137 research outputs found
Opinions and Outlooks on Morphological Computation
Morphological Computation is based on the observation that biological systems seem to carry out relevant computations with their morphology (physical body) in order to successfully interact with their environments. This can be observed in a whole range of systems and at many different scales. It has been studied in animals â e.g., while running, the functionality of coping with impact and slight unevenness in the ground is "delivered" by the shape of the legs and the damped elasticity of the muscle-tendon system â and plants, but it has also been observed at the cellular and even at the molecular level â as seen, for example, in spontaneous self-assembly. The concept of morphological computation has served as an inspirational resource to build bio-inspired robots, design novel approaches for support systems in health care, implement computation with natural systems, but also in art and architecture. As a consequence, the field is highly interdisciplinary, which is also nicely reflected in the wide range of authors that are featured in this e-book. We have contributions from robotics, mechanical engineering, health, architecture, biology, philosophy, and others
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Worlds of Authority, Communities of Practice, and State Formation in Early 1st Millennium Central Korea
Processes of state formation remain a key topic of debate in archaeology, with linear evolutionary models coming under increasing scrutiny and alternative models of social complexity accompanying these critiques. Studying the transition from Mahan (Late Iron Age; 100 BC â 300 AD) to the Baekje kingdom (Three Kingdoms Period; 300 â 668 AD) in the central part of Korea contributes on both these fronts. Models of state formation in Korea tend towards aforementioned evolutionary schemes, whereby a single chiefdom within the Mahan confederacy expanded outwards to form a territorial state via diplomacy and force.
To test this account this thesis develops a socio-political model of heterarchy based on multiple âworldsâ of what can be called natural or epistemic authority, with authority freely given by autonomous subjects voluntarily subjugating themselves based on situational evaluations of competence. In the first part of this thesis, textual and multi-scalar archaeological analyses (mapping distributions of consumption, storage, and production activities) of settlements in the Han River Basin and Hwaseong Region during the Later Iron Age, reveal that Mahan groups were organized along the principles of situational natural/epistemic authority, with multiple non-mutually exclusive leadership roles.
That Mahan groups had multiple, parallel positions of authority and little indication of permanent social ranks forces a reconsideration of the prevailing accounts concerning Baekje state formation. An analogous multi-scalar investigation into the Early Baekje Period shows a narrowing in the worlds of authority to one specific field of action involving public feasting, whereby an apparently exclusive community of practice emerged at particular locales, eclipsing the heterogeneity evident in the Later Iron Age. I argue that this exclusive community grew due to certain local leaders taking opportunities to monopolise the exchange
of certain goods, particularly those related to long distance trade/diplomatic missions to Mainland China.
However, elements of the heterarchical nature of Mahan persisted, with individual settlements maintaining similar principles of organization. Furthermore, stylistic, petrographic and compositional analyses of prestige Black Burnished Pottery explores whether the production of stylized serving ceramics was rooted locally or under central control. Identifying multiple loci of production indicates that, while local stratification is occurring, Early Baekje itself appears as a voluntary distributed network based on a new category of leader whose authority is grounded within membership of a particular community of practice
Compromised Values: Charlotte Posenenske, 1966âPresent
Fabricated in unlimited series and sold at cost, the sculptures produced by Charlotte Posenenske between 1966 and 1967âmodular wall reliefs, interactive cubic structures, and tubular geometric units whose installation requires collective decision makingâwere meant to confront both the artworkâs commodity status and the limitation of its consumption to a privileged elite. Nevertheless, Posenenskeâs work has been effectively recuperated by the art system: first, in the 1980s, through a series of exhibitions and publications organized by her estate; and second, with her inclusion in Documenta 12 in 2007, which reintroduced her work to the market. Since the artistâs death in 1985, her workâs circulation through the art system has increasingly revealed the normally obscured role that economic value plays in curatorial and conservation practices. Inspired by the artistâs own abandonment of art and turn to sociology after 1968, I examine her oeuvre via an expanded concept of value, using this term to refer to the often conflicting aesthetic, cultural, historical, and economic significance that is attached to artworks as they move through cultural and institutional contexts. Borrowing a term from cultural economist David Stark, I propose that Posenenskeâs sculptures create value heterarchiesâsystems in which multiple valuative criteria are in conflict, creating friction between modes of valuation and prompting the recognition of not-yet-formulated value categories. Given Posenenskeâs resistance to the commodification of her work during her life, her anticipation of its ongoing reproduction and circulation, and museumsâ subsequent assertion of its economic value after her death, this dissertation argues that her art is central to assessing the shifts in value that accompany the collection and preservation of institution-critical sculpture, as well as all objects that circulate within the art system
Complex event types for agent-based simulation
This thesis presents a novel formal modelling language, complex event types (CETs), to describe behaviours
in agent-based simulations. CETs are able to describe behaviours at any computationally
represented level of abstraction. Behaviours can be specified both in terms of the state transition rules of
the agent-based model that generate them and in terms of the state transition structures themselves.
Based on CETs, novel computational statistical methods are introduced which allow statistical dependencies
between behaviours at different levels to be established. Different dependencies formalise
different probabilistic causal relations and Complex Systems constructs such as âemergenceâ and âautopoiesisâ.
Explicit links are also made between the different types of CET inter-dependency and the
theoretical assumptions they represent.
With the novel computational statistical methods, three categories of model can be validated and
discovered: (i) inter-level models, which define probabilistic dependencies between behaviours at different
levels; (ii) multi-level models, which define the set of simulations for which an inter-level model
holds; (iii) inferred predictive models, which define latent relationships between behaviours at different
levels.
The CET modelling language and computational statistical methods are then applied to a novel
agent-based model of Colonic Cancer to demonstrate their applicability to Complex Systems sciences
such as Systems Biology. This proof of principle model provides a framework for further development
of a detailed integrative model of the system, which can progressively incorporate biological data from
different levels and scales as these become available
Design in the Age of Information: A Report to the National Science Foundation (NSF)
The Information Age is upon us - it has become a global force in our everyday lives. But the promise of significant benefits from this revolution, which has been driven largely by technologists, will not be realized without more careful planning and design of information systems that can be integral to the simultaneously emerging user-cultures. In cultural terms, information systems must be effective, reliable, affordable, intuitively meaningful, and available anytime and everywhere. In this phase of the information revolution, design will be essential
Authentic alignment : toward an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) informed model of the learning environment in health professions education
It is well established that the goals of education can only be achieved through the constructive alignment of instruction, learning and assessment. There is a gap in research interpreting the lived experiences of stakeholders within the UK learning environment toward understanding the real impact â authenticity â of curricular alignment. This investigation uses a critical realist framework to explore the emergent quality of authenticity as a function of alignment.This project deals broadly with alignment of anatomy pedagogy within UK undergraduate medical education. The thread of alignment is woven through four aims: 1) to understand the alignment of anatomy within the medical curriculum via the relationships of its stakeholders; 2) to explore the apparent complexity of the learning environment (LE); 3) to generate a critical evaluation of the methodology, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as an approach appropriate for realist research in the complex fields of medical and health professions education; 4) to propose a functional, authentic model of the learning environment.Findings indicate that the complexity and uncertainty inherent in the LE can be reflected in spatiotemporal models. Findings meet the thesis aims, suggesting: 1) the alignment of anatomy within the medical curriculum is complex and forms a multiplicity of perspectives; 2) this complexity is ripe for phenomenological exploration; 3) IPA is particularly suitable for realist research exploring complexity in HPE; 4) Authentic Alignment theory offers a spatiotemporal model of the complex HPE learning environment:the T-icosa
Stepping Beyond the Newtonian Paradigm in Biology. Towards an Integrable Model of Life: Accelerating Discovery in the Biological Foundations of Science
The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines
who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative
step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the
world. It is INBIOSAâs purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an
interdisciplinary community of original thinkers.
This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the
transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit
that biology to date has been more fact-oriented and less theoretical than
physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the
science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our
most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from
abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and
demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated
for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology
can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging
new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The
latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known
and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic
means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this
sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort.
The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions
within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the
explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the
abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam;
much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry)
and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized
by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed
are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions ânativeâ to biology
and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as
we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete
and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology
and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge
is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations
that is truly native to living systems.
Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically
recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted
Newtonian mechanics.
This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to
apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between
multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the
basic terms or tools needed.
The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set
of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its
early stages, this will seem to be a ânew scienceâ.
This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology
and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological,
ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science
of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to
be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic
information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic
systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that
there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at
this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches
to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows.
Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical
problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting
Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge
we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to
formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have
today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists
in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time
in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory
of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary
problems and multiple domains spanning both âhardâ and
âsoftâ sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated
mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project
proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability
of our approach to address âwicked problemsâ which span across physics,
chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions
require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as âgrand
challengesâ to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal
for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the
INBIOSA program.
The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging
research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The
efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently.
Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and
measured as it progresses
Noise and morphogenesis: Uncertainty, randomness and control
This thesis presents a processual ontology of noise by virtue of which morphogenesis (in its most general understanding as the processes by which order/form is created) must be instantiated. Noise is here outlined as the far from equilibrium environment out of which metastable temporary âsolutionsâ can emerge as the system transitions through the pre-individual state space. While frequently addressed by humanities and arts studies on the basis of its supposed disruptive character (often in terms of aesthetics), this thesis aims to thoroughly examine noiseâs conceptual potencies. To explore and amplify the epistemic consequences not merely of the ineliminability of noise but of its originative power as well as within the course of the elimination of givenness by epistemology. This philosophical work is informed by many different fields of contemporary science (namely: statistical physics, information theory, probability theory, 4E cognition, synthetic biology, nonlinear dynamics, complexity science and computer science) in order to assess and highlight the problems of the metascientific and ideological foundations of diverse projects of prediction and control of uncertainty. From algorithmic surveillance back to cybernetics and how these rendered noise âinformationally hereticalâ. This conveys an analysis of how contemporary prediction technologies are dramatically transforming our relationship with the future and with uncertainty in a great number of our social structures. It is a philosophico-critical anthropology of data ontology and a critique of reductive pan-info-computationalism. Additionally, two practical examples of noise characterised as an enabling constraint for the functioning of complex adaptive systems are presented. These are at once biophysical and cognitive, : 1) interaction-dominance constituted by âpink noiseâ and 2) noise as a source of variability that cells may exploit in (synthetic) biology. Finally, noise is posited as an intractable active ontological randomness that limits the scope of determinism and that goes beyond unpredictability in any epistemological sense due to the insuperability of the situation in which epistemology finds itself following the critique of the given
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