(2013). Complexity and Transdisciplinarity: Reflections on Theory and Practice. World Futures: Vol. 69, The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity, pp. 200-230.

The Information Age that has dawned upon us requires a new way of thinking about problems. Teleonics, which is a process?based systems approach, can be used for this purpose. The main aspects of teleonics are described, including structure, action, goal?relatedness and ethos, goal and ethos related systems, the web of life, with its spheres and levels, uncertainty and the synergy of complements. In particular, out of the Langkawi International Dialogues, organised in Malaysia in 1995, 1996 and 1997, has emerged the (...) concept of ?Smart Partnership?, a new business philosophy for promoting ethical, win?win business practises at all levels of enterprise. Teleonics is considered to provide an ideal framework for the valuable concepts which emerged from these dialogues. (shrink)

Despite its current popularity, “emergence” is a concept with a venerable history and an elusive, ambiguous standing in contemporary evolutionary theory. This paper briefly recounts the history of the term and details some of its current usages. Not only are there radically varying interpretations about how to define emergence but “reductionist” and “holistic” theorists hold very different views about the issue of causation. However, these two seemingly polar positions are not irreconcilable. Reductionism, or detailed analysis of the parts and their (...) interactions, is essential for answering the “how” question in evolution—how does a complex living system work? But holism is equally necessary for answering the “why” question—why did a particular arrangement of parts evolve? In order to answer the “why” question, a broader, multi-leveled paradigm is required. The reductionist approach to explaining emergent complexity has entailed a search for underlying “laws of emergence.” In contrast, the “Synergism Hypothesis” focuses on the “economics”—the functional effects produced by emergent wholes and their selective consequences in evolutionary change. This paper also argues that emergent phenomena represent, in effect, a subset of a larger universe of cooperative, synergistic effects in the natural world. (shrink)

ig Brother, the tyrant of George Orwell's 1984, directed his daily Two Minutes Hate against Emmanuel Goldstein, enemy of the people. When I studied evolutionary biology in graduate school during the mid 1960s, official rebuke and derision focused upon Richard Goldschmidt , a famous geneticist who, we were told, had gone astray. Although 1984 creeps up on us, I trust that the world will not be in Big Brother's grip by then. I do, however, predict that during this decade Goldschmidt (...) will be largely vindicated in the world of evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Considers that in ecosystem, landscape and global ecology, an energetics reading of ecological systems is an expression of a cybernetic, systemic and holistic approach. In ecosystem ecology, the Odumian paradigm emphasizes the concept of emergence, but it has not been accompanied by the creation of a method that fully respects the complexity of the objects studied. In landscape ecology, although the emergentist, multi-level, triadic methodology of J.K. Feibleman and D.T. Campbell has gained acceptance, the importance of emergent properties is still (...) undervalued. In global ecology, the Gaia hypothesis is an expression of an organicist metaphor, while the emergentist terminology used is incongruent with the underlying physicalist cybernetics. More generally, an analytico-additional methodology and the reduction of the properties of ecosystems to the laws of physical chemistry render purely formal any assertion about the emergentist and holistic nature of the ecological systems studied. (shrink)

During the past two decades, philosophers of biology have increasingly turned their attention to mechanisms of biological phenomena. Through analyses of mechanistic proposals advanced by biologists, the goal of these philosophers is to understand what a mechanism is and how mechanisms explain. These analyses have generally focused on mechanistic proposals for phenomenon that occur at the cellular or sub-cellular level, such as synapse firing, protein synthesis, or metabolic pathway operation. Little is said about the mechanisms of the macromolecular reactions that (...) underpin these phenomena. These reactions comprise a diverse family of reaction types, and include protein folding, macromolecular complex formation, receptor-ligand interactions, and enzyme catalysis. In this paper, I develop an account of mechanism that focuses exclusively on macromolecular reactions. I begin by reviewing how mechanism is understood in enzymology, and how mechanistic concepts of enzymology apply to macromolecular reactions in general. We will see that the mechanism of a macromolecular reaction is most accurately described as a progression of reaction intermediates, where the evolution of intermediates, from one to the next, is characterized by an energetic coupling between chemistry and protein dynamics. I then make the case that this description necessitates a grounding in a process ontology. To describe the mechanism by which a macromolecular reaction occurs is to describe a process. (shrink)

A notion of delegated causality is introduced here. This subtle kind of causality is dual to interventional causality. Delegated causality elucidates the causal role of dynamical systems at the “edge of chaos”, explicates evident cases of downward causation, and relates emergent phenomena to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. Apparently rich implications are noticed in biology and Chinese philosophy. The perspective of delegated causality supports cognitive interpretations of self-organization and evolution.

Michelle’s thesis explores the extent to which a researcher could contribute to change by engaging leaders in conversations that might intensify commitment to or the direction of their actions around socio-environmental decline in Bermuda as a country historically organised in the tradition of an entrepreneurial for-profit enterprise. The framing of a space to reflect on highlighted the significance of time that led to the bricolage design of a heuristic device called a moon gate. Time, the keystone of the moon gate, (...) created a prism lighting up the twists and turns of kaleidoscopic images of the chaos of the markets and the creative diversity of human and nonhuman participants. She undertook a philosophical approach with her study of the contested space of time around sensitivity to maintaining a fulcrum point based on the wellbeing of people and planet. (shrink)

Forty-two years ago, Capra published “The Tao of Physics” (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: “The exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has …. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts” and that, unlike ‘classical’ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum “modern physics” shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and “leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and (...) traditions.“ This article stresses an analogous situation in biology with respect to a new theoretical approach for studying living systems, Integral Biomathics (IB), which also exhibits some resonances with Eastern thought. Stepping on earlier research in cybernetics1 and theoretical biology,2 IB has been developed since 2011 by over 100 scientists from a number of disciplines who have been exploring a substantial set of theoretical frameworks. From that effort, the need for a robust core model utilizing advanced mathematics and computation adequate for understanding the behavior of organisms as dynamic wholes was identified. At this end, the authors of this article have proposed WLIMES (Ehresmann and Simeonov, 2012), a formal theory for modeling living systems integrating both the Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch, 2007) and the Wandering Logic Intelligence (Simeonov, 2002b). Its principles will be recalled here with respect to their resonances to Eastern thought. (shrink)

Paper type: Conceptual perspective. Background(s): Physics, biology, epistemology Perspectives: Theory of autopoietic systems, Popperian evolutionary epistemology and the biology of cognition. Context: This paper is a contribution to developing the theories of hierarchically complex living systems and the natures of knowledge in such systems. Problem: Dissonance between the literatures of knowledge management and organization theory and my observations of the living organization led to consideration of foundation questions: What does it mean to be alive? What is knowledge? How are life (...) and knowledge related? Method: The approach is synthetic and multidisciplinary. The concept of autopoiesis (as defined by Maturana) as a definition for life, and knowledge as a product of autopoiesis are developed from first principles regarding the behavior of dynamical systems in time. Results: Autopoiesis and the construction of knowledge are inseparable aspects of physical phenomena scalable to many levels of organization (e.g., cells, multicellular organisms, organizations, social systems, etc.). The result unifies theories of epistemology, physical dynamics, life, biological evolution, knowledge and social systems. Implications: Results highlight the importance to understand autopoiesis as first defined by Maturana and Varela – as a complex physical phenomenon persisting over time. Autopoietic “self-observation” is not paradoxical. As dynamic physical processes, any internal/external activities relating to “observations” are displaced in time. The worlds living systems act on are not those observed. “Circularly closed” systems are actually open spirals along the axis of time. (shrink)

Our methods of inquiry predetermine most of what we are able to know. While our modes of understanding ought to correspond to the complexities confronting us in our modern technological society, they do not. “Soft” systems methodology helps us focus on what is problematic and how it can be approached — and offers direction to exert moral control over our tools and technologies. [Powerful new technologies] pose basic threats to people and to life on Earth . . . Unless we (...) learn to live with them in safety, our future is likely to be both exciting and short. We cannot hope to foresee all the problems ahead, yet by paying attention to the big, basic issues, we can perhaps foresee the greatest challenges and get some idea of how to deal with them (K. Erik Drexler, 1986). (shrink)

Ervin Laszlo's Science and the Akashic Field is vital to our transition from a long epoch of empire building - of the drive to control Earth's resources by fierce competition in a situation of perceived scarcity - to a future of truly cooperative global family. Laszlo's universe is a far cry from the one Western science has taught us and compatible with my own views as a "post-Darwinian" evolution biologist. In fact, no small number of Western scientists today have defected (...) from the official scientific story of How Things Are to create or adopt various versions of the new scientific worldview Laszlo presents - a worldview rooted in older sciences and cultures such as Vedic, yet ultimately not just timely, but futuristic. These new scientific models, integrating ancient and modern knowledge, represent a paradigm shift greater than the Copernican revolution and are crucial to the next stage in humanity's evolution as a planetary species. (shrink)

While it is common to observe that our society and world are becoming increasingly complex and fast paced, most of our theories provide no bases upon which to develop appropriate strategies. The need for developing holistic strategies is becoming urgent in two related areas: major interactive technologies and morality.

The phenomenon of altruism extends from the biological realm to the human sociocultural realm. This article sketches a coherent outline of multiple types of altruism of progressively increasing scope that span these two realms and are grounded in an ever-expanding sense of “self.” Discussion of this framework notes difficulties associated with altruism at different levels. It links scientific ideas about the evolution of cooperation and about hierarchical order to perennial philosophical and religious concerns. It offers a conceptual background for inquiry (...) into societal challenges that call for altruistic behavior, especially the challenge of environmental and social sustainability. (shrink)

A synthesis of the two primary theory structures in Robert Rosen’s relational complexity, relational entailment mapping based on category theory as described by Rosen and Louie, and relational holism based on modeling relations, as described by Kineman, provides an integral foundation for relational complexity theory as a natural science and analytical method. Previous incompatibilities between these theory structures are resolved by re-interpreting Aristotle’s four causes, identifying final and formal causes as relations with context. Category theory is applied to introduce contextual (...) entailment algebra needed to complete the synthesis. The modeling relation is represented as a recursive four-cause hierarchy, which is a unit of both whole and part analysis that relates realized and contextual domains of nature as complementary inverse entailments between structure and function. Context is a non-localized domain of distributed potentials for existence, as contrasted with the realized domain of localized interactive and measurable events. Synthesis is achieved by giving modeling relations an algebraic form in category theory and by expanding relational analysis to include contextual entailments. The revised form of analysis is applied and demonstrated to examine Rosen’s M-R diagram, showing that structure–function relations imply adaptive interaction with the environment, and that contextual relations imply three forms of the M-R entailment corresponding with the generally known three forms of life; Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota, which can be represented by their holon diagrams. The result of this synthesis is a consistent foundation for relational science that should have important implications in many disciplines. (shrink)

For several decades, economists have been preoccupied with an attempt to place their entire subject on the ‘sound microfoundations’ of general equilibrium theory, with its individualistic premises. However, this project has run into seemingly intractable problems. This essay examines underlying questions such as the appropriate building block of analysis and the structure of explanation in economics. The examination of biology is found to be instructive, due to debates concerning the limitations of reductionism within that discipline. The final part of the (...) paper argues for the autonomy of a non‐reductionist macroeconomics, based on the institution as the unit of analysis. (shrink)

The implications of Warren McCulloch's 1945 concept of heterarchy are analyzed in terms of human value and motivational systems. The results demonstrate the near-impossibility of predicting behavior on the basis of any hierarchical scheme, or even which among a set of hierarchical schemes will be selected as the basis of a behavioral choice. Thus, for example, people regularly say one thing and do another.

This would have been a better book if Sampson had argued his main point, the usefulness of the Simonian principle as an explanation of the evolution, structure, and acquisition of language, on its own merits, instead of making it subsidiary to his attack on ‘limited-minders’ (e.g., Noam Chomsky). The energy he has spent on the attack he might then have been willing and able to employ in developing his argument at reasonable length and detail. He might then have found that (...) argument faulty, or even wrong. Underdeveloped as it is, however, his point about the Simonian principle does seem to have thepossibility of some significance in understanding the empirical issues of this book (and the dichotomy of ‘limited’ and ‘creative’ minds is certainly not one of these).What Sampson has done inMaking Sense has the appearance of science, and theoretical linguistics, and therefore it is somewhat puzzling to find the conclusions that the human mind cannot be scientifically studied (p. 10), and that theoretical linguistics is a “mirage” (p. 210). His statement that It may still seem worthwhile to some to work out the exact implications for present-day linguistic structure of the fact that languages are evolved systems, but I cannot see that there is much glamour or, indeed, much substance in this task (p. 210) would surely be surprising to a geneticist or ethologist. We hope his apparent misunderstanding on this point will not lead him to give up his profession, in which he seems willing and able to make a significant contribution.What in particular is required is a clear indication of how the Simonian principle imposes itself in the ontogenesis of language. Consider Chomsky's example of the rule for forming questions in English. For sentence (1) below, children able to deal with such examples would give (2) but not (3) as the corresponding question (Chomsky, 1975, p. 31).The man who is tall is in the room.Is the man who is tall in the room?*Is the man who tall is in the room?Now compare Sampson's evolutionary explanation for the structure-dependence of rules which is illustrated in (1)-(3): “once a behavior-pattern has become thoroughly established, it will tend to be treated as a fixed given when used as a constituent of a more complex, later-learned behavior-pattern” (p. 183). In order for this to account for Chomsky's example it would have to be the case that children learn relative clauses before they learn questions, which simply isn't true.In conclusion, we wish not to seem unaware of the problems with the position Sampson is attacking, or unaware of the sometimes dogmatic way it too has been presented. Chomsky's hypothesis of innate linguistic ideas seems, fundamentally, to derive from the claimed rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition in the face of limited and degenerate data. Chomsky appears to have been unwilling to argue these points directly or to show their relation to others, for which he has argued, for example, the implausibility of some abstract constraint's having been learned (cf. 1971, pp. 22–44; 1975, pp. 30–33; 1980, pp. 35–52). And almost from his first invoking of rationalism in support of his linguistic method, Chomsky has himself resorted to an unnecessarily polemical attack on empiricism (cf. 1965, p. 58, n. 33). The innateness issue is just not clear or simple enough to justify so much animus, or even conviction. (shrink)

(2013). Systems Patterns and Possibilities. World Futures: Vol. 69, The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity, pp. 382-396.

This artical explores that application of evolutionary approaches to the study of entrepreneurship. It is argued an evolutionary theory of entrepreneurship must give as much concern to the foundations of evolutionary thought as it does the nature of entrepreneurship. The central point being that we must move beyond a debate or preference of the natural selection and adaptationist viewpoints. Only then can the interrelationships between individuals, firms, populations and the environments within which they interact be better appreciated.

Stem cells have the capacity both to self‐renew and to give rise to differentiated progeny, and are vital to the organization of multicellular organisms. Stem cells raise a number of fundamental questions regarding lineage restriction and cellular differentiation, and they hold enormous promise for cell‐based therapies. Here I propose a theoretical framework for stem cell biology based on the concepts of autopoiesis (self‐production) and complementarity. I argue that stem cells are pivotal in the self‐production of the organism and that we (...) need complementary approaches to understand their probabilistic behavior. I discuss how this framework generates testable hypotheses regarding stem‐cell functions. BioEssays 26:1013‐1016, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

(1993). Progress and pathology in managerial practice: An evolutionary perspective. World Futures: Vol. 37, The Evolution of Socio-Economic Systems, pp. 151-161.

Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 06 september 2010.

It is possible to predict future life forms? In this paper it is argued that the answer to this question may well be positive. As a basis for predictions a rationale is used that is derived from historical data, e.g. from a hierarchical classification that ranks all building block systems, that have evolved so far. This classification is based on specific emergent properties that allow stepwise transitions, from low level building blocks to higher level ones. This paper shows how this (...) hierarchy can be used for predicting future life forms.The extrapolations suggest several future neural network organisms. Major aspects of the structures of these organisms are predicted. The results can be considered of fundamental importance for several reasons. Firstly, assuming that the operator hierarchy is a proper basis for predictions, the result yields insight into the structure of future organisms. Secondly, the predictions are not extrapolations of presently observed trends, but are fully integrated with all historical system transitions in evolution. Thirdly, the extrapolations suggest the structures of intelligences that, one day, will possess more powerful brains than human beings.This study ends with a discussion of possibilities for falsification of the present theory, the implications of the present predictions in relation to recent developments in artificial intelligence and the philosophical implications of the role of humanity in evolution with regard to the creation of future neural network organisms. (shrink)

Orthodox business ethics, conventional management theory, and a great deal of higher education embody the overriding emphasis accorded to analysis by yesteryear''s science. An alternative strategy, exemplified by the war stories told by a Confederate Genral, is more consistent with late 20th century science in general and soft systems methodology in particular.The characteristic way of management that we have taught... is to take a complex system, divide it into parts, and then try to manage each part as well as possible. (...) And if that''s done, the system as a whole will behave well, and that''s absolutely false because it''s possible to improve the performance of each part taken separately and destroy the system at the same time. (shrink)