Mitochondria are widely known as the cell’s powerhouse, but emerging research reveals a more profound role — as coherence-mediating agents that translate energy, structure, and meaning across biological scales. This white paper reframes mitochondria as teleodynamic attractors: recursive, constraint-modulating, semiotic hubs that sustain adaptive integration from molecules to minds. Drawing on biosemiotics, systems biology, and regenerative medicine, we develop a multi-scale coherence framework that situates mitochondria at the center of a living architecture of nested intelligences. We explore their roles in signaling, immune modulation, trauma healing, cognitive adaptation, and evolutionary emergence. From this vantage, mitochondria are not passive organelles but agents of systemic coherence and regeneration. This new understanding carries urgent implications for clinical practice, healthcare design, and the healing of ecological and civilizational fragmentation. Mitochondria are not just organelles of survival — they are seeds of Kosmic integration.
Tag: morphodynamics
Teleodynamics: Specifying the Dynamical Principles of Intrinsically End-Directed Processes | Terrence W. Deacon | IAISAE (2020)
ABSTRACT
Seven parameters are described that distinguish three hierarchically nested system dynamics that are characteristic of partially-bounded open subsystems. These are used to characterize the transition from self-organized inorganic to self-regulated living systems which exhibit self-synthesis, self-reproduction, and self-reconstitution in response to damage. This analysis demonstrates that yoked self-organizing processes that generate each-others’ boundary conditions can produce a form of co-dependent unity that exhibits these end-directed properties. A simple empirically testable molecular model system — an autogenic virus — is described for exploring these dynamical properties.
Keywords: organism, constraint, dissipative processes, self-organization, morphodynamics, autogenesis, MEPP, virus










