The Relational Turn

Formalism is based on the premise that the form of a literary text is constitutive of meaning (or content). Literature is counter-posed to standard (or practical) texts due to its properties of literariness and capacity to defamiliarise. An inherent autonomy is proposed, rejecting notions of literature being subject to extra-literary causal factors. In the life sciences, formalist positions present an alternative to the reductionist positions of current molecular biology. One branch of mathematical biology, ‘relational biology’, eschews the view that living processes can, in the end, be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. Rather, life is unique in its organisational properties. Furthermore, metabolic closure (demonstrated by both relational biology and autopoietic models) indicates that living cells, while being open thermodynamic systems, are ‘closed to efficient causation’. Relational principles are opposed to current systems biology and goals of genetic manipulation, which focus on components and not the coherent whole. The claim by relational biologists that life is non-computable (at least on the basis of present computer technology) leads to disagreements with proponents of artificial life.