Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing against (...) this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) – all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In doing so, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination and if this relates to doing science. I conclude Whitehead's process philosophy falls short of allowing for the actual creative spontaneity of a dynamic (eternal) present. (shrink)

I attempt to get as clear as possible on the chain of reasoning by which irreversible macrodynamics is derivable from time-reversible microphysics, and in particular to clarify just what kinds of assumptions about the initial state of the universe, and about the nature of the microdynamics, are needed in these derivations. I conclude that while a “Past Hypothesis” about the early Universe does seem necessary to carry out such derivations, that Hypothesis is not correctly understood as a constraint on the (...) early Universe’s entropy. (shrink)

The claim of the freedom of the will (understood as an individual who is transcendent to Nature) in the name of XXth century scientific knowledge, against the perspective of XVIIIth-XIXth century scientific materialism, is analysed and refuted in the present paper. The hypothesis of reductionism finds no obstacle within contemporary natural sciences. Determinism in classical physics is irrefutable, unless classical physics is itself refuted. From quantum mechanics, some authors argue that free will is possible because there is an ontological indeterminism (...) in the natural laws, and that the mind is responsible for the wave function collapse of matter, which leads to a choice among the different possibilities for the body. However, here I defend the opposite thesis because indeterminism does not imply free will, and because the considerations about an autonomous mind sending orders to the body is against neuroscience or evolutionary theories about human beings. The quantum theory of measurement can be interpreted without the intervention of human minds, but other fields of science cannot contemplate the mentalist scenario. A fatalistic or materialist view, which denies the possibility of a free will, makes much more sense in scientific terms. (shrink)

Museums lose their conceptual complexity and polysemy under conditions of war, forced confrontation, and struggles for survival, which may lead to a loss of diversity in the long run. Parametric General Systems analysis allows us to consider a museum as a system and to explore substratum, structural, and conceptual types of simplicity and complexity. Such qualitative analysis makes it possible to move the discussion from the ideological and value sphere to the field of rational and science-based justification. This justification, in (...) turn, illustrates why it is important to maintain complex interpretations in Ukrainian museums during the current war. (shrink)

Language research is currently in a state of flux. The phenomenon of language is not merely the topic of investigation in linguistics, it is examined by a multitude of scholars with different scientific backgrounds. In order to examine how these various disciplines approach language, a think-tank was founded in 2002, called DITO, Dynamisch Inter(-en trans)disciplinair onderzoek, or Dynamic Inter- (and trans)disciplinary Research. The think-tank is located at the Belgian Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels). This book provides short introductory (...) articles to the language research conducted by some of the think-tank’s most important members, from within the point of view of the following 5 disciplines: philosophy of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, sign language research and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Traditionally defined as the science of the living, or as the field that beyond anatomical structure and bodily form studies functional organization and behaviour, physiology has long been excluded from evolutionary research. The main reason for this exclusion is that physiology has a presential and futuristic outlook on life, while evolutionary theory is traditionally defined as the study of natural history. In this paper, I re-evaluate these classic science divisions and situate physiology within the history of the evolutionary sciences, as (...) well as within debates on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and the need for a Third Way of Evolution. I then briefly point out how evolutionary physiology in particular contributes to research on function, causation, teleonomy, agency and cognition. (shrink)

Can literature make it possible to represent histories that are otherwise ineffable? Making use of the Deleuzian concept of “the powers of the false,” Doro Wiese offers readings of three novels that deal with the Shoah, with colonialism, and with racialized identities. She argues that Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish, and Richard Powers’s The Time of Our Singing are novels in which a space for unvoiced, silent, or silenced difference is created. Seen through (...) the lens of Deleuze and his collaborators’ philosophy, literature is a means for mediating knowledge and affects about historical events. Going beyond any simple dichotomy between true and untrue accounts of what “really” happened in the past, literature’s powers of the false incite readers to long for a narrative space in which painful or shameful stories can be included. (shrink)

Complexity theory has become a major influence in discussions about the theory and practice of education. This book focuses on a question which so far has received relatively little attention in such discussions, which is the question of the politics of complexity. The chapters in this book engage with this question in a range of different ways. Whereas some contributions make a case for the promotion of complexity in education, others focus more explicitly on questions concerning the reduction of complexity (...) in and through education. The chapters do so using theoretical, historical and empirical arguments, paying attention to a range of different educational settings (including early childhood education, school education, post-compulsory education, lifelong learning and work-based education), and focusing on different aspects of these practices (such as curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, architecture, and management). Taken together the chapters not only reveal the potential of complexity for engaging with questions about the politics of education in new and different ways. They also provide examples of a more reflexive engagement with the politics of complexity in education itself. The book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of education studies, curriculum studies, curriculum theory, educational theory, educational policy, and philosophy of education. It should also be of interest to practitioners in more specialised fields such as early childhood education, school education, post-compulsory education, work-based education and lifelong learning. (shrink)

[DRAFT] Paper presented at Congress for Doctoral Researchers in Philosophy, Tampere University, 25.–27.10. 2021. The Paper strives to flesh out Gilbert Simondon's notion of information as a multifaced process (transduction-modulation-organization) from the viewpoint of living (/biological) beings.

Since the end of the 1980s – the Decade of Style – the value of style in design has fallen. Recent times see a focus on style as a sign of design’s immaturity, while a more mature design should be attending to process, strategy and policy creation. Design Thinking has been enjoying its success in the same spirit, where it is championed as a way of taking design away from its early stage as ‘mere’ styling, towards the more thoughtful, serious (...) matters of business. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze is of a different mind however. ‘Style,’ he writes, ‘amounts to innovation.’ For us this engages not only a rethinking of design practice in particular, but also a reconsideration of the guiding principles of scenario planning. Deleuze’s thought entails the opportunity for styling to be an act that participates in driving all creativity towards making a successful future impact. A philosophical disruption of current design and scenarios orthodoxies offers a way of considering that style has a key role in the production of the future. Here, then, we will investigate the creative, even innovative, opportunities that emerge from a reworking of the value of style that comes from a critique of Design Thinking, a perspective on future-thinking, but also some work from organisation and management studies ), and an encounter with philosophy. We will highlight the affective capacities of style – in design and scenarios, both as creative constructing of futures – by way of creatively accessing uncertainty, complexity and indeterminacy in the production of strategic maps for living. (shrink)

If only everything were formed of neat laminar flows, with easy to understand conditions, and determinable outcomes: there would be no risk to manage out, messy inconsistencies and uncertainties to disrupt well-laid out plans. Things are not so clear-cut however. Indeed, as scientists, poets and philosophers of science have pointed out it is under conditions of nondeterminism and complexity that everything comes into being. There is an issue, then, when creative disciplines in particular find such complexity problematic enough to design (...) systems and models in which uncertainty, disruption and aleatory collisions are if not destroyed, then dampened. We wonder: what might become of a creative practice that championed its encounter with The Swerve, Lucretius's clinamen? This article examines the role, value and applicability of the concept of collision to design. It takes a philosophical approach to examining this concept and mapping the possibilities of its use in design. We will argue using concepts mainly from Lucretius and Serres – but also Deleuze and others – that collision is an important aspect of all creativity, and that there would be nothing were it not for collisions, disruptive deviation and swerves from equilibrium. The aim will be to articulate the conditions for the possibility of designing that is a 'fan of collisions'. (shrink)

Introduction to alternative ontology of mind and physics based on the multi-dimensional model of A Geometric Theory of the Universe (Holster).

Is there not any place in the history of ideas for the imperfect character of human doings (i.e. capability of error) that is repeated for so long until we lately start to think that it had long been wrong? The answer is: In the conventional histories of ideas there is almost none. The importance of the phenomenon,however, is immense. Intellectual history is full of errors. Scholarly errors are among the factors that generate intellectual pathways in which consequences of historical small (...) events feed back up on each other positively and give rise to historical pathologies in the end. Pathways hold the intellectuals dependent on the consequences of errors which interact upon each other and prevent resulting pathologies to disappear fully. As a result, ideas do not converge to a level of perfection. Evolutionary account of errors suggests that errors in the history of ideas matter even though they are often corrected. (shrink)

In 1675, Burchard de Volder became the first university physics professor to introduce the demonstration of experiments into his lectures and to create a special university classroom, The Leiden Physics Theatre, for this specific purpose. This is surprising for two reasons: first, early pre-Newtonian experiment is commonly associated with Italy and England, and second, de Volder is committed to Cartesian philosophy, including the view that knowledge gathered through the senses is subject to doubt, while that deducted from first principles is (...) certain. On the surface, it is curious that such a man would bring experiments to university physics. After all, in demonstrating experiments to his students, he was teaching them through their senses, not reason. However, if we consider the institutional context of de Volder’s teaching, we come to see de Volder’s Cartesian experimentalism as representative of a certain form of pre-Newtonian Dutch Cartesian science, as well as part of a larger tradition of teaching through observation at the University of Leiden. Considering de Volder’s institutional context will help us see that de Volder’s experimentalism was not in spite of his Cartesianism, but motivated by it. This paper will describe de Volder’s physics curriculum, the Theatre in which it was taught and how his work predates similar efforts in other European Universities. The second part will consider three aspects of the culture at the University of Leiden: a tradition of teaching through observation, a particular reception of Cartesianism, and an eclectic approach to the New Philosophy. The concluding portion shows how de Volder would have understood his enterprise in Cartesian terms. (shrink)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008.

The scientific worldview is based on laws, which are supposed to be certain, objective, and independent of time and context. The narrative worldview found in literature, myth and religion, is based on stories, which relate the events experienced by a subject in a particular context with an uncertain outcome. This paper argues that the concept of “agent”, supported by the theories of evolution, cybernetics and complex adaptive systems, allows us to reconcile scientific and narrative perspectives. An agent follows a course (...) of action through its environment with the aim of maximizing its fitness. Navigation along that course combines the strategies of regulation, exploitation and exploration, but needs to cope with often-unforeseen diversions. These can be positive (affordances, opportunities), negative (disturbances, dangers) or neutral (surprises). The resulting sequence of encounters and actions can be conceptualized as an adventure. Thus, the agent appears to play the role of the hero in a tale of challenge and mystery that is very similar to the "monomyth", the basic storyline that underlies all myths and fairy tales according to Campbell [1949]. This narrative dynamics is driven forward in particular by the alternation between prospect (the ability to foresee diversions) and mystery (the possibility of achieving an as yet absent prospect), two aspects of the environment that are particularly attractive to agents. This dynamics generalizes the scientific notion of a deterministic trajectory by introducing a variable “horizon of knowability”: the agent is never fully certain of its further course, but can anticipate depending on its degree of prospect. (shrink)

Our goal is to investigate the biological correlates of the first-person experience of time or phenomenal time. ‘Time’ differs in various domains, such as (i) physical time (e.g., clock time), (ii) biological time, such as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and (iii) the perceptual rate of time. One psychophysical-measure of the perceptual rate is the critical flicker frequency (CFF), in which a flashing light is perceived as unchanging. Focusing on the inability to detect change, as in CFF, may give us insight into (...) phenomenal time. CFF varies from 24 Hz for dim light and 60 Hz in bright light and is lower for colored lights. We propose that problem of the phenomenal time can be addressed using two contrasting but complementary approaches (inability to detect changes vs. ability to detect changes): (1) The soliton-catalytic model that entails invariant quantum coherent state for temporal frequencies (TFs) >= CFF, where flickering light is perceived as unchanging, similar to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). (2) Temporal frequency tuned mechanisms model, which starts with ability to detect changes for TFs < CFF and then their sensitivities decreases to zero at CFF. For a subject who has CFF of 60 Hz, the duration of one cycle or time-period of the flickering light is approximately 16.7 ms. Phenomenal time may be quantized into ‘subjective occasions of experience’ (SE), which arise out of the interaction of the individual with situation (environment). Pioneering work examining the complex interaction of neurons suggests the possibility that macroscopic quantum states similar to a BEC may also occur in the brain (Davia, 2006; Freeman & Vitiello, 2006; Georgiev, 2004; Vimal & Davia, 2008) . (shrink)

This edited collection highlights the valuable ontological and creative insights gathered from anticipation studies, which orients itself to the future in order to recreate the present. The gathered essays engage with many writers from speculative metaphysics to poetic philosophy, ancient writing systems to the fringes of pataphysics. The book situates itself as a creative intervention in and with various thinkers, designers, artists, scientists and poets to offer insight into ways of anticipating. It brings together philosophical practices for which creativity is (...) both a fundamental area of consideration and a mode of working, a characterization of recent Continental Philosophy which takes a departure from traditional futures studies thinking. This book will be of interest to scholars and research in futures studies, anticipation, philosophy, creative practice and theories about creative practice, as well as the intersections between philosophy, creativity and business. (shrink)

Many sophisticated essays and books have been written about the topic of consciousness. My own contributions date back some twenty-five years in an essay entitled 'Problems concerning the structure of consciousness' (Pribram 1976), and five years before that in delineating the difference between brain processes that are coordinate with awareness and those that are coordinate with habitual behavior (Pribram 1971a). I have been intrigued by what has been written since and take this occasion to reassess a few of the major (...) issues that have arisen. (shrink)

from non-conscious components by positing that consciousness is a universal primitive. For example, the double aspect theory of information holds that infor- mation has a phenomenal aspect. How then do you get from phenomenal infor- mation to human consciousness? This paper proposes that an entity is conscious to the extent it amplifies information, first by trapping and integrating it through closure, and second by maintaining dynamics at the edge of chaos through simul- taneous processes of divergence and convergence. The origin (...) of life through autocatalytic closure, and the origin of an interconnected worldview through conceptual closure, induced phase transitions in the degree to which informa- tion, and thus consciousness, is locally amplified. Divergence and convergence of cognitive information may involve phenomena observed in light e.g. focusing, interference, and resonance. By making information flow inward- biased, clo- sure shields us from external consciousness; thus the paucity of consciousness may be an illusion. (shrink)

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the broad phases of web development: the read-only Web 1.0, the read-write Web 2.0, and the collaborative and Internet of Things Web 3.0, are examined for the theoretical lenses through which they have been understood and critiqued. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual piece, in the tradition of drawing on theorising from outside the Information Systems field, to shed light on developments in information communication technologies (ICTs). Findings – Along (...) with a summary of approaches to Webs 1.0 and 2.0, the authors contend that a more complex and poststructuralist theoretical approach to the notion of, and the phenomenon of Web 3.0, offers a more interesting and appropriate theoretical grounding for understanding its particularities. Originality/value – The discussion presages five further papers engaged with ICTs in a changing society, each of which similarly addresses novel theoretical understandings. (shrink)

A global economy powered by non-solar energy sources is limited by global warming, finite reserves and concomitant insults to the earth's biosphere, including our own species. Some of these impacts, such as loss of biodiversity, will be irreversible. Without constraints on the reproduction of capital, the global driver of the contemporary environmental crisis, these impacts will intensify. This is not a necessary outcome for an economy utilizing the high efficiency capture of solar energy, a conclusion informed by consideration of the (...) heat budget of the earth's surface and the laws of thermodynamics. Such a solarbased economy managed by containment of the socially modified environment is a necessary condition for a global civilization realizing the Marxian concept of communism. (shrink)

The first step that I took in preparing myself to undertake what is in essence a piece of epistemological research was to divide the psychological therapies into two: the potentiality paradigm and the pathology paradigm. The former is based upon the potentiality model articulated by person-centred theorists like Dave Mearns and Brian Thorne, which is essentially a growth model, whilst the latter reflects a form of therapy that recognises people according to what may be considered ‘wrong with’ or ‘deficient about’ (...) them, such as operates in the disciplines of medicine and clinical psychology. The main focus of this piece of research was to determine the epistemology that is at work with what actually goes on in the practice of potentiality paradigm therapy. In order to achieve this, I set about identifying, reading, analysing and eventually coding the most epistemologically rich writings that I could find from mainstream authors on potentiality paradigm therapy from the professional and the academic literature. It became clear from this analysis that the heart of what was actually going on in the practice of potentiality paradigm therapy as articulated in these theoretical writings could be coded into three main discourses: an experiential discourse, a relational discourse and a hermeneutic discourse, each of which I have considered to represent an epistemological discourse for the purposes of this piece of research. My next question was to ask myself how these discourses set about articulating the potentiality paradigm with respect to the practice of the psychological therapies, and the answer came back that they articulated the potentiality paradigm best when they worked concertedly rather than discretely. Indeed, it soon became apparent that the human brain integrates and synthesises the data that it receives by way of these three central discourses, and so it seemed only appropriate that I should work towards expressing these findings by creating a qualitative meta-synthesis of these three discourses: the experiential, the relational and the hermeneutic, which is exactly what I did. The epistemological mechanism by which these three discourses are integrated and synthesised needs to reflect the way in which the human brain integrates and synthesises the data that it receives, and the name given to this epistemological mechanism is dialectical constructivism. This is included along with the three epistemological discourses – the experiential, the relational and the hermeneutic – in the creative and interpretive synthesis in which this piece of research culminates, and is followed by an illustrative worked example showing how these discourses articulate the potentiality paradigm – concertedly – with respect to the practice of the psychological therapies. One of the advantages of applying this meta-model to the way in which we look at potentiality paradigm therapy is that it may be used to free us up to practice in the more dialogical ways which have been becoming increasingly favoured by practitioners in recent times. With our view of potentiality paradigm therapy mediated by this meta-model, we may find it easier to traverse across what many practitioners have tended to view as theoretical boundaries. It could also be viewed as a move towards a more functional and less structural form of governance or regulation, as expressed by Mearns and Thorne. (shrink)

Development has been themain strategy in addressing the problemof sustainability since at least the mid-1980s. The results of this strategy have been mixed, if not disappointing. In their objections to this approach, critics frequently invoke constraints imposed by physical reality of which the most important one is entropy production. They question the belief that technological innovations are capable of solving the problem of sustainability. Is development the right response to this problem and is the current course capable of attaining sustainability? (...) The article examines closely and critiques the principal theoretical objection to sustainable development that emphasizes physical constraints, and more specifically entropy production. It also offers a critique of the current approach to sustainable development. The article advocates a systems approach as a way to anchor a broad consensus in the ongoing sustainability debates. (shrink)

This text was first published in Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, vol. 90 , March 2008 : 1–15. We thank gratefully Professor Robert Dodgshon for granting us the permission to reproduce it. ABSTRACT : From the moment it began to engage with time in a considered way, human geography has employed a variety of analytical and conceptual approaches to it. Recent work especially has greatly extended the range of these different approaches by stressing the innate - Géographie – Nouvel (...) article. (shrink)

The central focus of this paper is the disjunction between the findings of climate science in revealing the threat of global warming and the failure to act appropriately to these warnings. The development of climate science can be illuminated through the perspective provided by Peircian semiotics, but efforts to account for its success as a science and its failure to convince people to act accordingly indicate the need to supplement Peirce’s ideas. The more significant gaps, it is argued, call for (...) the integration of major new ideas. It will be argued that Peirce should be viewed as a Schellingian philosopher, and it will then be shown how this facilitates integration into his philosophy of concepts developed by other philosophers and theorists within this tradition. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of the ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ will be integrated with Peirce’s semiotics and used to analyse the achievements and failures of climate science. It will be suggested that the resulting synthesis can augment Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology and so provide a better basis for comprehending and responding to the situation within which we find ourselves. (shrink)

The present paper criticizes Chalmers's discussion of the Singularity, viewed as the emergence of a superhuman intelligence via the self-amplifying development of artificial intelligence. The situated and embodied view of cognition rejects the notion that intelligence could arise in a closed 'brain-in-a-vat' system, because intelligence is rooted in a high-bandwidth, sensory-motor interaction with the outside world. Instead, it is proposed that superhuman intelligence can emerge only in a distributed fashion, in the form of a self-organizing network of humans, computers, and (...) other technologies: the 'Global Brain'. (shrink)

Principles of design composition are commonly understood to pertain to geometrical systems for arranging parts in assembling a formal whole. Connection to socio-cultural 'meaning' and relevance arguably occurs primarily via the assumed divinity or universality of these systems. In the contemporary architectural world, where explicitly held beliefs in fundamental, geometrically defined principles or values have dissipated, guiding principles of composition appear to be obsolete. This seems particularly true in relation to work that highlights process - or change, responsiveness, interactivity and (...) adaptability - since this implies that the composition remains in flux and unable to be grounded in the composition of form. While processually inflected architecture (referred to here as 'processual architecture'), has been an active field since at least the 1960s, it has been significa ntly developed since design experiments involving digital computation intensified in the 1990s. For this field of work, both highly celebrated and criticised as superficial or unethical, any connection to 'meaning' or value that might be offered by principles of composition would appear especially lost. This thesis reviews, counterpoises and reorients these assumptions, arguing a case for the value of processual architectural that has not been previously articulated. After the last 10 to 15 years of digital experimentation, it is clear that digital technology in itself is not the primary issue, but simply part of a complex equation. The thesis articulates this 'equation' through the model of emergence, which has been used in the field with increasing prominence in recent years. Through both practice-based research and theoretical development, a processually inflected theory of composition is proposed. This offers pathways through which the potential of processual architecture might be productively developed, aiming to open this field of work into a deeper engagement with pressing contemporary socio-political issues. The thesis demonstrates how the cultivation of particular modes of attention and engagement, found to hold an implicit but nevertheless amplified significance within processual architecture, make it possible to develop an embodied awareness pertaining to an 'ethico-aesthetic know-how'. This know-how is acquired and matured through attention to the affective dimensions that arise through design activity. The thesis highlight aspects of design process and products that are routinely suppressed in architectural discourse, generating new insights into the importance of affect for design process, design products and the relations between them. The ethical dimensions of such an approach become especially poignant through the explicit connection made between design activity and the practices of everyday life. Relationships between architecture and the social become re-energised, in a radically alternative manner to the social agendas of modernism or the more literary critiques of post-modernism. Through detailed discussions of the specific, local conditions with a series of design projects I have undertaken, I argue how and why close attention to the affective dimensions of design process offers new and productive ways to approach research through design practice. This offers a response to the calls for new 'post-critical' forms of research through empowering both sides of a previously held divide: theory and practice. (shrink)

A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...) I believe some exposure to environmental ethics can help focus their interests and goals. I identify three primary areas in which environmental ethics can con- tribute to their education. The first is an examination of who (or what) should be considered to be part of our moral community (i.e., the community to whom we owe direct duties). Is it humans only? Or does it include all sentient life? Or all life? Or ecosystems considered holistically? Often, readings implicitly assume one or more of these answers; the goal is to make the student more sensitive to these implicit claims and to get them to think about the different reasons that support them. The second area, related to the first, is the application of the different answers concerning the extent of the ethical community to real environmental issues and problems. Students need to be aware of how the different answers concerning the moral community can imply conflicting answers for how we should act in certain cases and to think about ways to move toward conflict resolution. The third area in which environmental ethics can contribute is a more conceptual one, focusing on central concepts such as biodiversity, sustainability, species, and ecosystems. Exploring and evaluating various meanings of these terms will make students more reflective and thoughtful citizens and biologists, sensitive to the implications that different conceptual choices make. (shrink)

Recent developments in the natural sciences make a renewed dialogue with the humanities possible. Previously, humanists resisted transferring scientific paradigms into fields like history, fearing materialism and determinism would deprive experience of its meaning and people of their freedom. At the same time, scientists were realizing that deterministic materialism made understanding phenomena like life virtually impossible. Scientists escaped the irony of describing a nature to which they did not belong by also discovering that their knowledge can never be complete and (...) that descriptions of nature at the subatomic level were essentially random. These developments, as Monod said, weakened the “Modern” paradigm sufficiently to make life scientifically possible. To understand how life might actually exist, however, scientists had to move beyond laments about observations losing information and concentrate on how nature creates information. Nature creates information in the process of reducing thermodynamic gradients and stores created information in self-organized systems. Nature thus becomes historical, for it is defined by qualitative changes accumulating over time because of unpredictable contingencies. This paper will explore the possibility that the patterned processes by which nature changes apply in the human realm, where interactions can change people and created information can be stored in self-organized societies. Values, Ethics and Morals are the qualitatively new information stored in social systems. VEMs script the actions structuring societies, demonstrating there is meaning in history and solving the problem of how sequences of events –“chronicles”–become narratives. Moreover, when societies compete, their system-structuring information is tested in the same way natural selection tests DNA. Thus, the succession of social systems suggests there is a meaning of history. The meaning of history need be no more transcendental or intended than Darwinian evolution. But if organs and traits can have biological value without implying design, socially constructed attributes like morality, consciousness, and freedom can be valued without supposing history has an ultimate or eternal purpose. Aspiring to show how the cacophony of historical events becomes a cosmos, a “well-ordered” context in which changes become meaningful, this sketch suggests a new understanding of nature may provide a basis for ethics. (shrink)

The original publication is available at JAIST Press http://www.jaist.ac.jp/library/jaist-press/index.html.

This paper attempts to establish a systems-semiotic framework explaining creativity in the design process, where the design process is considered to have as its basis the cognitive process. The design process is considered as the interaction between two or more cognitive systems resulting in a purposeful and ongoing transformation of their already complex representational structures and the production of newer ones, in order to fulfill an ill-defined goal. Creativity is considered as the result of an emergence of organizational complexity in (...) each cognitive system participating in the design process, while it is trying to purposefully incorporate new constraints in its meaning structures. The meanings generated in each system are identified as the contingent and anticipatory content of its representations, and where self-organization is the dominant process in which they are continuously involved. Furthermore, Peircean semiotic processes appear to provide the functionality needed by the emergent representational structures in order to complete the cycle of a creative design process. Creativity originates in the abductive stage of the semiotic process, the fallible nature of which is maintained in the proposed framework by the fact that the respective emergent representations can be misfits. The nodal points of the framework are identified and analyzed showing that a cognitive system needs the whole interactive anticipatory cycle in order to engage in a creative design process. (shrink)

The article presents a conceptually unified, quantitative account of the development of chemical phenomena throughout the cosmic history, with a detailed discussion of the cosmological, astrophysical, geological, biological, and anthropological context. The totality of cosmic chemistry is represented by a list of 176 classes of phenomena, drawn from the Universal Decimal Classification library cataloguing system, and divided into 6 phases: of no chemistry, of prestellar chemistry, of galactic chemistry, of planetary chemistry, of biological chemistry, of human history. These are separated (...) by periods of intensive chemical innovation, likened to phase changes based on four similarities: the rapidity of change, its intensity, the presence of nucleation-like dynamics, and dependence of outcome on history. The limitations and perspectives of the method are described, including the extension of the analysis to all 893 UDC classes relevant to the study of nature. The role of chemical phenomena in the general architecture of the universe is shortly discussed, especially their complex relationships with basic phenomena described by physics. (shrink)

The present paper is meant to give a simple introduction to the problem of the connection between microscopic dynamics and statistical laws. For sake of simplicity, we mostly refer to non-dissipative dynamics, since dissipation adds technical difficulties to the conceptual issues, although part of our discussion extends beyond this limit. In particular, the relevance of chaos and ergodicity is here confronted with that of the large number of degrees of freedom. In Section 2, we review the microscopic connection, along the (...) lines of Boltzmann's approach, and of its further developments. In Section 3, we discuss the falsifiability of statistical mechanics and its role as statistical inference. In particular we argue that the Maximum entropy priciple is in general not a predictive tool. (shrink)

OVERVIEW. The concept of emergence – which I define as the (diachronic) construction of functional structures in complex systems that achieve a (synchronic) focus of systematic behaviour as they constrain the behaviour of individual components – plays a crucial role in debates in philosophical reflection on science as a whole (the question of reductionism) as well as in the fields of biology (the status of the organism), social science (the practical subject), and cognitive science (the cognitive subject).1 In this essay (...) I examine how the philosophy of Deleuze and that of Deleuze and Guattari2 can help us see some of the most important implications of the debate on the status of the organism, as well as prepare the ground for a discussion of the practical and cognitive subject. (shrink)