How Homeostasis Works
Bernard's concept of homeostasis was revolutionary to the manner in which biological function was viewed at the time. Never before had it been proposed that the internal stability of an organism could only be maintained through some kind of purposeful feedback, both from the external environment in which an organism lived as well as within its internal environment. (emphasis author's)
It further implied that this feedback could only work by simultaneously affecting multiple, interacting, fully integrated control mechanisms to keep the internal environment stable and in balance. No process could operate independently from any other. When one became active and increased (or decreased) its activity, others that were affected would respond accordingly.
All of this really exquisite, purposeful feedback on an organism's functioning would take place continually, regardless of the physiological systems involved. None of it was in any way was random. None it it. (emphasis mine)
This brief description incorporates the whole of homeostasis. Now we will turn to actual biology to make this principle real and show that in sharp contrast to evolution, it is real science.
....homeostasis has been found and demonstrated in every form of life studied.
How Wilson turned to "actual biology", to make the homeostasis principle real in this particular section of his book, was to give several real world examples -- both from whole, multi-cellular organisms and from single cell life. For the former, he showed how this principle works in water balance and in core body temperature. And for the latter free-living, single cell example, he used protein production. For the sake of brevity, I will not reproduce all that. However, if someone wishes to see what he had to say, I will consider the request, but make no promises.
In the final post in this series, we'll get to the "bottom line" of this well-established, well documented, proven, universal physiological principle to understand better its deeply profound and devastating implications to biological evolution. (Actually, I think it's the second death knell to it!)
But also, I plan on doing one other critically important post that will be devoted to defining what "random" means in biological science. Don't forget: Wilson made a stupendous claim about the workings of homeostasis. He said, "None of it was random. None of it." So we must have a crystal clear understanding of what Wilson meant by "random" when he said that because evolutionists insists that evolution is a natural, gradual, random process from beginning to end. He spent some time in his book in a couple places defining "random", probably knowing how many evolutionists have a propensity to equivocating when it comes to this critically important term. For this reason alone, I feel it's worth a separate post.
Plus we'll have the enjoyment of watching Actor react to Wilson's well-thought out definition when he returns and respond by creating his own. This will be fun to witness.
