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The invention of the psychosocial: An introduction
PMCID: PMC3627511This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Some resonances between Eastern thought and Integral Biomathics in the framework of the WLIMES formalism for modelling living systems
Forty-two years ago, Capra published âThe Tao of Physicsâ (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: âThe exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has âŠ. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic conceptsâ and that, unlike âclassicalâ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum âmodern physicsâ shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and âleads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and traditions.â 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
Introduction : biofutures/biopresents
Two very different reports produced for the UK government in the last three years have connected the state of our physical health with that of our material wealth. The first of these was produced in 2003 by the Bioscience Innovation and Growth Team (BIGT) titled Improving National Health, Improving National Wealth, whilst the second, called Health Inequalities-Status Report on the Programme for Action, was produced in 2005 by the Department of Health (DH).1 The former produced a series of recommendations designed to 'secure' the economic position of the UK bioscience industry and through this the health of the UK population, whilst the latter repeated the finding that socio-economic status and physical health are strongly related, revealing significant spatial and social health inequalities across the UK (see Batty, 2005; Shaw et al., 2005). These different understandings of the health-wealth link provide a useful foil to explore the central focus of this special issue, namely the construction and definition of particular problems and their solutions encompassing the technoscience of new genetics. Here the popular term technoscience is used to denote a technological context that promotes and maintains forms of scientific enquiry and understanding particular to that set of artefacts: in its simplest formulation, it posits that technology is both shaped by and shapes society. In this special issue we seek to explore the specific technoscientific context in which the biosciences-molecular biology, genetics, genomics, proteomics-are situated and subsequently promulgated: their biopresents and their biofutures. Using the government reports above to illustrate the context of the biosciences reveals two very different approaches to understanding national healthcare. The BIGT report implies that our health is dependent upon ensuring future industrial performance through building 'a mutually advantageous collaboration between the NHS and industry for patient benefit' (2003, p. 5). In contrast, the DH report implies that our health is dependent upon existing resource distribution with the government response, according to Shaw et al. (2005), consisting of an 'individualistic rhetoric of behavioural prevention [of illness]' as opposed to building 'mutually advantageous' alliances between different institutions. This is exemplified in the DH proposal for 'health trainers' for deprived areas which Caroline Flint MP, Minister for Public Health, says would assist people in adopting 'a healthier way of life' (quoted in Batty, 2005). Other wide-ranging changes to the UK health service have also been oriented towards promoting such an agenda based on personal choice, healthier lifestyles and medical innovations derived from modern biotechnology (i.e. targeted at individuals). Furthermore, this agenda has been supported by the extension of privatized provision of services across the NHS [see Pollock (2004) for a critical review]
Do organisms have an ontological status?
The category of âorganismâ has an ambiguous status: is it scientific or is it philosophical? Or, if one looks at it from within the relatively recent field or sub-field of philosophy of biology, is it a central, or at least legitimate category therein, or should it be dispensed with? In any case, it has long served as a kind of scientific âbolsteringâ for a philosophical train of argument which seeks to refute the âmechanisticâ or âreductionistâ trend, which has been perceived as dominant since the 17th century, whether in the case of Stahlian animism, Leibnizian monadology, the neo-vitalism of Hans Driesch, or, lastly, of the âphenomenology of organic lifeâ in the 20th century, with authors such as Kurt Goldstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Georges Canguilhem. In this paper I try to reconstruct some of the main interpretive âstagesâ or âlayersâ of the concept of organism in order to critically evaluate it. How might âorganismâ be a useful concept if one rules out the excesses of âorganismicâ biology and metaphysics? Varieties of instrumentalism and what I call the âprojectiveâ concept of organism are appealing, but perhaps ultimately unsatisfying
Contrasting Views of Complexity and Their Implications For Network-Centric Infrastructures
There exists a widely recognized need to better understand
and manage complex âsystems of systems,â ranging from
biology, ecology, and medicine to network-centric technologies.
This is motivating the search for universal laws of highly evolved
systems and driving demand for new mathematics and methods
that are consistent, integrative, and predictive. However, the theoretical
frameworks available today are not merely fragmented
but sometimes contradictory and incompatible. We argue that
complexity arises in highly evolved biological and technological
systems primarily to provide mechanisms to create robustness.
However, this complexity itself can be a source of new fragility,
leading to ârobust yet fragileâ tradeoffs in system design. We
focus on the role of robustness and architecture in networked
infrastructures, and we highlight recent advances in the theory
of distributed control driven by network technologies. This view
of complexity in highly organized technological and biological systems
is fundamentally different from the dominant perspective in
the mainstream sciences, which downplays function, constraints,
and tradeoffs, and tends to minimize the role of organization and
design
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