This essay, written by my friend Stuart Newman two years ago, might 
interest you.
I've reformatted it and attached it here as a PDF.

Stuart is a cell biologist at New York Medical College in Valhalla, 
NY, and is one of the  world's key dialectical thinkers in science and biology.

This is not everyone's "cup of tea", but for me everything Stuart 
investigates and writes is of great interest, so I thought those who 
are also interested in that topic might discuss it here.

As my brain recovers gradually from three years of "trouble" caused 
by too little oxygen (due to beta blockers I'd been taking, which 
slowed my heart too much while I slept) -- and yet somehow I wrote my 
Monsanto book during that time! -- I've been recovering pieces I'd 
been working on using the same general philosophical approach, trying 
to understand what some call "emergent properties" and Chaos theory, 
and how Life "self-develops" and sorts itself.

It was Stuart Newman -- along with Richard Levins, Martha Herbert, 
Douglas Hofstadter, Bertell Ollman, Silvia Federici, Kamran Nayeri, 
Brian Tokar, Howie Cohen, Vandana Shiva, and Petros Evdokas (and 
tripping a lot on mescaline and acid) got me to thinking for many 
decades of how what we call "consciousness" emerges from physical 
clusters of cells, how ecosystems emerge and sustain ..... and how 
that understanding can be applied to political consciousness / class 
consciousness as well, although I grant it is a very large leap ....

Mitchel