An informational sociobiological explanation of the constitution of the human body

Introduction

When Pedro Ortiz Cabanillas (1933-2011), in the early 1960s at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM), began to plant the seeds that five decades later he called “Informational Sociobiology Theory” (IST), he did it from the position of a physician, specialized in the human nervous system, interested in having a total explanation of the universe.^1,2 This huge pretension parents the IST with a sort of “philosophy of nature”, or a “scientific macro-theory”. Then, the formulations of the IST constitute a kind of philosophical and programmatic matrix from which different scientific explanations can germinate. In this work, we are going to focus on the IST’s explanations about the constitution of the human body, and consider this question: How does IST explain the constitution of the human body?

Following a biographical route, we know that by late 1993 and early 1994, Ortiz conceived an informational systematic approach. From the development of his own definition of “information”, Ortiz elaborated an epistemic framework that coherently explained the entire extension of nature: the universe (the cosmos), on one side, the planet Earth, and in it, on the other side, living beings (informational systems). Living beings are material systems organized by information.³ On this road, Ortiz proposed a new qualitative definition of “information” which served as basis for the IST since 1994.⁴

In IST, the information is an attribute of the matter (not a part of the human communication); and information is a material structure that organizes all the living beings.^5,6 In the middle of 1990s, this definition of information crowned almost four decades of clinical experience, academic exploration and teaching. Additionally, a systematic research program (called IST) was opened, which Ortiz conducted between 1994 and 2011. For an organic and critical oncoming of the IST’s approaches, Ortiz implemented at the beginning of this century the neuroscience postgraduate program in Peru (whether at a diplomate, master and doctorate level) at the UNMSM, which, after almost two decades, is currently the only postgraduate program in neuroscience that is valid in Peru.⁷

As a part of this research program, Ortiz published the following books: “The system of personality” (1994), where he exposes a basic and schematical totality of the IST; “Introduction to Clinical Medicine 1” (1996); in this book, he exposes the synthesis and the method to realize a general medical exam; “The development of the personality” (1997), where he sketches out the first links between the IST and education; “The conscious level of the memory” (1998), where Ortiz explains a hypothesis regarding the role of the memory as an attribute of the life; “Introduction to Clinical Medicine 3” (1999), explanations and sustentations to realize an integral neurological exam; “Language and Self-expression” (2002); developing the sociobiological explanation of the language and the vision of the brain as a semiotic system; “Book 1 of Socio Psychobiological” (2004), also called “Introduction to a Human Psychobiology”; “Book 6 of Socio Psychobiological” (2004), called “the Conscious level of the Self-activity”; “Introduction to Clinical Medicine 2” (2006), where Ortiz exposes the sustentations and the method to realize an integral psychological exam; “Social Ethics” (2007), exposition of the proximity of the IST to explain the freedom, justice and solidarity; “Education and development of personality” (2008), where he elaborates on an education-focused proposal”; second edition of “Introduction to Clinical Medicine 2” (2009); second edition of “Book 1 of Socio Psychobiological” (2010); and, finally, a collection of papers written between 1984 and 2011 called “The Informational Explanation” (2011).^3,8–21

Ortiz wrote three books about clinical methods titled: “Introduction to Clinical Medicine”, volumes 1, 3, and 2 (following the order of publication): “The Essential Clinical Examination”; “The Integral Neurological Examination”; “The Integral Psychological Examination”. The first one gives guidelines on conducting the clinical medical exam (Ortiz 1996), the second one applies to the realization of the psychological exam (Ortiz 2006, 2009), and the third one focuses on the integral neurological exam (Ortiz 1999).^8,10,14,17

This shows that the exploration of the human body has always been one of Ortiz’s main interests. In all these documents, the traditional procedures for exploring the human body are fully redefined, especially in the exploration of neuropsychological aspects.

The effort that Ortiz made to enter into the territory of psychology and neurology is astonishing, creating his own definitions for concepts that are used traditionally such as: consciousness, attention, anxiety, personality, intelligence, temperament, cognitive, affective, volitional, motivation, conduct, unconsciousness, etc.

For example, he does not refer to the “mind” in any moment (the word “mind”, in plain, does not exist in a sociobiological informational dictionary). Ortiz explored the limits of an explanation of the human body’s constitution in the editorial project “Books of Social Psychology” (BSP). Ortiz started the BSP in the late 1990s as a part of a collection of materials for teaching purposes, but developed them through the first decade of the 21st century. In the BSP, Ortiz proposed applying the IST to understand the complex configuration of the human body. This is what Ortiz called “informational sociobiology”.²² The BSP were written for working critically in the classes that Ortiz gave (for example, in the postgraduate neurosciences program at the UNMSM the courses have the same titles as the BSP).

They are not a summary manual like a monograph or narrative review of prior knowledge; the originality of the BSP is that they represent the work in progress where Ortiz developed his own conception in terms of cellular biology, histology, embryology, anatomy, physiology, neurology, psychology, and sociology (but in an original, particular, and different form: the IST). Initially there were three BSP, but after more than ten years of work, and at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Ortiz structured them into seven books. In his lifetime, Ortiz published just Book 1 and Book 6 (both in 2004, and a second edition of the first one in 2010).^12,13 After his death, Books 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 remained unfinished and unpublished. Working versions of all the BSP were published, posthumously, in 2017.^23–25 We aimed to review the totality of these seven BSP and to explore how, sociobiological informationally, the constitution of the human body is explained.

Methods

Information analysis

The total concept model that is displayed in Figure 1, presents concepts mentioned more frequently in the BSP as bigger than those mentioned less frequently. The blue lines that attach concepts serve to establish the narrative mechanisms that are used within the informational sociobiological explanation. Once the model is established (the informational sociobiological interpretive matrix), we chose only the concepts that make reference to the constitution of the human body, such as at the cellular level, the organs, the systems, the human nervous system, the morphophysiology of the human body, in general, and in particular, the morphophysiology of the brain. The concepts not chosen (because they don’t explicitly work in the human body’s constitution) were: the organization of matter, the nature of universe, the philosophical aspects of information, the history of neurosciences, the explanation of living beings (from bacteria to psychism), the evolution of hominids, the birth of humanity, the history of society (from its archaic, ancient and modern periods), the aspects of personal development, the conscious psychic information, the memory, the speech and the language, and some specific psychological aspects. In this way, in this revision are included concepts that have a relationship with the description of the structural activity (constitution) of a person (in line with the scope that the histological, anatomical and physiological examination could offer). In the total concept model shown in Figure 1, we have highlighted in red the concepts that are included in this present research.

Figure 1. Total concept map and selected notions.

The narrative revision is presented like an informational sociobiological explanation, based on the concepts of the IST. In addition, there are some schematic figures (graphics) that make visually explicit the dynamic flow of the interaction of the concepts in the delimited epistemic framework. Both the narrative revision and the schematic graphics have been realized with the vision to clarify, with a pedagogic affaire, keeping in mind an uninitiated reader in the statements of the IST.

Results

The original names of the Books have denoted, since the beginning, a programmatic claim. Thereby, the titles: “Introduction to a Human’s Social Psychobiology” (Book 1), “The Cell Level of the Personal Activity” (Book 2), “The Tissue Level of the Personal Activity” (Book 3), “The Neural Level of the Personal Activity” (Book 4), “The Unconscious Psychic Level of the Personal Activity” (Book 5), “The Conscious Psychic Level of the Personal Activity” (Book 6), and “Develop of the Personal Psychic Activity” (Book 7).^23–25 In the PO-A, it is found that there are three files in which Ortiz managed his documents related with the Books. These three files, or dispositions, are organized differently, as seen in Figure 2. Disposition 1 and Disposition 2 contain texts documents (and different versions of the Books). Disposition 3 contains images, photographs and conceptual schemes that Ortiz drew up by himself; in the files of Disposition 3, there are no text documents, all the content is essentially images. Beyond the differences between these three dispositions presented, one fact is true: it is possible that, according to Ortiz, there were twelve Books in total. In that case, in addition to the seven Books mentioned above, there would have been: Book 8: “PBS Talk”; Book 9: “PBS Memory”; Book 10: “PBS Clinical Neuroscience”; Book 11: “PBS Education”; and, Book 12: “PBS Ethic” (the names in quotation marks are the names that Ortiz himself gave them, and “PBS” was the acronym that Ortiz used to designate “Social Psychobiology”).

Figure 2. The Books: three organizations (titles in Spanish).

To start, Ortiz defined the society in systematic and informational terms, not like the integration of people but like a supra-individual structure (and material) that involves the people since before their birth. This societal system that involves people is established by all the people that have been creating and accumulating along its history. In this sense, the historical development of society started 70,000 years ago, the moment that the hominization (the course since the hominid to human) progressed to socialization (the passing of the human to person, it means: social being).

In line with all the Books, it is argued that there exists just one society and that the only living beings that are “social” are those that have grown and developed in “society” (or alternatively, because the only one who has a society is one which involves him). From this interpretative paradigm, one is not social because one lives in a group, but because one lives in society. The living beings (the bees, the ants, the elephants, and others) constitute “multi-individual” groupings; they are not social, because social is being in society, and society is “supra-individual”. This society and the persons that are involved constitute a single amalgam that is, at the end, a new form of life (the latest and most complete form of developed life on earth, as a part, or region, of the universe). With this understanding, from the beginning, it’s clear the intention of the Books is to position an explanation that integrates universe, earth, life, society and people. This can be seen in Figure 3, where the configuration of the human body results in a system of five levels of complexity; not linear but enveloping, where each system that emerges subsumes the preceding levels (the tissue organizational level subsumes the cellular organizational level; the neural organizational level subsumes the tissue organizational level; the unconscious psychic level subsumes the neural organizational level; and finally, the conscious psychic level subsumes the unconscious level). In this way, the human body is energized by determinations that go from the simple to the complex (which in the Books is called epigenetic determination) and from the complex to the simple (which in the Books is called kinetic determination).

Figure 3. Informational morphology of the human body.

Speaking and moving, for example, are the result of kinetic manifestations, while smelling and looking put in motion a series of epigenetic processes. Every person, as complex architecture, is enveloped by society (which is a part of the material universe) and that is the base of the highest level of complexity. This means that the level of the conscious psychic organization (neocortical, or simply: consciousness) is not conditio sine qua non but conditio per quam of the existence of the society (that, informationally, is the most complex living system ever established on earth).

For the Books, each level of organization of life (cellular, tissue, neural, unconscious psychic and conscious psychic) corresponds to a type of information. For the level of cellular organization is the genetic information (also known as DNA); for the tissue level, the metabolic information (the extracellular matrix); for the neural level, the neural information (the subcortical nerve networks, that are: the reticular networks, -the plexuses-, ganglion networks -the autonomic nervous system-, and nuclear networks -the medulla and the subcortical brain-); for the unconscious psychic level, the information is the paleocortex (that, specifically, is defined as the paralimbic cortex and the heterotypic cerebral cortex); and for the conscious psychic level, the information is the neocortex (that, specifically, is defined as the association cerebral cortex: anterior temporal, orbitofrontal, parietotemporal-occipital, medial prefrontal and dorsolateral prefrontal). Note that an essential feature in the proposal of the Books is that at no moment does it make reference to the information as a message or content that is processed in the brain, but rather that the information is the brain (as long as material structure). On the other hand, the paleocortex and neocortex definitions are specific and original to the Book’s proposal. As seen in Figure 4, the organic systems of the human body can be divided into two systems, the visceral systems and the somatic systems. Within the visceral systems are the endocrine, digestive, respiratory, cardiovascular, urinary and reproductive systems; while within the somatic systems are the immune, muscular skeletal, osteoarticular, fascial and dermal systems. These organic systems, at most, manage to reach two levels of complexity (cellular and tissue) and are shrouded, subsumed, for the neural organization level (in its visceral and somatic divisions, respectively). The visceral neural system includes the ganglion of the autonomic nervous system, and to a series of subcortical nuclei grouped in the spinal cord and subcortical brain, especially located in the medial regions (for example: medial nuclei of the thalamus, nuclei of the hypothalamus, and tonsil nuclei, among others), while the somatic neural system includes essentially nuclei in the spinal cord and subcortical brain, specially located in the lateral regions (for example: lateral nuclei of the thalamus and nuclei of the base, among others). The nuclei of the visceral neural system constitute the “visceral neural axis” (and, in effect, there would be two axes, left and right) while the nuclei of the somatic neural system constitute the “somatic neural axis” (also two axes, left and right).

Figure 4. Relationship between the universe, society and the constitution of the human body.

As one knows from any text in neuroanatomy, the neural axes cross from one side to the other side of the body, integrating both hemi bodies into a single synthetic reality (this cross of the neural axes is not shown in Figure 4, but is important nonetheless). In the same way, when Ortiz says “conscious” (neocortical) and “unconscious” (paleocortical), these terms have been understood within the same informational explanation that is presented in the Books and not with the view of traditional definitions that have long been established in psychology, neurology or psychiatry. For Ortiz, the IST, and in the Books in particular, the conscious is not the capacity of the people to realize something, and the unconscious is not the Freudian unconscious, but rather it is all much simpler: the unconscious is the paleocortex, and conscious is the neocortex.

Finally, and as Figure 5 exposes, the IST can explain the configuration of human body, and its morphology, as seen from these two perspectives. From the outside to the inside (lower section of Figure 4), it means: if one as an observer is located in the universe and in society and goes to the human body from the cellular, tissue, neural, unconscious and conscious levels (epigenetically, knowing that each level of complexity kinetically determines the preceding levels). In this perspective, as demonstrated in the lower section of Figure 5, the maximum level of the human body complexity (neocortex) is found in the “innermost” circle of the human body. However, as the upper section of Figure 5 demonstrates, if an observer is located at the interior of himself, from this perspective, the previous “innermost” is not entirely exact, so there is not an “inside place”. Instead, the maximum level of complexity of the human body (neocortex) does, in reality, involve all the preceding levels of complexity. In this sense, the conscious activity would be an emergent and enveloping activated structure to all concrete reality of the human body. In simple words: our thoughts, our feelings, all our memories (when we remember them) are not in the brain but in all the constitution of the human body. Like that, the morphology that the Books propose is not the sum of different parts of corporeality, but the integration of these different parts into an enveloping system of complexity, determined from the bottom up (epigenetically) and from top down (kinetically) at five levels of structured organization (genetic, tissue, neural, psychic and social information).

Figure 5. Two visions of the constitution of the human body (seen from inside and seen from outside).

Discussion

In light of these results, it’s clear that the academic effort of Pedro Ortiz Cabanillas in creating the IST includes an original explanation of the human body constitution. Depending on this explanation, the human body is constituted as a concatenation of envelope systems, that go from the cells (first level of complexity) to the neocortical brain (fifth level of complexity), and is organized from an epigenetic determination (from cells to neocortex) and from a kinetic determination (from neocortex to cells).

Traditionally, the constitution of the human body is explained as follows: the cells are grouped in tissues, tissues grouped in organs, and organs grouped in systems; and within the systems, there is the nervous system which involves, by definition, all the rest of organs and systems.^40–43 In this way (which is not fully explained), all the systems of the body are integrated in just one individual; and therefore to this individual there are properties and characteristics that are not applicable to their parts. This supposes that the nervous system is behind the integration of all corporal systems that constitutes a single human individual, but it is unclear how this nervous system reaches such an amazing feat. In addition, the neocortex is generally described, in the traditional sciences, as referring to almost the entire human cerebral cortex.^44,45 In contrast, the IST is positioned as an alternative explanation. In the IST, for example, the neocortex makes explicit reference to brain areas of association; similarly, the heterotopic cortex can be considered a neocortex for the traditional vision but not for the informational explanation developed by Ortiz (that instead defines it as paleocortex).

Ortiz’s explanation allows us to consider what science poses as the human body, weighting all the scientific explanations with the purpose of avoiding scientific excesses or, worse, positions and hypotheses with no evidence. This can play an important role in the current morphology discussion about what is the better evidence to help understand the human body.^46,47 Perhaps one of the most subtle aspects, potentially applicable to the informational explanation, is its consideration as a matrix that interprets or explains, in other forms, the actual scientific knowledge. For example, it recognizes that cadaver dissection plays an important role in the training of a doctor,^48–51 hence in a complementary way we can note that the informational explanation of the human body reinforces the passage from comprehension of the corpse to the living human being (patient), above all the neuropsychological limits. This complementary nature of the informational morphology with the traditional morphology would redound to the students’ understandings, especially in contexts of the search for effective pedagogies that integrate the ways of teaching⁵² and the contents, i.e., the conceptual architecture.

Regarding the suggestions that these Books could be twelve, and not seven, it remains pending the detail and clarification according to the purposes followed by those who enter into informational studies. Ten years after his death, Pedro Ortiz’s ideas begin to germinate, expanding horizons and perspectives.

The limitations of this research can be grouped into:

Conclusions

We demonstrate that the IST, developed by Pedro Ortiz, is a feasible theory to use when talking about an original and alternative way to explain the organization and constitution of the human body; an “informational morphology” which creates dialogue between the knowledges of the biology, neurology, anatomy, physiology, embryology, histology, and others. This “own conception” of the configuration of the human body is entirely dependent of the knowledges of the IST, and his comprehension makes sense only within the IST. This means that the informational morphology cannot be explained except throughout the definitions and concepts of the IST. Ortiz dedicated more than the last decade of his life to writing the Books, and shows the radical structuring importance of the “informational explanation of the human body” within the framework of the architecture of thought that is the IST. In synthesis: there is an original explanation of the constitution of the human body, and the Informational Sociobiological Theory makes it intelligible (that is, seen with logos and not with eyes).

Data availability