What Is Being Controlled

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Mutual Attraction, Homeostasis and Governance
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Living systems and their governance mechanisms are a natural part of the universe. In our world, they have evolved bottom-up, from atoms into molecules, from molecules into cells, from cells into organisms, and from organisms into superorganisms. For modeling purposes, the following definitions are used:
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Mutual Attraction:	For the evolutionary sequence to occur there must be an innate characteristic of nature that produces mutual attraction, causing simpler elements to join together as components into more complex aggregates. The term "mutual attraction" provides a label for the self-organizing force that causes lower-level living systems to aggregate together as components to form a higher-level living system whole.
Homeostasis:	For an aggregate living system to survive in its changing environment, its life functions and interactions with its environment must continually be performed in a highly coordinated manner. For this to occur, there must be another complementary characteristic of nature such that when an aggregate living system is formed, a self-sustaining and self-correcting control mechanism is also created to maintain its health and equilibrium. "Homeostasis" describes the ongoing maintenance and adjustment of key properties of a living system by which it is judged to "have life" and to "be alive."
Governance:	Where "homeostasis" describes the ongoing functionality of life, "governance" describes control mechanisms that initiate the specific actions and corrections necessary to produce homeostasis. Governance controls and operates the individual subsystems and their functions in a coordinated way for the good of the overall living system. The purpose of governance is to meet the needs of both the living system and its components, protect them from harm and sustain their existence in a changing environment. Homeostasis is a fundamental part of nature, and "governance" describes the way it is manifested in all living systems to control their organization units and components.

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Attraction, Aggregation and Governance
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The Theory of Aggregate Objects helps explain how component objects within an aggregate whole are controlled by constraining their behavior. When component objects are joined together to produce an aggregate object, it forms bonds that place certain constraints on their individual freedom of movement. The characteristics of the components, plus the nature of the constraints imposed by the bonds, cause a set of new and unique properties to emerge. We interpret and "see" this new set of emergent properties as a "whole" aggregate object. Once established, the structure of the living system aggregate object enforces the constraints to maintain its existence. For a living system, these emergent properties include dynamic control to preserve homeostasis.
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When biomolecules are attracted to join together under certain constraining relations, they form a living system aggregate object with a set of new and unique properties. We interpret this set of emergent properties as a "living cell," which then controls the behavior of its internal biomolecules to achieve its life functions. Likewise, when cells are attracted to join together under certain constraining relations, they form a living organism that exercises control over its cells. And when organisms are attracted to join together under certain constraining relations, they form a living superorganism that exercises control over its component organisms.
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Constraining relations (or "bonds") can be physical, as in the case of any organism's structure, or social, as in the case of a nation-state's citizen components. To be "alive," a living system aggregate object must control its internal component actions to perform its life functions and maintain its homeostatic equilibrium. The controlling homeostatic force is referred to here as a "governance mechanism," or just "governance."
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Governance, Learning, and Adapting
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Given that governance is a necessary natural phenomenon, how is it actually carried out? At the cell-level, governance resides in a cell's nucleus. There, it operates as a reactive stimulus-response mechanism, driven mainly by the cell's internal needs and responding to certain kinds of change in its surrounding environmental conditions. The actions by a cell's organelles and their biomolecules are hard-wired to perform on-demand in pre-defined ways. At this level of living system, there is no learning by the governance mechanism. Any adaptation of structure or behavior to meet changing environmental conditions takes place at the gene pool or species level, through natural selection across generations of individual living cells.
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At the organism-level, a learning capability is added that enables the living system to interact within a wider range of environmental changes. The resulting ability to adjust behavior according to conditions improves survival of the individual living system instances. Manifestation of this governance capability varies widely by type of species and is directly related to the complexity of the organism. Simple organisms have very limited learning ability with simple governance mechanisms; complex organisms have highly-developed brains to govern their more sophisticated behavior. However, even human organisms have little or no ability to adapt their DNA-driven physiological structure to major environmental changes. At the present time, each organism instance has a fixed genome that determines its cellular and organic makeup. However, advances in genetic manipulation methods are now being developed to allow individuals take some control of their genetic structure.
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At the superorganism-level, an adaptation ability is added that enables governance to reorganize and improve the internal structure of its living system to meet new environmental conditions, and to exercise some control over the environment itself. To meet changing conditions, superorganism governance continually makes internal structural adjustments to the constraints it places on citizen component behavior. Where an organism instance is limited by its genetic structural design, a superorganism's physical structure and functional capabilities are based on a set of memes which, in human nation-states, evolve over time and can be modified by government policy and edict.
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Evolution of Human Living Systems
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From a design viewpoint, the evolution of human living systems from cell to organism to superorganism was accomplished by building on and adding onto previous successes. Although higher-level living systems have become more complex with additional features, they still retain the same basic architectural structure across all three levels. Using this common architecture as a framework, their limitations and capabilities can be compared:
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Comparison of Living System Capabilities

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Cells and Organelles
•   Cell instance governance is hard-wired, and not subject to learning.
•   Cells evolve only at the species level, across generations of instances.
•   Organelle instances are hard-wired and not capable of learning.
•   Organelles evolve as parts of cells, across generations of cells.

Organisms and Organs
•   Organism instance governance is part hard-wired and part learned.
•   Organisms evolve only at the species level, across generations of instances.
•   Organ instances are hard-wired, capable of adjustment but not learning.
•   Organs evolve as parts of organisms, across generations of organisms.

Superorganisms and Organizations
•   Superorganism instance governance is learned, not hard-wired.
•   Superorganisms evolve within individual instance life spans.
•   Organization instances learn and adapt within their individual life spans.
•   Organizations evolve as parts of superorganisms, within superorganism life spans.

Who is in Control examines the different dimensions of control and who performs them.