Download or read book Principles of Biological Autonomy written by Francisco J. Varela and published by North-Holland. This book was released on 1979-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Biological Autonomy written by Alvaro Moreno and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-04 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Darwin, Biology has been framed on the idea of evolution by natural selection, which has profoundly influenced the scientific and philosophical comprehension of biological phenomena and of our place in Nature. This book argues that contemporary biology should progress towards and revolve around an even more fundamental idea, that of autonomy. Biological autonomy describes living organisms as organised systems, which are able to self-produce and self-maintain as integrated entities, to establish their own goals and norms, and to promote the conditions of their existence through their interactions with the environment. Topics covered in this book include organisation and biological emergence, organisms, agency, levels of autonomy, cognition, and a look at the historical dimension of autonomy. The current development of scientific investigations on autonomous organisation calls for a theoretical and philosophical analysis. This can contribute to the elaboration of an original understanding of life - including human life - on Earth, opening new perspectives and enabling fecund interactions with other existing theories and approaches. This book takes up the challenge.
Download or read book On the Origin of Autonomy written by Bernd Rosslenbroich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume describes features of autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about major transitions in evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. They include questions about the origin of evolutionary innovation, their genetic and epigenetic background, the role of the phenotype and of changes in ontogenetic pathways. In the present book, it is argued that it is likewise necessary to question the properties of these innovations and what was qualitatively generated during the macroevolutionary transitions. The author states that a recurring central aspect of macroevolutionary innovations is an increase in individual organismal autonomy whereby it is emancipated from the environment with changes in its capacity for flexibility, self-regulation and self-control of behavior. The first chapters define the concept of autonomy and examine its history and its epistemological context. Later chapters demonstrate how changes in autonomy took place during the major evolutionary transitions and investigate the generation of organs and physiological systems. They synthesize material from various disciplines including zoology, comparative physiology, morphology, molecular biology, neurobiology and ethology. It is argued that the concept is also relevant for understanding the relation of the biological evolution of man to his cultural abilities. Finally the relation of autonomy to adaptation, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and other factors and patterns in evolution is discussed. The text has a clear perspective from the context of systems biology, arguing that the generation of biological autonomy must be interpreted within an integrative systems approach.
Download or read book Molecular Mechanisms of Autonomy in Biological Systems written by Tara Karimi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-28 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a novel molecular description for understanding the regulatory mechanisms behind the autonomy and self-organization in biological systems. Chapters focus on defining and explaining the regulatory molecular mechanisms behind different aspects of autonomy and self-organization in the sense of autonomous coding, data processing, structure (mass) formation and energy production in a biological system. Subsequent chapters discuss the cross-talk among mechanisms of energy, and mass and information, transformation in biological systems. Other chapters focus on applications regarding therapeutic approaches in regenerative medicine. Molecular Mechanisms of Autonomy in Biological Systems is an indispensable resource for scientists and researchers in regenerative medicine, stem cell biology, molecular biology, tissue engineering, developmental biology, biochemistry, biophysics, bioinformatics, as well as big data sciences, complexity and soft computing.
Download or read book What Makes Biology Unique written by Ernst Mayr and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-16 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, a collection of essays written by the most eminent evolutionary biologist of the twentieth century, explores biology as an autonomous science, offers insights on the history of evolutionary thought, critiques the contributions of philosophy to the science of biology, and comments on several of the major ongoing issues in evolutionary theory. Notably, Mayr explains that Darwin's theory of evolution is actually five separate theories, each with its own history, trajectory and impact. Natural selection is a separate idea from common descent, and from geographic speciation, and so on. A number of the perennial Darwinian controversies may well have been caused by the confounding of the five separate theories into a single composite. Those interested in evolutionary theory, or the philosophy and history of science will find useful ideas in this book, which should appeal to virtually anyone with a broad curiosity about biology.
Download or read book Autopoiesis and Cognition written by H.R. Maturana and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a bold, brilliant, provocative and puzzling work. It demands a radical shift in standpoint, an almost paradoxical posture in which living systems are described in terms of what lies outside the domain of descriptions. Professor Humberto Maturana, with his colleague Francisco Varela, have undertaken the construction of a systematic theoretical biology which attempts to define living systems not as they are objects of observation and description, nor even as in teracting systems, but as self-contained unities whose only reference is to them selves. Thus, the standpoint of description of such unities from the 'outside', i. e. , by an observer, already seems to violate the fundamental requirement which Maturana and Varela posit for the characterization of such system- namely, that they are autonomous, self-referring and self-constructing closed systems - in short, autopoietic systems in their terms. Yet, on the basis of such a conceptual method, and such a theory of living systems, Maturana goes on to define cognition as a biological phenomenon; as, in effect, the very nature of all living systems. And on this basis, to generate the very domains of interac tion among such systems which constitute language, description and thinking.
Download or read book Self Organization and Management of Social Systems written by H. Ulrich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-organization of systems belonging to quite different discipl ines has been a central topic of synergetics since its beginning. I am therefore particularly plea sed that Hans Ulrich and Gilbert Probst have not only undertaken to organize an interdisciplinary meeting on Self-Organization and Management of Social Systems, but have also edited these articles written by leading scientists after and based upon that symposium. While the previous volumes of the Springer Series in Synergetics were mainly de voted to physical, chemical and biological systems, with only the book by W. Weidlich and G. Haag deal i ng with "Quant i tat i ve Soc i 01 ogy" (Spri nger Ser. Syn., Vo 1. 14), the present volume opens a new perspective. As the reader will notice, the multitude of facets of self-organization is well reflected by various authors belonging to different discipl ines and representing different schools of thought. When such a wide scope of fields - ranging from phy sics to sociology - is covered, it is not surprising that the existence of a "hiatus" between sociology and the natural sciences was felt by some participants.
Download or read book Systems Biology written by Fred Boogerd and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Systems biology is a vigorous and expanding discipline, in many ways a successor to genomics and perhaps unprecedented in its combination of biology with a great many other sciences, from physics to ecology, from mathematics to medicine, and from philosophy to chemistry. Studying the philosophical foundations of systems biology may resolve a longer standing issue, i.e., the extent to which Biology is entitled to its own scientific foundations rather than being dominated by existing philosophies.* Answers the question of what distinguishes the living from the non-living* An in-depth look to a vigorous and expanding discipline, from molecule to system* Explores the region between individual components and the system
Download or read book Traditions of Systems Theory written by Darrell Arnold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term ‘systems theory’ is used to characterize a set of disparate yet related approaches to fields as varied as information theory, cybernetics, biology, sociology, history, literature, and philosophy. What unites each of these traditions of systems theory is a shared focus on general features of systems and their fundamental importance for diverse areas of life. Yet there are considerable differences among these traditions, and each tradition has developed its own methodologies, journals, and forms of anaylsis. This book explores this terrain and provides an overview of and guide to the traditions of systems theory in their considerable variety. The book draws attention to the traditions of systems theory in their historical development, especially as related to the humanities and social sciences, and shows how from these traditions various contemporary developments have ensued. It provides a guide for strains of thought that are key to understanding 20th century intellectual life in many areas.
Download or read book Studies in the Philosophy of Biology written by Francisco Ayala and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1974-01-01 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mind in Life written by Evan Thompson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is life related to the mind? The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan Thompson explores in Mind in Life. Thompson draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind. Where there is life, Thompson argues, there is mind: life and mind share common principles of self-organization, and the self-organizing features of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of life. Rather than trying to close the explanatory gap, Thompson marshals philosophical and scientific analyses to bring unprecedented insight to the nature of life and consciousness. This synthesis of phenomenology and biology helps make Mind in Life a vital and long-awaited addition to his landmark volume The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (coauthored with Eleanor Rosch and Francisco Varela). Endlessly interesting and accessible, Mind in Life is a groundbreaking addition to the fields of the theory of the mind, life science, and phenomenology.
Download or read book The Principles of Life written by Tibor Ganti and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with a new essay, "Levels of Life and Death," Tibor Gánti develops three general arguments about the nature of life. In "The Nature of the Living State," Professor Gánti answers Francis Crick's puzzles about "life itself," offering a set of reflections on the parameters of the problems to be solved in origins of life research and, more broadly, in the search for principles governing the living state in general. "The Principle of Life" describes in accessible language Gánti's chief insight about the organization of living systems-his theory of the "chemoton," or chemical automaton. The simplest chemoton model of the living state consists of three chemically coupled subsystems: an autocatalytic metabolism, a genetic molecule and a membrane. Gánti offers a fresh approach to the ancient problem of "life criteria," articulating a basic philosophy of the units of life applicable to the deepest theoretical considerations of genetics, chemical synthesis, evolutionary biology and the requirements of an "exact theoretical biology." New essays by Eörs Szathmáry and James Griesemer on the biological and philosophical significance of Gánti's work of thirty years indicate not only the enduring theoretical significance, but also the continuing relevance and heuristic power of Gánti's insights. New endnotes by Szathmáry and Griesemer bring this legacy into dialogue with current thought in biology and philosophy. Gánti's chemoton model reveals the fundamental importance of chemistry for biology and philosophy. Gánti's technical innovation - cycle stoichiometry - at once captures the fundamental fact that biological systems are organized in cycles and at the same time offers a way to understand what it is to think chemically. Perhaps most fundamentally, Gánti's chemoton model avoids dualistic thinking enforced by the dichotomies of modern biology: germ and soma, gene and character, genotype and phenotype.
Download or read book Francisco J Varela 1946 2001 written by Jeanette Bopry and published by Imprint Academic. This book was released on 2004 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A volume dedicated to the life and work of Francisco Varela, this is an issue of the journal "Cybernetics and Human Knowing".
Download or read book Emergence and Embodiment written by Bruce Clarke and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-30 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics—the study of communication and control systems—was mainstreamed under the names artificial intelligence and computer science and taken up by the social sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. In Emergence and Embodiment, Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen focus on cybernetic developments that stem from the second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics’ attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous self-regulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to second-order concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis in embodied and metabiotic systems. The collection opens with an interview with von Foerster and then traces the lines of neocybernetic thought that have followed from his work. In response to the apparent dissolution of boundaries at work in the contemporary technosciences of emergence, neocybernetics observes that cognitive systems are operationally bounded, semi-autonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Second-order systems theory stresses the recursive complexities of observation, mediation, and communication. Focused on the neocybernetic contributions of von Foerster, Francisco Varela, and Niklas Luhmann, this collection advances theoretical debates about the cultural, philosophical, and literary uses of their ideas. In addition to the interview with von Foerster, Emergence and Embodiment includes essays by Varela and Luhmann. It engages with Humberto Maturana’s and Varela’s creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varela’s later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmann’s adaptations of autopoiesis to social systems theory. Taken together, these essays illuminate the shared commitments uniting the broader discourse of neocybernetics. Contributors. Linda Brigham, Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen, Edgar Landgraf, Ira Livingston, Niklas Luhmann, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe
Download or read book Advances in Artificial Life written by Fernando Almeida e Costa and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 1232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL 2007, held in Lisbon, Portugal. The 125 revised full papers cover morphogenesis and development, robotics and autonomous agents, evolutionary computation and theory, cellular automata, models of biological systems and their applications, ant colony and swarm systems, evolution of communication, simulation of social interactions, self-replication, artificial chemistry.
Download or read book The Tree of Knowledge written by Humberto R. Maturana and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 1987 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opstilling af en plan for en helhedsforståelse af processerne i biologiske systemer og en diskussion af dette biologiske udgangspunkts konsekvenser for den menneskelige erkendelsesproces
Download or read book Perspectives on Organisms written by Giuseppe Longo and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authored monograph introduces a genuinely theoretical approach to biology. Starting point is the investigation of empirical biological scaling including their variability, which is found in the literature, e.g. allometric relationships, fractals, etc. The book then analyzes two different aspects of biological time: first, a supplementary temporal dimension to accommodate proper biological rhythms; secondly, the concepts of protension and retention as a means of local organization of time in living organisms. Moreover, the book investigates the role of symmetry in biology, in view of its ubiquitous importance in physics. In relation with the notion of extended critical transitions, the book proposes that organisms and their evolution can be characterized by continued symmetry changes, which accounts for the irreducibility of their historicity and variability. The authors also introduce the concept of anti-entropy as a measure for the potential of variability, being equally understood as alterations in symmetry. By this, the book provides a mathematical account of Gould's analysis of phenotypic complexity with respect to biological evolution. The target audience primarily comprises researchers interested in new theoretical approaches to biology, from physical, biological or philosophical backgrounds, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students who want to enter this field.
