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Author: Francis Bailly
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1848166931
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
The book aims at the identification of the organising concepts of some physical and biological phenomena, by means of an analysis of the foundations of mathematics and of physics. This is done in the perspective of unifying phenomena, of bringing different conceptual universes into dialog. The analysis of the role of “order” and of symmetries in the foundations of mathematics is linked to the main invariants and principles, among which the geodesic principle (a consequence of symmetries), which govern and confer unity to the various physical theories. Moreover, we attempt to understand causal structures, a central element of physical intelligibility, in terms of symmetries and their breakings. The importance of the mathematical tool is also highlighted, enabling us to grasp the differences in the models for physics and biology which are proposed by continuous and discrete mathematics, such as computational simulations. A distinction between principles of (conceptual) construction and principles of proofs, both in physics and in mathematics, guides this part of the work.As for biology, being particularly difficult and not as thoroughly examined at a theoretical level, we propose a “unification by concepts”, an attempt which should always precede mathematisation. This constitutes an outline for unification also basing itself upon the highlighting of conceptual differences, of complex points of passage, of technical irreducibilities of one field to another. Indeed, a monist point of view such as ours should not make us blind: we, the living objects, are surely just big bags of molecules or, at least, this is our main metaphysical assumption. The point though is: which theory can help us to better understand these bags of molecules, as they are, indeed, rather “singular”, from the physical point of view. Technically, this singularity is expressed by the notion of “extended criticality”, a notion that logically extends the pointwise critical transitions in physics.
Author: Francis Bailly
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1848166931
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Get Book Here
Book Description
The book aims at the identification of the organising concepts of some physical and biological phenomena, by means of an analysis of the foundations of mathematics and of physics. This is done in the perspective of unifying phenomena, of bringing different conceptual universes into dialog. The analysis of the role of “order” and of symmetries in the foundations of mathematics is linked to the main invariants and principles, among which the geodesic principle (a consequence of symmetries), which govern and confer unity to the various physical theories. Moreover, we attempt to understand causal structures, a central element of physical intelligibility, in terms of symmetries and their breakings. The importance of the mathematical tool is also highlighted, enabling us to grasp the differences in the models for physics and biology which are proposed by continuous and discrete mathematics, such as computational simulations. A distinction between principles of (conceptual) construction and principles of proofs, both in physics and in mathematics, guides this part of the work.As for biology, being particularly difficult and not as thoroughly examined at a theoretical level, we propose a “unification by concepts”, an attempt which should always precede mathematisation. This constitutes an outline for unification also basing itself upon the highlighting of conceptual differences, of complex points of passage, of technical irreducibilities of one field to another. Indeed, a monist point of view such as ours should not make us blind: we, the living objects, are surely just big bags of molecules or, at least, this is our main metaphysical assumption. The point though is: which theory can help us to better understand these bags of molecules, as they are, indeed, rather “singular”, from the physical point of view. Technically, this singularity is expressed by the notion of “extended criticality”, a notion that logically extends the pointwise critical transitions in physics.
Author: Giuseppe Longo
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1908977795
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
This book identifies the organizing concepts of physical and biological phenomena by an analysis of the foundations of mathematics and physics. Our aim is to propose a dialog between different conceptual universes and thus to provide a unification of phenomena. The role of “order” and symmetries in the foundations of mathematics is linked to the main invariants and principles, among them the geodesic principle (a consequence of symmetries), which govern and confer unity to various physical theories. Moreover, an attempt is made to understand causal structures, a central element of physical intelligibility, in terms of both symmetries and symmetry breakings. A distinction between the principles of (conceptual) construction and of proofs, both in physics and in mathematics, guides most of the work.The importance of mathematical tools is also highlighted to clarify differences in the models for physics and biology that are proposed by continuous and discrete mathematics, such as computational simulations.Since biology is particularly complex and not as well understood at a theoretical level, we propose a “unification by concepts” which in any case should precede mathematization. This constitutes an outline for unification also based on highlighting conceptual differences, complex points of passage and technical irreducibilities of one field to another. Indeed, we suppose here a very common monist point of view, namely the view that living objects are “big bags of molecules”. The main question though is to understand which “theory” can help better understand these bags of molecules. They are, indeed, rather “singular”, from the physical point of view. Technically, we express this singularity through the concept of “extended criticality”, which provides a logical extension of the critical transitions that are known in physics. The presentation is mostly kept at an informal and conceptual level./a
Author: Cary Wolfe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000533611
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
This book is based upon the collaborative efforts of the Ontogenetics Process Group (OPG) – an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, multi-national research group that began meeting in 2017 to explore new and innovative ways of thinking the problem of complexity in living, physical, and social systems outside the algorithmic models that have dominated paradigms of complexity to date. For all the descriptive and predictive power that the complexity sciences offer (the ability to compute feedback systems, recursive networks, emergent dynamics, etc.), they also presume that the living world in all of its modalities (biological, semiotic, economic, affective, social) can be reduced to finite schema of description that delimits in advance all possible outcomes. What is proposed in this volume are conceptual architectures for the living that are not only irreducible to physico-mathematical frames of reference, but that are also as vital as the phenomena they wish to express. In short: life is more complex than complexity. What emerges from this engagement is not the ascendance of a new transcendental principle (or, what amounts to the same thing, a foundational bedrock) derived from the physico-mathematical sciences, but just the opposite: a domain in which the ontological and the epistemological domains enter a zone of strange (and unavoidable) entanglement. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.
Author: Fabio Gironi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137463473
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Crossing the boundaries between 'continental' and 'analytic' philosophical approaches, this book proposes a naturalistic revision of the mathematical ontology of Alain Badiou, establishing links with structuralist projects in the philosophy of science and mathematics.
Author: Elena Pagni
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030852652
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
This book reviews the evolution of Biosemiotics and gives an outlook on the future of this interdisciplinary new discipline. In this volume, the foundations of symbolism are transformed into a phenomenological, technological, philosophical and psychological discussion enriching the readers’ knowledge of these foundations. It offers the opportunity to rethink the impact that evolution theory and the confirmations about evolution as a historical and natural fact, has had and continues to have today. The book is divided into three parts: Part I Life, Meaning, and Information Part II Semiosis and Evolution Part III Physics, medicine, and bioenergetics It starts by laying out a general historical, philosophical, and scientific framework for the collection of studies that will follow. In the following some of the main reference models of evolutionary theories are revisited: Extended Synthesis, Formal Darwinism and Biosemiotics. The authors shed new light on how to rethink the processes underlying the origins and evolution of knowledge, the boundary between teleonomic and teleological paradigms of evolution and their possible integration, the relationship between linguistics and biological sciences, especially with reference to the concept of causality, biological information and the mechanisms of its transmission, the difference between physical and biosemiotic intentionality, as well as an examination of the results offered or deriving from the application in the economics and the engineering of design, of biosemiotic models for the transmission of culture, digitalization and proto-design. This volume is of fundamental scientific and philosophical interest, and seen as a possibility for a dialogue based on theoretical and methodological pluralism. The international nature of the publication, with contributions from all over the world, will allow a further development of academic relations, at the service of the international scientific and humanistic heritage.
Author: Bruce J. West
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319048791
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
Networks of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders is a mathematically rigorous and data rich book on a fascinating area of the science and engineering of social webs. There are hundreds of complex network phenomena whose statistical properties are described by inverse power laws. The phenomena of interest are not arcane events that we encounter only fleetingly, but are events that dominate our lives. We examine how this intermittent statistical behavior intertwines itself with what appears to be the organized activity of social groups. The book is structured as answers to a sequence of questions such as: How are decisions reached in elections and boardrooms? How is the stability of a society undermined by zealots and committed minorities and how is that stability re-established? Can we learn to answer such questions about human behavior by studying the way flocks of birds retain their formation when eluding a predator? These questions and others are answered using a generic model of a complex dynamic network—one whose global behavior is determined by a symmetric interaction among individuals based on social imitation. The complexity of the network is manifest in time series resulting from self-organized critical dynamics that have divergent first and second moments, are non-stationary, non-ergodic and non-Poisson. How phase transitions in the network dynamics influence such activity as decision making is a fascinating story and provides a context for introducing many of the mathematical ideas necessary for understanding complex networks in general. The decision making model (DMM) is selected to emphasize that there are features of complex webs that supersede specific mechanisms and need to be understood from a general perspective. This insightful overview of recent tools and their uses may serve as an introduction and curriculum guide in related courses.
Author: Luca Vanzago
Publisher: Quodlibet
ISBN: 8874627521
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Contents: Luca Vanzago, Introduction • Ted Toadvine, Tempo naturale e natura immemoriale • Luca Vanzago, The Problem of Nature between Philosophy and Science. Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Ontology and its Epistemological Implications • Roberta Lanfredini, Essenza e Natura: Husserl e Merleau-Ponty sulla fondazione dell’essere vivente • Christopher Pollard, Merleau-Ponty and Embodied Cognitive Science • Gianluca De Fazio, L’Essere pre-logico. Una lettura ontologica dell’interpretazione di Copenhagen a partire da Merleau-Ponty • Danilo Manca, La scienza allo stato nascente. Merleau-Ponty e Sellars sull’immagine scientifica della natura • Darian Meacham, Sense and Life: Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature and Evolutionary Biology • Franck Robert, Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead, une pensée de la vie • Claus Halberg, Emergent Life: Addressing the “Ontological-Diplopia” of the 21st Century with Merleau-Ponty and Deacon • Prisca Amoroso, Prospettive ecologiche nell’opera di Merleau-Ponty
Author: Laurent Dubreuil
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452944040
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 141
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Book Description
The Intellective Space explores the nature and limits of thought. It celebrates the poetic virtues of language and the creative imperfections of our animal minds while pleading for a renewal of the humanities that is grounded in a study of the sciences. According to Laurent Dubreuil, we humans both say more than we think and think more than we say. Dubreuil’s particular interest is the intellective space, a space where thought and knowledge are performed and shared. For Dubreuil, the term “cognition” refers to the minimal level of our mental operations. But he suggests that for humans there is an excess of cognition due to our extensive processing necessary for verbal language, brain dynamics, and social contexts. In articulating the intellective, Dubreuil includes “the productive undoing of cognition.” Dubreuil grants that cognitive operations take place and that protocols of experimental psychology, new techniques of neuroimagery, and mathematical or computerized models provide access to a certain understanding of thought. But he argues that there is something in thinking that bypasses cognitive structures. Seeking to theorize with the sciences, the book’s first section develops the “intellective hypothesis” and points toward the potential journey of ideas going beyond cognition, after and before computation. The second part, “Animal Meditations,” pursues some of the consequences of this hypothesis with regard to the disparaged but enduring project of metaphysics, with its emphasis on categories such as reality, humanness, and the soul.
Author: Niels Henrick Gregersen
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451469845
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
This volume takes the reader on a journey from New Testament and early church views of incarnation to contemporary understandings of Christology. A prominent group of scholars explores and debates the idea of “deep incarnation”—the view that the divine incarnation in Jesus presupposes a radical embodiment that reaches into the roots of material and biological existence, as well as into the darker sides of creation. Such a wide-scope view of incarnation allows Christology to be meaningful when responding to the challenges of scientific cosmology and global religious pluralism.
Author: John C Sanford
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 981450873X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 584
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Book Description
In the spring of 2011, a diverse group of scientists gathered at Cornell University to discuss their research into the nature and origin of biological information. This symposium brought together experts in information theory, computer science, numerical simulation, thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, whole organism biology, developmental biology, molecular biology, genetics, physics, biophysics, mathematics, and linguistics. This volume presents new research by those invited to speak at the conference.The contributors to this volume use their wide-ranging expertise in the area of biological information to bring fresh insights into the many explanatory difficulties associated with biological information. These authors raise major challenges to the conventional scientific wisdom, which attempts to explain all biological information exclusively in terms of the standard mutation/selection paradigm.Several clear themes emerged from these research papers: 1) Information is indispensable to our understanding of what life is; 2) Biological information is more than the material structures that embody it; 3) Conventional chemical and evolutionary mechanisms seem insufficient to fully explain the labyrinth of information that is life. By exploring new perspectives on biological information, this volume seeks to expand, encourage, and enrich research into the nature and origin of biological information.
