Talk:Game of Life

I don't understand how the statements below can be held to wider scientific scrutiny:

1) "Autopoeisis is a fundamental concept in the biology of cognition"

2) "The biological cell is a canonical example of autopoeisis; its components underlie processes (supported by external energy and material flow) which continually regenerate the components in a structure that defines itself against the surrounding medium".

Regarding statement 1). Autopoiesis is NOT a fundamental concept in biology; hardly anyone in biology even knows about it. If it were fundamental, it would have received a Nobel prize or at least be included in life sciences curricula, which it isn't.

Regarding statement 2). The biological cell is NOT a canonical example of autopoiesis. The phenotype of cells in multicellular organisms is very oten completely controlled by external signals, such as genes, proteins and signalling from other cells and the environment; see for example how segment polarity in drosophila is controlled by neighboring cells, or how the gender of alligators is controlled by external temperature, or how plants exchange genetic material, or how aprox 8% human genome is comprised of retroviral DNA, the influence of gut microbiota of host phenotypes (e.g. Wolbachia genes change the viral response of drosophila), etc. The same is true in prokaryotes (think of CRISPR and even Griffith's and Avery's "transformation" experiments).