, existing at the borderland between living and non-living systems.
Why Syncropy Matters
Unlike specialized scientific concepts, syncropy functions as a philosophical foundation that helps us make sense of our place in the world. It offers several distinctive features:
- Generates meaning: Provides a coherent story about how we fit into the larger patterns of life and cosmos
- Grounds values: Shows how values emerge naturally from life's self-maintaining processes
- Evolves with understanding: Contains its own mechanisms for revision as our knowledge develops
- Bridges disciplines: Connects scientific insights with philosophical questions about meaning and purpose
- Accessible application: Offers practical guidance for living well in relationship with other living systems
A Both/And Approach
Syncropy doesn't compete with scientific concepts—it integrates their insights into a broader philosophical framework. Scientific concepts answer specific questions within specialized domains. Syncropy addresses the general human need to understand our place in the world and how we should live.
By recognizing the patterns common to all living beings through syncropy, we gain a philosophical foundation that is empirically grounded while remaining open to revision—a framework that can guide our understanding and actions in an increasingly complex world.
To learn about the methodological principles that guide our approach, explore The Method of Biomorality.