From coincidence to purposeful flow? properties of transcendental information cascades

In this paper, we investigate a method for constructing cascades of information co-occurrence, which is suitable to trace emergent structures in information in scenarios where rich contextual features are unavailable. Our method relies only on the temporal order of content-sharing activities, and intrinsic properties of the shared content itself. We apply this method to analyse information dissemination patterns across the active online citizen science project Planet Hunters, a part of the Zooniverse platform. Our results lend insight into both structural and informational properties of different types of identifiers that can be used and combined to construct cascades. In particular, significant differences are found in the structural properties of information cascades when hashtags as used as cascade identifiers, compared with other content features. We also explain apparent local information losses in cascades in terms of information obsolescence and cascade divergence; e.g., when a cascade branches into multiple, divergent cascades with combined capacity equal to the original

When resources collide: Towards a theory of coincidence in information spaces

This paper is an attempt to lay out foundations for a general theory of coincidence in information spaces such as the World Wide Web, expanding on existing work on bursty structures in document streams and information cascades. We elaborate on the hypothesis that every resource that is published in an information space, enters a temporary interaction with another resource once a unique explicit or implicit reference between the two is found. This thought is motivated by Erwin Shroedingers notion of entanglement between quantum systems. We present a generic information cascade model that exploits only the temporal order of information sharing activities, combined with inherent properties of the shared information resources. The approach was applied to data from the world's largest online citizen science platform Zooniverse and we report about findings of this case study

Baer and modern biology : abstracts of the international conference held in Tartu, 28.2 - 2.3 1992

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4130058*es

The Value of Being Wild: A Phenomenological Approach to Wildlife Conservation

Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are undermining the entire natural infrastructure on which our modern world depends (IPBES, 2019), this dissertation will show that there is a need to provide an alternative approach to wildlife conservation, one that avoids anthropocentrism and wildlife valuation on an instrumental basis to provide meaningful and tangible success for both wildlife conservation and human well-being in an inclusive way. In this sense, The Value of Being Wild will showcase the concept of eco-phenomenology as an important non-anthropocentric alternative to the current approach to wildlife conservation, namely sustainable development. The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system. As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings. Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65). Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings

An evolutionary metaphysics of human enhancement technologies

The monograph is an English, expanded and revised version of the book Cheshko, V. T., Ivanitskaya, L.V., & Glazko, V.I. (2018). Anthropocene. Philosophy of Biotechnology. Moscow, Course. The manuscript was completed by me on November 15, 2019. It is a study devoted to the development of the concept of a stable evolutionary human strategy as a unique phenomenon of global evolution. The name “An Evolutionary Metaphysics (Cheshko, 2012; Glazko et al., 2016). With equal rights, this study could be entitled “Biotechnology as a result and factor of the evolutionary processˮ. The choice in favor of used “The Evolutionary Metaphysics of Human Enhancement Technologiesˮ was made in accordance with the basic principle of modern post-academician and human-sized science, a classic example of which is biotechnology. The “Metaphysics of Evolution” and “Evolutionary Metaphysics” concepts are used in several ways in modern philosophical discourse. In any case, the values contain a logical or associative reference to the teleological nature of the evolutionary process (Hull, 1967, 1989; Apel, 1995; Faye, 2016; Dupre, 2017; Rose, 2018, etc). In our study, the “evolutionary metaphysics” serves to denote the thesis of the rationalization and technologization of global evolution and anthropogenesis, in particular. At the same time, the postulate of an open future remains relevant in relation to the results of the evolutionary process. The theory of evolution of complex, including the humans system and algorithm for its constructing are а synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern science. ln other words, natural philosophy is regaining the status bar element theoretical science in the era of technology-driven evolution. The co-evolutionary concept of 3-modal stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens is developed. The concept based оn the principle of evolutionary complementarity of anthropogenesis: value of evolutionary risk and evolutionary path of human evolution are defined bу descriptive (evolutionary efficiency) and creative-teleological (evolutionary correctness) parameters simultaneously, that cannot bе instrumental reduced to others ones. Resulting volume of both parameters define the vectors of blological, social, cultural and techno-rationalistic human evolution Ьу two gear mechanism genetic and cultural co-evolution and techno-humanitarian balance. The resultant each of them сап estimated Ьу the ratio of socio-psychological predispositions of humanization / dehumanization in mentality. Explanatory model and methodology of evaluation of creatively teleological evolutionary risk component of NBIC technological complex is proposed. Integral part of the model is evolutionary semantics (time-varying semantic code, the compliance of the blological, socio-cultural and techno-rationalist adaptive modules of human stable evolutionary strategy). It is seem necessary to make three clarifications. First, logical construct, “evolutionary metaphysics” contains an internal contradiction, because it unites two alternative explanatory models. “Metaphysics”, as a subject, implies deducibility of the process from the initial general abstract principle, and, consequently, the outcome of the development of the object is uniquely determined by the initial conditions. Predicate, “evolutionary”, means stochastic mechanism of realizing the same principle by memorizing and replicating random choices in all variants of the post-Darwin paradigm. In philosophy, random choice corresponds to the category of “free will” of a reasonable agent. In evolutionary theory, the same phenomenon is reflected in the concept of “covariant replication”. Authors will attempt to synthesize both of these models in a single transdisciplinary theoretical framework. Secondly, the interpretation of the term “evolutionary (adaptive) strategyˮ is different from the classical definition. The difference is that the adaptive strategy in this context is equivalent to the survival, i.e. it includes the adaptation to the environment and the transformation (construction) of the medium in accordance with the objectives of survival. To emphasize this difference authors used verbal construction “adaptiveˮ (rather than “evolutionaryˮ) strategy as more adequate. In all other cases, the two terms may be regarded as synonymous. Thirdly, the initial two essays of this series were published in one book in 2012. Their main goal was the development of the logically consistent methodological concept of stable adaptive (evolutionary) strategy of hominines and the argumentation of its heuristic possibilities as a transdisciplinary scientific paradigm of modern anthropology. The task was to demonstrate the possibilities of the SESH concept in describing and explaining the evolutionary prospects for the interaction of social organization and technology (techno-humanitarian balance) and the associated biological and cultural mechanisms of the genesis of religion (gene-cultural co-evolution). In other words, it was related to the sphere of cultural and philosophical anthropology, i.e. to the axiological component of any theoretical constructions describing the behavior of self-organizing systems with human participation. In contrast, the present work is an attempt to introduce this concept into the sphere of biological anthropology and, consequently, its main goal is to demonstrate the possibility of verification of its main provisions by means of procedures developed by natural science, i.e. refers to the descriptive component of the same theoretical constructions. The result of this in the future should be methods for assessing, calculating and predicting the risk of loss of biological and cultural identity of a person, associated with a permanent and continuously deepening process of development of science and technology

STABLE ADAPTIVE STRATEGY of HOMO SAPIENS and EVOLUTIONARY RISK of HIGH TECH. Transdisciplinary essay

The co-evolutionary concept of Three-modal stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens is developed. The concept based on the principle of evolutionary complementarity of anthropogenesis: value of evolutionary risk and evolutionary path of human evolution are defined by descriptive (evolutionary efficiency) and creative-teleological (evolutionary correctly) parameters simultaneously, that cannot be instrumental reduced to others ones. Resulting volume of both parameters define the trends of biological, social, cultural and techno-rationalistic human evolution by two gear mechanism ˗ gene-cultural co-evolution and techno- humanitarian balance. The resultant each of them can estimated by the ratio of socio-psychological predispositions of humanization/dehumanization in mentality. Explanatory model and methodology of evaluation of creatively teleological evolutionary risk component of NBIC technological complex is proposed. Integral part of the model is evolutionary semantics (time-varying semantic code, the compliance of the biological, socio-cultural and techno-rationalist adaptive modules of human stable evolutionary strategy)

Particles and Waves: Poetic Responses to Place - Psycho-geography and/as practice

Utilising a range of psychogeographic practices, this project comprises a hybrid creative response to the natural landscape of West Wales, using the River Towy as a focal point. It is concerned with an exploration of the importance of identity, and with themes of the spiritual, land, gender, culture and history. The work’s originality results from the application of predominantly male urban writing practices in a rural Welsh environment from a woman’s standpoint. The journey recounted in the creative piece is understood essentially as a transformative, personal process of a transcendental nature, whilst also exploring and depicting the nature of the differing stages of the river and those who live in or come to the specific locations, including Carmarthen, the Cambrian Mountains, Llandeilo, Llandovery, and Llansteffan. It is informed by the belief that some places are imbued with energies that may cause specific types of human interaction and responses. The project was developed through investigative visits to predetermined sites at significant positions and with notable histories, in order to ascertain and record what might be felt, observed and experienced, leading to site-specific writing. It is formally diverse, including short essays, prose and poetry of various kinds, the use of found texts. It is presented as a ‘scrapbook’ and makes creative use of the interplay between text and image. The multi-layered approach assumes that myths, fiction and fact are all of equal importance and intuitive skills are acknowledged as essential. The work, thus, is informed by recent developments in psychogeography, i.e. ‘mythogeography’ or ‘deep topography’. The writing is experimental and influenced by the zeitgeist preference for abbreviated/truncated writing. The methodologies of this practice-based project include autoethnographic responses and an exploration of psychogeographic literature and practice. The creative piece is supported by a wide and deep contextual background, which has informed its development

'I don't really notice where I live' : Philip Larkin's literary nationalities

[Introduction:]With the journalist’s playfulness John Haffenden implicitly accuses Philip Larkin of “narrow-mindedness” and “cultural chauvinism” in his well-documented interview from 1981. Philip Larkin replies with two counter-questions: “But honestly, how far can one really assimilate literature in another language? In the sense that you can read your own?” If it was impossible to read, understand and emotionally react to literature in a foreign language as opposed to literary works composed in one’s native language, the foreign Larkin scholar would arrive at a dead-end before he or she has even crossed the Channel to England. The appeal of Larkin’s poetry would be restricted to a relatively small English target group. Is it this specific group Larkin has in mind when he says that “you write for everybody. Or anybody who will listen”? A look at the standard works of Larkin criticism almost makes this likely; most Larkin critics are either comfortably sharing Larkin’s own nationality or are at least Irish, Scottish, Welsh, American or Canadian native speakers of English. Thus, we hardly seem to be in a position to judge safely whether Larkin’s own poetry can be assimilated elsewhere.It is thus that Larkin’s oeuvre - prompted, to a large extent, by the poet’s own gruff assertion of comfortable insularity - is all too often perceived on narrowly English terms. Larkin’s cultural and national identity is taken for granted; his disparaging comments about abroad (“I hate being abroad. Generally speaking, the further one gets from home the greater the misery.”) are taken at face value.Perhaps it takes the perspective of a foreign European and non-native speaker of English to crack open dated perceptions.Indeed, Larkin’s engagement with cultural Otherness is profound. Tim Trengrove-Jones notes that “Larkin’s aesthetic took root and found its mature expression through specific moments of contact with the German, the French, and the Dutch” only to conclude paradoxically that these points of contact with the European Other cement Larkin’s position of English insularity. Larkin’s cultural identity will remain firmly English; his poetic engagement with cultural Otherness between Europe and America, however, transcends notions of petty insularity by a long stretch. His engagement with Ireland, France, America and Germany is so obviously premeditated that we can speak of literary nationalities. Jean-François Bayart’s comment that “we identify ourselves less with respect to membership in a community or a culture than with respect to the communities and cultures with which we have relations” is of particular significance in this context. Furthermore, Larkin’s negotiations of literary nationalities constantly exhibit points of contact with Marc Augé’s theory of non-place. It is against this background that the theory of the universality - as opposed to an assumed Englishness - of Larkin’s poetry is developed.In the context of political and sociological theories of nation and cultural identity I will argue that Larkin’s identity in his poetry is expressed through an awareness of common humanity as opposed to cultural exclusiveness. Introducing the ancient Stoics’ idea of cultural identity as concentric circles that denote self, family, city, nation and so on, I will argue that the universal appeal of Larkin’s poetry lies in the fact that he is always as intimately conscious in his writing of the outermost circle of ‘common humanity’ as he is of narrower more socially, politically or geographically limited self-definitions. In this he differs from Betjeman and Hughes who remain more English than Larkin because they define themselves within the categories of the inner circles: class, nation, economic group. It is Augé’s non-place in its familiarity that enhances the impression of universality in Larkin’s work.When Larkin mourns the loss of the “fields and farms” and “the meadows, the lanes” in “Going, Going”, elaborates on the “wind-muscled wheatfields” and the “[t]all church-towers” of “Howden and Beverley, Hedon and Patrington” in “Bridge for the Living” he negotiates not only the markers of English culture but also the (English) poetic tradition of pastoral. If Larkin’s non-place in its universal particularity comes at the Stoics’ concentric circles from the outside and touches on common humanity first, then Larkin’s version of provincialism perhaps entails sculpting the province in its particular universality as the smallest recognizable fragment within the circles of cultural identity. It is the less-deceived quality of Larkin’s approach to the poetic tradition that paradoxically makes a poem like “Here” a full-blooded pastoral.“The Importance of Elsewhere” has often been discussed in the context of its confrontation of two national identities, English and Irish, and the poet’s evasion of his own national identity in the liminal space between them. The chapter on Ireland will explore how different Larkin’s negotiation of nationality is from, say, that of Seamus Heaney, who never seems to stop digging, constantly looks downwards and backwards and seems to remain safely within the parameters of Irish national identity. Terry Whalen states that Larkin’s “best poems written in Ireland were not necessarily about Ireland at all” thus underlining Larkin’s immunity against “that Irish impulse to name and fix”.A reading of Patrick Kavanagh’s “My Room” against Larkin’s “Poetry of Departures” emphasises the fatality of assumed historico-political contexts to poetical works.The strong influence of Jules Laforgue on Larkin is the cutting edge of a larger set of influences from France. Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and the Symbolistes all leave more or less visible marks on different phases of his poetry, and feed one of the main strands of his poetic style. Larkin is often seen to arrive at Laforgue via Eliot, but this chapter explores how differently both poets assimilate the French poet’s influence. Larkin’s ‘Dutch’ poem “The Card-Players” is a striking negotiation of Laforgue with one of Larkin’s very few realisations of anthropological, chthonic place.Larkin’s English identity is clarified most effectively perhaps in juxtaposition with the familiar big brother, or brash cousin Otherness of America. Larkin’s loud confrontation with the American, or ‘international’ Modernism of ‘the mad lads’ who followed Pound perhaps distorts the picture. His work frequently echoes that of Eliot, and contains many modernist elements. From his early youth the States were a vivid country of his mind, black American jazz providing an essential element in his sensibility, and affected his poetry in subtle ways which are not always immediately evident. Larkin’s ‘jazz-poetry’ sets him in a context with the Beat poets, particularly Allen Ginsberg. However, jazz is not the sole point of contact with the USA. Indeed, Larkin engages with the poetry of the confessional poets and exhibits some striking intertextual relations with the poetry of Sylvia Plath.Larkin’s encounters with Germany were in terms of actual visits early in his life, rather than a profound literary influence. Nevertheless it is significant that both Jill and A Girl in Winter, miss out on the opportunity to swear allegiance to England in time of war. This chapter will build on the evidence that, though ‘foreign’ rather than of any specific nationality, Katherine in A Girl in Winter is the imaginative product of Larkin’s experience of Germany. Furthermore, the allegedly German Katherine functions as the fully realized prototype for the alienated speakers in Larkin’s mature poetry.Larkin’s almost proverbial exclamation “Foreign poetry? No!” is thus exposed as one of his characteristic masks. Indeed, the negotiation of and engagement with foreign poetry allows him to try on different literary nationalities without having to leave his cultural comfort zone. It is thus that Larkin’s poetry becomes universal

Venturing in the slipstream : the places of Van Morrison’s songwriting

This thesis explores the use of place in Van Morrison’s songwriting. The central argument is that he employs place in many of his songs at lyrical and musical levels, and that this use of place as a poetic and aural device both defines and distinguishes his work. This argument is widely supported by Van Morrison scholars and critics. The main research question is: What are the ways that Van Morrison employs the concept of place to explore the wider themes of his writing across his career from 1965 onwards? This question was reached from a critical analysis of Van Morrison’s songs and recordings. A position was taken up in the study that the songwriter’s lyrics might be closely read and appreciated as song texts, and this reading could offer important insights into the scope of his life and work as a songwriter. The analysis is best described as an analytical and interpretive approach, involving a simultaneous reading and listening to each song and examining them as speech acts. At the same time as the analysis was being undertaken, a divergent body of literature spanning popular music and literary traditions was opened up. As a result of this process, a group of songs was chosen to illustrate the use of place in Van Morrison’s work, and these are then organised into the specific expressions of place across the thesis. Organised into chapters, this expression explores the way Van Morrison utilises place in his songwriting, and the emblematic and temporal perspectives that different places bring to this process. Some show how home places hold childhood and adolescent reminiscences, where simple pursuits jostle for importance within more serious deliberations about human meaning. Others reflect on what influences drive his moving away from home, what this means for his future symbolic exile, and how returning home becomes an imaginative and textual exercise. Elsewhere, chapters highlight ways that the songwriter looks to escape the trappings of the city and the pressures of the music industry through excursions into a natural world, where responses arise from encounters with landscape and weather