Appreciation of the Machinations of the Blind Watchmaker

One danger in using the language of engineering to describe the patterns and operations of the evident products of natural selection is that invoking principles of design runs the risk of invoking a designer. But as we analyze the increasing amount of data on the genome and its organization across a wide array of organisms, we are discovering there are patterns and dynamics reminiscent of designs that we, as imperfect human designers, recognize as serving an engineering purpose, including the purpose to be designable and evolvable. There is no doubt that biological artifacts are the product of Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker, natural selection. But natural selection has at its heart one of engineering’s most prized principles, optimization. Survival of the fittest, while not directly specifying an objective function that an organism must meet, nonetheless provides a clear figure of merit for long term biological success, persistence of lineages through reproduction of organisms, and is a well-formed if ever-changing specification. The mechanisms which provide the optimization algorithm for an organism to meet the demands of this changeable requirement, composed of a program subject to operations of mutation and interorganismal transfer and inheritance, are themselves under selection. Repeated rounds of this process leads, some argue, to architectures that facilitate evolution itself, the evolving of evolvability

Architecture and the creation of worlds

This thesis is an enquiry by creative practice into the academic and aesthetic (avant-garde) practice of architecture. It explores the notion of the virtual as pure potentiality following an event, and defines architecture as the site of such potentiality. (Alain Badiou names event as the moment /encounter which initiates a radical break from a given situation /state of affairs. There are four types of event: artistic, political, scientific and amorous).The thesis follows two parallel strands of enquiry. One, into the material production of the architectural object and topological space, this is titled the actual; and the other, an investigation into the philosophical and antagonistic nature of the virtual, this is titled the virtual. The actual deals with the literature review, methodology, context of study and proposal for (the site of) actual engagement with theory, including a design element (House of the Chinese Mantis); while the virtual explores (through a series of five international and interdisciplinary conference papers) the philosophical problems of emergence. The 'context of study' in the actual centres around the move from the fetish of commodities to seduction and concludes with eroticism, while the body of work in the virtual concentrates on the notions of sovereignty, becoming, and concrete subjectivity.Following the technological practices of the avant-garde between hypersurface theory and catalytic formations in architecture, the thesis rejects the claims of virtual space as the digital space of computer -based design, and of emergence as mimetic and /or algorithm based design. It argues that the virtual is the intangible space of creative unfolding following Bergson and Deleuze, but resists the claim in Deleuze that event is a chance occurring. Also, it resists the claim in Baudrillard that seduction and /or enchanted simulation are event and abandons them to focus on the amorous (one of the four events in Badiou). This creates an inflection in the enquiry, moving the thesis towards Plato and the Renaissance, and a contemporary resurrection in architecture, of the tragic, as concrete manifestation of the amorous encounter.The method of inquiry is structured after the nomadic logic of the War Machine in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, and of the revolutionary nature of fidelity to the scientific event in Badiou, which argues that new knowledge is created by 'revolutions' and from the anomalies and collaborations which arise as a result of such 'detours'; it is a strategy justified by the science historians Feyerabend, Kuhn and Lakatos.The thesis takes the form of two books (the actual and the virtual), and concludes that the avant-garde practice of architecture, with its infinite potentialities is distinct from the bureaucratic or State apparatus of building, and that the commonplace appropriation of the avant-garde by the State, as seen in the institutional recourse to parametrics, appears unproductive and uncreative with regard to knowledge

Understanding creativity through memes and schemata

When it comes to the notion of creativity, both R. Dawkins and D. Dennett argue that creativity is a matter of random mutation, in the same way that genes randomly mutate. Neither Dennett nor Dawkins see anything else in the mimetic theory of creativity than a process of Darwinian evolution. However, this complete reliance upon the extension of evolution for understanding creativity needs to be supplemented by combining it with other ideas such as those of "schema theory," because creativity always occurs within a structured context and is not simply a matter of random mutation of ideas. Schema theory comes largely from the works of E.H Gombrich, who argued that "schemas" play a crucial role in how it is that we are able to be creative. He defines schemas as structure and traditions in society that help to convey the meaning of our creative efforts. Just as semantics needs syntax within language in order to formulate and convey meaning, so by analogy memes need schemas for the creation and expression of new ideas. Rather than being the antithesis of creativity, existing forms of expression and traditions are important for the creation of new ideas. This needs to be factored into any theory of creativity in order to account for the effect of the social context on creative endeavours in addition to a Darwinian account of memes. The unconscious processes at work within the brain that are involved in the generation of ideas and other creative products can be understood using the notion of a "generator", as originally conceived by D. Dennett. This notion goes beyond mere concrete Skinnerian behavioural trial and error. Within this generator, there appear to be at work processes such as those of bisociation and association, as discussed by A. Koestler, as well as processes such as the role of language, memory, generate-and-test and intentionality that must be acknowledged in addition to the syntactic operations of schemas and the replicating contents of memes. The operation of all of these ingredients within the generator, when understood together, can be seen as responsible for our ability to be creative

Nabokov : the artist against caprice

This study examines the use of detachment in the novels of Vladimir Nabokov, a detachment that has earned Nabokov an undeserved reputation as an aesthete interested only in manipulating his characters within intriguing artistic patterns. I attempt to show that Nabokov's detachment is a device for provoking both his protagonists and his readers into shedding their complacency and assuming a perceptive1, engaged stance toward the world. His detachment imitates, and thereby exposes', a power I call Caprice, a whimsically destructive force at large in the world, as inexorable as the Fates, yet never as predictable. Nabokov's weaker characters cannot decipher Caprice's patterns, and they become alienated ciphers, lost in madness or drifting on the periphery of life. His artist heroes, though, are strong enough to insistently carve out their own moral niches within the chaos of an amoral world. The Nabokovian hero's artistic sense is grounded in a continual awareness of the beauties as well as the horrors of the phenomenal world; and he uses his imagination to highlight these beauties and transform the horrors. He controls the imaginative constructs with which he reshapes his world

Dreams: A unified theory approach

Henriques (2011) proposed a new unified theory of psychology (UT) which he argued could assimilate and integrate divergent lines of thought into a coherent whole. An implication of this claim is that the system can be applied to phenomena that was not addressed in the original work and the current work tests this proposition. Specifically, the current work utilized the UT and its components to examine the dream literature, especially psychodynamic, physiological and evolutionary approaches. Following a brief introduction, the project reviews the various lines of research and interpretations of why we dream and what they may mean for us. Then, the UT is introduced, specifically, the four components, which include: 1) The Tree of Knowledge System; 2) the Justification Hypothesis; 3) Behavioral Investment Theory; 4) the Influence Matrix. The UT framework is designed to transpose the language systems from different theoretical perspectives and map their overlapping and distinctive qualities onto human functioning, and is thus a model that should excel at organizing the fragmented and elusive psychological construct of dreaming. The primary thrust of this work is demonstrating the utility of this organizational scheme. Specifically, the UT allows us to understand that dreams can be understood as serving the function of processing emotional and relational themes to foster problem solving. It also informs us regarding the complicated role of self-consciousness, both in terms of how the rational, justifying portion of consciousness is normally shut off in dreams, and how it sometimes, in rare cases, comes on line in the form of “lucid” dreaming. In addition to providing a framework for knitting together a number of different threads, the UT also sets the stage for new angles on dream interpretation. This work explores Freud’s famous dream, “Irma’s Injection,” as a test-case to show the potential utility of Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix to offer meaningful and accurate interpretations of dream content. Via the meta-theoretical perspective afforded by the UT, we argue one can delineate key boundaries in Freud’s method of interpretation, which can usefully be divided intooperating at two levels of analysis. We then showed that there is theoretical support for the validity of Freud’s “level 1” analysis, which is comprised of determining the basic affective and relational meaning of dream content. Freud’s level 2 analysis, by contrast, was comprised of his attempts to justify all dream content through the lens of his classicdual-drive theory of human motivation, which is seen both by the UT and mainstream modern approaches as misguided. Ultimately, this paper shows strong promise for the development of a UT approach to dream analysis, both in terms of organizing our current knowledge and in terms of pointing the way toward future direction

Silver City Eagle, 10-28-1896

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/sc_eagle_news/1113/thumbnail.jp

The Control of Time in Renaissance England: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne.

While critics have much analyzed the idea of time, they have left largely unchronicled an important Renaissance conception. Time the destroyer or devourer and time the creator or revealer of truth are familiar early modern tropes. But the inversion of this power structure--humanity not controlled by but controlling time--was equally pervasive. Especially apparent are inversions in which time is acted upon as an instrument objectified for use and abuse. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne all explore this notion of time as controllable instrument, alternately condemning or glorifying time\u27s debasement, enfeeblement, subjugation, and manipulation. For Marlowe, the control of time manifests itself in a series of mythic rituals, so that time is not only dismissed but violently done away with. His protagonists paradoxically both imitate and subordinate time. Similarly, in Shakespeare\u27s The Merchant of Venice characters vie for supremacy over time even as they embody certain avatars of time: Fortune and Hope. Portia and Shylock ultimately suggest Shakespeare\u27s ambivalence over an important corollary of the control of time: the control of others through time. Jonson more visibly derides those who would control time. In his masque Time Vindicated, time is whipped by the figure of Chronomastix, while in The Alchemist, Jonson\u27s venture tripartite revere time as little as they do their parade of dupes. Alternately, Donne\u27s Devotions demonstrates that time can be used to transcend time itself. Time in the Devotions appears natural and unnatural both, and Donne embraces time only to voyage beyond it into contemplation and experience of the eternal. These works emblematize broader cultural concerns that reveal the control, objectification, and even commodification of time. The first use of the time bomb in 1585, for instance, uniquely transforms time into a weapon, just as the growing preponderance of clocks and watches echo the changes in time from an abstraction beyond the scope human power to a concrete, personal possession. Finally, these reconfigurations of time remain potent influences on modern conceptions of time. Modern worries that respect for the inviolability of time has grown dangerously passe owe their genesis to these developments in the Renaissance

On the Problem of Vague Terms: A Glossary of Clearly Stated Assumptions & Careful, Patient, Descriptions

Coase 1930 endures through the decades as one of the most-cited papers in economics due to the fact that it highlights a fundamental and equally enduring problem: "Economic theory has suffered in the past from a failure to state clearly its assumptions. Economists in building up a theory have often omitted to examine the foundations on which it was erected. This examination is, however, essential not only to prevent the misunderstanding and needless controversy which arise from a lack of knowledge of the assumptions on which a theory is based, but also because of the extreme importance for economics of good judgement in choosing between rival sets of assumptions." In 1944 Von Neumann and Morgenstern offered the simply, yet invariably rejected solution: "In… economics the most fruitful work may be that of careful, patient description; indeed this may be by far the largest domain for the present and some time to come….Economic problems [have been and are often] not formulated clearly and are often stated in such vague terms as to make mathematical treatment a priori appear hopeless because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are. There is no point in using exact methods where there is no clarity in the concepts and issues to which they are to be applied. Consequently the initial task is to clarify the knowledge of the matter by further careful descriptive work." This paper offers a stone along the path to the solution to this problem by offering a glossary in this spirit, a glossary germain to some of the most fundamental, open problems in economics. As the fate of the human race may lay in the balance to finding solutions to these problems, this glossary may be a steop in the right direction.economic terms; methodology; scientific method; coase 1930; Von Neumann & Morgenstern 1944; definitions; careful, patient descriptions