Abstract

Life on our planet is a global ensemble termed bios. We emphasize that bios and the Earth per se form an integral system that behaves as a single coherent object. This idea is strongly supported by our knowledge of the organization of bios and its evolution on the geological time scale. This article considers interactions between the Earth, a self-organizing system, and bios, its subsystem, in ontological terms. Both systems are open. They are characterized by non-linear processes.