IX. Natural Genesis 2020: A Chapter, Section and Verse Synoptic Review

This initial section is posted as another way to convey a bidecadal capsule of the Natural Genesis resource content, as it reaches 4,000 pages. Here each chapter and section, 86 in all, comes with a capsule of advances, select citations, and especial quotes. And in 2022, an EarthWinian title word has been added as an attempt, some 160 years later, as a name for our Earthuman version – Charlotte and Charles EarthWin. See Chap. V: Life’s Evolution Organizes Itself, Chap. IX: A 2020s Discovery Decade for more. (We note that Universal Gestation was the main thematic concept in the mid 1800s.) And in addition, as the final Great Earth section reports, our home bioplanet might aspire to be a vitally unique participant.

I. A NATURAL GENESIS VISION: A WOMAN’S ECOSMOS WISDOME

A. Homo/Anthropo Opus: Historic Prescience

2020: As Jessica Riskin’s excellent history recounts, this long scientific project could well be viewed as an interplay between a mainstream barren, mechanical model and a persistent minority organic essence. But we went to the book’s index only to find some 700 male names over two millennia and just 5 women. Today, as the pointless accident scheme reigns, a revolutionary, wumanwise, life affirming actuality needs to be brought into salutary awareness.

Riskin, Jessica. The Restless Clock. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Wagner, Roger and Andrew Briggs. The Penultimate Curiosity.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

B. Earthuman Sapiensphere: A 21st Century Revolutionary Discovery

2020: By way of these worldwise multiplex factors, an epochal, a triple Ecosmos, EarthOva and Earthuman revision about the phenomenal nature of an actual ecosmic genesis uniVerse, along with this precious Earthly abide, and our microcosmic human/wuman selves in community may just coming to fruition in our midst. But an historic impediment remains because any such considerations are blocked by a vested, Ptolemaic, male, left brain mindset which is cognitively unable to imagine and allow an extant procreative reality with an independent existence and developmental course.

To wit, as the whole Natural Genesis content seeks to identify, report and support, the olden sterile, particulate, materialist, mindless, mechanical, accident scheme is quite being set aside for an actual lively (feminine), genetically encoded, familial reproductive procreativity. And as the ultimate Earthropic Principle and EarthOva 2021 sections (VIII. C., D) express, by way of life’s processional, quickening emergence to a super-human global acumen and knowledge, a especial Gaia alive distinction can well regain a significant central place, role and destiny.

And for a traditional reference, we cite a Chinese “anthropocosmic” wisdom which taught a triune unity of “heaven, Earth and humanity” (Tu Weiming). At this advent moment of an historic dispensation, an expansive, esteemed appreciation of individual persons can likewise accrue. If we peoples can be newly understood as (fractal) self-similar micro-universes (personVerse) with all that may imply, anoint and empower, human beings are not sinners, rather we can one and all aspire to be Winners. If men can ever stop fighting, if a vital Gaian ecological sustainability replace, we might altogether begin a new complementary, bigender cocreation for all the children’s sake.

Cockell, Charles. The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution. New York: Basic Books, 2018.

Nicolelis, Miguel. The True Creator of Everything. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

West, Geoffrey. Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability and the Pace of Life. New York: Penguin, 2017.

Volk, Tyler. Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.

II. EARTH LEARN: A PLANETARY PRODIGY COMES TO HER/HIS OWN KNOWLEDGE

A. Aboriginal Quest(ion)

1. Indigenous Intimation: Mythic Animism Please refer to the main section.

2. Perennial Wisdome: An Anthropocosmic Code Please refer to the main section

3. The Book of Naturome: A New Translation

2020: In the scope of this Natural Genesis posting, a New Translation phrase has been added. As an example we cite Information-Consciousness-Reality by the Swiss physicist James Glattfelder (2019), which is fully online at its Springer page. While an algorithmic future is surmised, it is proposed that into the 21st century the new nonequilibrium sciences of dynamic network complexities as they inform and self-organize might represent a novel worldwise decipherment.

Glattfelder, James. Information-Consciousness-Reality. International: Springer Frontiers, 2019.

Van Schaik, Carel and Kai Michel. The Good Book of Human Nature. New York: Basic Books, 2016.

4. World Natural PhiloSophia: An Ubuntu Universe

2020: As the new intro notes, this section has been a gathering place for second culture viewings and vistas of integral, narrative complements to science data details. It surveys select academic, personal, non-western (global) philosophies as they press on with this minority endeavor. And the African organic wisdom herein might gift us with a once and future It takes an ecovillage, ubuntu me + We = US guidance.

In contemporary times ubuntu has become an oft used word in South Africa that means I am what I am because of who we all are” or more simply “I am because of us.” Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you con’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. (Marsha MacDowell, 2017)

Karenga, Maulana. MAAT: A Study in Classical African Ethics. New York: Routledge, 2004

Nicholson, Daniel and John Dupre, eds. Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

B. Homo to Anthropo to Earthropo: The Spiral of Science

2020: By this year a copious array of online eprint sites and journals post thousands of papers each day. A cumulative repository builds on its own as researchers scan, read, fill in, modify and contribute further work. Many entries have come to perceive this active endeavor as an exemplary self-organizing network and complex adaptive system. A worldwise collective intelligence now seems in emergent effect whereof any ecosmic breadth and atomic depth has become cognitively accessible.

Scientific research is often seen as individuals and small teams striving for disciplinary advances. Yet as a whole, this endeavor closely resembles a complex system of natural computation, in which information is obtained, generated, and disseminated more effectively than by single persons. Here we use network science to map interconnected topics covered in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Broadly, this work suggests that complex and dynamic patterns of knowledge emerge from scientific research. (Jordan Dworkin, 2019)

Dong, Yuxiao, et al. A Century of Science: Globalization of Scientific Collaborations, Citations, and Innovations. arXiv:1704.05150.

Krenn, Mario and Anton Zeilinger. Predicting Research Trends with Semantic and Neural Networks. arXiv:1906.06843.

Renn, Jurgen. The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

1. EI: An Survey of Earthificial Deep Neural Network Learning

2020: As the intro describes, since 2015 a total revision from ineffective machine methods to a biological, human brain based approach has occurred. The advance was facilitated by concurrent neuroscience findings about the multiplex capacities of our cerebral faculties. It is then notable that “artificial” neural nets have found much analytic utility from quantum to galactic studies, which is another indication of nature’s common recurrence. As this AI frontier expands, it is under scrutiny over misuses and abuses, along with scientific, medical and social benefits. One might even broach an “Earthificial” intelligence going forward within a nascent planetary cognizance.

Kellehar, John. Deep Learning. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019.

Sejnowski, Terrence. The Deep Learning Revolution. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018.

C. Global Genius: A Collective, Intelligent, Worldwise Mindkinder

2020: By this bidecadal year, a novel online informative sapiensphere could be seen in place to an extent that it has commenced to learn on its (her/his) own. Again, this perception is the conceptual basis of this resource site. As we human persons contribute to and daily avail, an accessible global repository of accumulated knowledge can become apparent. In wider regard, as an ecosmic (genomic) source may at last reach its conscious recognition, this vast content can be feed back to salve, heal, and enhance the valiant beings it arose from. A specific, crucial case may be its biological and medical application to cure and bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. As 214 select references to date may convey, it would serve me + We = US to become aware of its salutary presence, a novel Earthomo dispensation we so need.

You might well argue that human intelligence has all along been a collective phenomenon rather than an individual one. Most of our intellectual achievements as humans result not just from a single person, but by interactions with a culture, a body of knowledge, a whole community and network of other humans. I think and I hope that this approach to thinking about collective intelligence can help us to understand not only what it means to be individual humans, but what it means for us as humans to be part of some broader collectively intelligent entity. (Thomas Malone, 2012)

Falk, Emily and Danielle Bassett. Brain and Social Networks. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 21/9, 2017.

Heylighen, Francis and Marta Lenartowicz. The Global Brain as a Model of the Future Information Society. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 114/1, 2017.

III. ECOSMOS: A PROCREATIVE ORGANIC HABITABLE UNIVERSE

A. Quantum Cosmology Unity

2020: This title phrase arose in the 1980s as it was realized that mathematic phenomena at the universe’s point of origin had a quantum physical nature. Into the 21st century this evidential synthesis across this widest micro to macro expanse has been well worked out. Issues and nuances may remain over the inflationary moment, but as Planck satellite results affirm, the theoretical basis is basically correct. It can now be put that our collective human inquiry and acumen has been able to find and quantify a whole scale unification so as to form an integral identity.

When quantum mechanics was developed in the '20s of the last century another revolution in physics was just starting. It began with the discovery that the universe is expanding. For a long time quantum mechanics and cosmology developed independently of one another. Yet the very discovery of the expansion would eventually draw the two subjects together because it implied the big bang where quantum mechanics was important for cosmology and for understanding our observations of the universe today. (James Hartle, 2020)

Calcagni, Gianluca. Classical and Quantum Cosmology. Europe: Springer, 2017.

Smolin, Lee. Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: the Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum. New York: Penguin, 2019.

Sanchez, Norma. New Quantum Phase of the Universe before Inflation. arXiv:1912.06655.

1. A Galactic, Stellar, Planetary System Spacescape

2020: Two decades in, an international collaborative astronomy by way of land-based and satellite telescopes, sophisticated instrumentation, analytic techniques, computational displays and more, has allowed we Earthlings to fill in and flesh out the temporal formation of a trillion galaxy, sextillion star spacescape. A prime aspect noted in Universal Evolution is a widest stochastic, contingent variety. We will enter its newly found occasion of myraid habitable planetary zones further on. Streaming 3D videos of intersecting galaxies and black holes, for example, can now inform and illustrate our awesome humankinder achievement, and future task of conceptual ecosmic self-description.

Over the course of the last decades, our understanding of the extragalactic universe has significantly evolved: the description of its components has moved from being isolated to multiply connected on large scales, cluster scales and galactic scales. This model predicts a certain shape for the initial conditions, leading to a hierarchical formation scenario, which produces the large scale structure. The maga-parsecs “Cosmic Web” picture now explains the origin this network: it relates the observed clusters of galaxies, and filaments that link them to the geometrical properties of the initial density field. (Sandrine Codis, 2018))

Courtois, Helene. Finding Our Place in the Universe. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019.

Perlov, Delia and Alex Vilenkin. Cosmology for the Curious. International: Springer, 2017.

2. Earth Alive: A Bio-Eco-Ovo Sphere Sustains Her/His Self

2020: After some decades of critical doubt, worries and just unfamiliarty, a biospheric, life-sustaining, superorganic global envelope has become the basic guide for Earth systems science. This Gaian process is seen to influence and control Earth’s mineral surface, atmospheric compositions, and more so to maintain a favorable, billion year milieu for life’s evolutionary development to our retrospective sapiensphere observance.

Humans are the brain — the consciousness — of the planet. We are Earth made aware of itself. Viewed this way, our ecological responsibility could not be clearer. By fuming greenhouse gases, we have not simply changed the climate; we have critically wounded a global life form and severely disrupted its biological rhythms. No other member of this living assembly has our privileged perspective. No one else can see the sinews and vessels of our planetary body. Only we can choose to help keep Earth alive. (Ferris Jabr, 2019)

Alvarez, Walter. A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves. New York: Norton, 2016.

Lenton, Timothy, et al. Selection for Gaia across Multiple Scales. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Online July, 2018.

Steffen, Will, et al. The Emergence and Evolution of Earth System Science. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. 1/1, 2020.

3. Quantum Organics in the 21st Century

2020: A second quantum revolution phrase has arisen because it is lately realized that this deepest, contextual realm seems to be actually suffused by the same network, self-organized, complexities as everywhere else. The advance was fostered by a global project to achieve superfast quantum computers, along with finding that neural network methods are applicable. Nonlinear phenomena such as self-organized criticalities and chimera states are also present. Another aspect is a notice of quantum-like effects in biological organisms, cognition and behavior. As a further result, the olden quantum-classical divide is being erased due to better understandings of each domain. An issue remains because the 20th century version of unintelligible opaqueness is still in place. But altogether within a nascent ecosmos genesis, it may be appropriate to propose a new “quantum organics” identity.

This special issue of Annalen der Physik collects expertise and perspectives on complex (quantum) systems from diverse areas of research - disordered quantum systems, molecular dynamics and interactions, mesoscopic physics, quantum many body physics, open quantum systems, network and scattering theory, quantum information and control – which all share the same interest in getting a better grasp of complexity on the quantum level. (Irene Burghardt, 2016)

Ball, Philip. Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different. London: Bodley Head, 2018.

Berkelbach, Timothy and Michael Thoss. Dynamics of Open Quantum Systems. Journal of Chemical Physics. 152/020401, 2020.

Jaeger, Gregg, et al. Second Quantum Revolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 375/20160397, 2016.

4. Novel ExoUniverse Studies

2020: In 1983 I attended Andrei Linde’s first US public lecture at Harvard where he spoke of bubbling fractal universes. But as the 21st century began, cosmic multitudes beyond our own remained a theoretical conjecture. Into the 2010s, due to Fred Adams, McCullen Sandora and other seekers, deeper insights along with detectable inklings now indicate a vast array of vicarious universes. Several entries consider whole cosmoses with regard to variable parameters and elemental makeup. As a result this infinity (maybe 10500) are thought to span wide contingent ranges to an extent that again some selective process may be going on. Since we Earthlings are here due to a rarest cocatenation, our home spacescape must favor anthropic qualities. But how fantastic is it that in a few centuries a sentient worldly species on a tiny orb some 10-33 orders smaller can yet explore and achieve such vast knowledge.

The fundamental constants that describe the laws of physics appear to have arbitrary values that cannot be explained by current theory. One possible explanation is that other universes exist in which the constants have different values, so that they are drawn from an as-yet-unknown probability distribution. Many authors have argued that changes in these constants could render a universe uninhabitable to life as we know it. So as a result our universe appears to be “fine-tuned” for life. (Evan Grohs, 2018)

Adams, Fred and Evan Grohs. Stellar Helium Burning in Other UniversesarXiv:1608.04690.

Siegfried, Tom. The Number of the Heavens. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019.

B. An Animate Procreative Ecosmos

2020: Over the ages and stages of our human wonderment, by turns an aboriginal, mystic animism was replaced by a sterile mechanical physics, especially in the last century. But into the 21st century, an emergent transition to personsphere collaborations seems on the way to quantifying and recovering a procreative geobiosphere in an organically conducive uniVerse. Two aspects involve living systems reaching and rooting deeper into a material ground, and how such basic substrates are now seen as spontaneously fertile. Circa 2020, an evolutionary developmental gestation might be glimpsed from a singular ecosmic origin all the way to humankinder’s worldwide sentience.

Up until maybe a decade ago, we were told that life was impossible and that we were the most incredible miracle in the universe. In fact, we were the only people in the universe. So as a chemist, I wanted to say, “Is life that improbable?" And this is really the question. I think that perhaps the emergence of the first cells was as probable as the emergence of the stars. And in fact, let's take that one step further. Let's say that if the physics of fusion is encoded into the universe, maybe the physics of life is as well. (Lee Cronin, 2011)

Barge, Laura, et al. From Chemical Gardens to Chemobrionics. Chemical Reviews. 115/8652, 2015.

Hazen, Robert. Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything. New York: Norton, 2019.

Schweitzer, Frank. An Agent-Based Framework of Active Matter with Applications in Biological and Social Systems. arXiv:1806.10829.

1. A Consilience of Biology and Physics: Active Matter

2020: As 21st century system sciences due to a regnant worldwise cognizance form in our midst, largely unawares, the long separation of organic, evolving life and mind from an “inorganic” material ground are well on their way to a vital integrated reunivication. This holistic synthesis occurs as living systems gain deeper integrations with physical phases and in turn quantum and many-body statistical phenomena find their way into biological vitalities.

Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie evidence that theory, in the sense that physicists use the word, is impossible in a biological context. For others, this contrast serves to highlight a grand challenge. I'm an optimist, and believe (along with many colleagues) that the time is ripe for the emergence of a more unified theoretical physics of biological systems, building on successes in thinking about particular phenomena. (William Bialek, 2015)

Fodor, Etienne and Cristina Marchetti. The Statistical Physics of Active Matter. arXiv:1708.08652.

Katsnelson, Mikhail, et al. Towards Physical Principles of Biological Evolution. Physica Scripta. 93/4, 2018.

2. Systems Physics: Self-Organization

2020: While systems biology and systems chemistry have become distinct research endeavors (see sections herein), this title phrase, which should be equally obvious, has not come into wider use (no hits on Google). The olden divide between life sciences and a mechanical physics is deeply rooted. This section went online in the mid 2000s for contributions that began to scope out the endemic presence of dynamically interconnected environs from universe to human. The current scientific revolution has now well advanced toward a natural unified, animate ecosmos, as Active Matter attests. Other sections such as A Survey of Common Principles contain more entries about complex network self-organizations everywhere.

Motivated by statistical physics, we believe that it would be possible to formulate evolutionary dynamical systems by focusing on microscopic interactions of agents and then to derive macroscopic – systems – properties and laws. Further there is room for hope that a variety of different specific microscopic interaction mechanism may lead to the same class of macroscopic properties. In physics this led to the concept of universality classes. (Stefan Thurner, 2011)

Drossel, Barbara. Strong Emergence in Condensed Matter Physics. arXiv:1909.01134.

Perc, Matjaz. Beauty in Artistic Expressions through the Eyes of Networks and Physics. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. March 2020.

3. Supramolecular Systems Chemistry

2020: In our bidecadal span chemical research theory and test has found essential nature’s complex network self-organization to even be at generative effect in this deep substantial domain. Today via international conferences, journal publications and current applications, this cocreative activity serves to study and quantify nature’s organic materiality, along with novel compositions for a better, sustainable future.

Systems chemistry is an active frontier focusing on functional reactions from ensembles of molecular components. A striking example of such emerging behavior is life itself, and unravelling the rules involves decreasing the gap between ‘dead’ molecules and living matter. This Virtual Symposium on Systems Chemistry was hosted by the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center from 18–20 May 2020. Discussions covered supramolecular assembly, out-of-equilibrium processes, chemical networks, and compartmentalization as from self-organization to motion, functional (bio)materials, new insights into the origins of life, to interventions with the SARS-CoV-2. (Helena Azevedo, 2020)

Ashkenasy, Goren, et al. Systems Chemistry. Chemical Society Reviews. 46/2543, 2017

McArdle, Sam, et al. Quantum Computational Chemistry. Review of Modern Physics. 92/015003, 2020.

4. Universal Evolution: A Celestial Expanse

2020: Into the 2010s, a wider notice of a general Darwinian process which forms many contingent candidates so that a winnowing post-selection might attain an optimum or good enough result has occurred. An evident presence is being found all the way from quantum phenomena to cosmic and multiversal domains, far beyond biological evolution. A new aspect is an entry of computational, algorithmic approaches to express and define the pervasive mathematical operation. While albeit harsh, capricious, and excessive, it appears to be the way of beingness and becomings.

In further regard, this “natural selection” writ large, as it dawns upon us, will be a key factor as we reach the Earthropic Principle section because the winnowing process may likewise hold for and apply to vicarious habitable planets in stellar incubators. Out of some quintillion estimated worlds, it is beginning to seem that our home bioplanet may very well be the fittest of them all.

One of the clearest manifestations of the evolutionary approach is the form of universal evolutionism (Big History) that considers the process of evolution as a continuous and integral process – from the Big Bang all the way to the current state of human affairs and beyond. The great importance of this approach (that has both the widest possible scope and a sound scientific basis) is evident. It strives to encompass within a single theoretical framework all the major phases of the universe, from its origin to forecasts for the entire foreseeable future, while showing that the present state of humankind is a result of the self-organization of matter. (Leonid Grinin, 2011)

Campbell, John O. and Michael Price. Universal Darwinism and the Origins of Order. Georgiev, Georgi, et al, eds. Evolution, Development and Complexity. International: Springer, 2019.

C. The Information Computation Turn

2020: By this date, sanother feature being found by our composite global genius is a theoretical and evidential presence, in addition to space, time, matter and energy, of a maybe more fundamental, mathematic, generative domain. In regard, its intrinsic informative content would appear to program and prescribe the temporal development of an animate, informed, personified uniVerse. In accord with the large Ecosmomics chapter ahead, some 136 entries herein open windows upon a deeply textual source code which at once independently underlies an organic genesis while seeming to rise along with life’s exemplary evolution all the way to our sapient cocreative endowment.

In this book I argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical has resulted from a single human activity: the quest is uniquely human, its effectiveness is also a fundamental fact about reality at the most impersonal, cosmic level – namely that it conforms to universal laws of nature that are indeed good explanations. This simple relationship between the cosmic and the human is a hint of a central role of people in the cosmic scheme of things. (David Deutsch, 2012)

Davies, Paul. The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information are Solving the Mystery of Life. London: Allen Lane, 2019.

Ensslin, Torsten, et al. The Physics of Information. Annalen der Physik. 531/3, 2019

1. Our Participatory UniVerse

2020: A rising conceptual presence into the 2010s has been certain physical theories which require sentient, interactive human-like beings whom in turn can retrospectively observe, recognize and affirm the procreative, encoded universe they arose from. In its own terms, an original Bit source code needs to reach an It literacy so as to bring the whole temporal scenario into full regnant existence.

By virtue of this perceptive model, to follow its theme, we Earthlings have a central, special importance to the fate and future of an ecosmic genesis. That is to say since human beings can rightly be viewed as the risen ecosmos personified, our Earthomo lives can have a direct cocreative influence. This vista due much to the physicist John A. Wheeler is reviewed more in the main introduction above, along with a view of personal and universal self-realization by Freya Mathews, a feminist philosopher.

No working picture that can be offered today is so attractive as this: the universe brought into being by acts of observer-participatorship; the observer-participator brought into being by the universe. (John Archibald Wheeler, 1994)

Gould, Roy. Universe in Creation: A New Understanding of the Big Bang and the Emergence of Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018.

Mermin, David. Making Better Sense of Quantum Mechanics. Reports on Progress in Physics. 82/1, 2018.

D. Natural Consciousness and Cognition

2020: Although long at odds with an olden physical mechanism model, since circa 2000 due to a confluence of neuroscientific advances aided by philosophic engagements, an allowance of a pervasive mindfulness from universe to human beingness has gone forth. Along with contributions such as integrated information theory (see VII, A, 4), a recovery of panpsychism, and signs of intelligent behavior across all natural realms, an ecosmic consciousness, still deeply subsumed by Eastern wisdom, stirs and awakens once again.

Is it not possible that consciousness, like space-time, has its own intrinsic degrees of freedom, and that neglecting these will lead to a description of the universe that is fundamentally incomplete? Is it possible to introduce a “space for consciousness,” and investigate that consciousness may exist by itself, even in the absence of matter, just like gravitational waves, exist in the absence of protons and electrons? Will it not turn out that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked? After a unified geometrical description of the weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions, will the next important step be a unified approach include the world of consciousness? (Andrei Linde, 2015)

Chittka, Lars and Catherine Wilson. Expanding Consciousness. American Scientist. November-December, 2019.

Gazzaniga, Michael. The Consciousness Instinct. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

E. A Thermodynamics of Life

2020: As some 100 diverse references cite, this scientific endeavor to learn all about nature’s energies which animate a genesis uniVerse, emergent life and human becomings, has moved far beyond a simple second entropic law to find many intrinsic non-equilibrium formative forces at work in every phase. There is work still to be done such as homing in on a phenomenal proof and how to better understand and align with their Earthly presence.

Gravitation reverses the usual relation between energy and temperature. As a result, temperature differences in the astronomical universe tend to increase rather that decrease. There is no final state of uniform temperature, and there is no heat death. Gravitation gives us a universe hospitable to life. Information and order can continue to grow for billions of years in the future, as they have evidently grown in the past. The vision of the future as an infinite playground, with an unending sequence of mysteries to be understood by an unending sequence of players exploring an unending supply of information, is a glorious vision for scientists. (Freeman Dyson, 2011)

England, Jeremy. Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

Haddad, Wassim. A Dynamical Systems Theory of Thermodynamics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.

1. Quantum Thermodynamics

2020: This fledgling field is an intersect of thermodynamic theory, a work in conceptual progress, with quantum phenomena as it reconceives itself via complex dynamic systems, has led to a flurry of insightful syntheses. OK

Thermodynamics has had a strong influence on the natural sciences. Until recently, it was applied to large systems described classical physics. However, with modern technologies down to the nanoscale and into the quantum regime, the field of quantum thermodynamics has started to blossom, fuelled by new, highly controlled quantum experiments, powerful numerical methods, and novel theoretical tools, for instance in non-equilibrium thermodynamics and quantum information theory. (Janet Anders, 2017)

Wolchover, Natalie. The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution. Quanta Magazine. Online May 2, 2017.

2. An Autocatalytic, Bootstrap EcosmoVerse

2020: Another essential feature of a genesis ecosmos is an array of self-creative phenomena which activate and enliven its ongoing development. Living systems from their earliest rediments appear to pervasively initiate and catalyze themselves by innately responsive biochemicals and bioprocesses at every instance. That is to say, a wholly self-making, autopoietic, spontaneity by way of its own internal agencies becomes apparent.

A companion perception is the recent recovery of a 1960s physical bootstrap model mostly from Geoffrey Chew, as described by Natalie Wolchover. A significant implication may be that we regnant human beings, both personally and collectively, ought to be inspired and moved to take up a role and mission as Earthomo and Earthosmic catalystic cocreators.

Autocatalysis, the ability of chemical systems to make more of themselves, is a hallmark of living systems, as it underlies metabolism, reproduction, and evolution. Here, we present a unified theory of autocatalysis based on stoichiometry. This allows us to identify motifs of autocatalytic networks and cores which come in five categories. Overall, these findings suggest that autocatalysis is a richer and more abundant phenomenon than previously thought. (Alex Blokhuis, 2020)

Blokhuis, Alex, et al. Universal Motifs and the Diversity of Autocatalytic Systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 41/25230, 2020.

F. Systems Cosmology: Fractal SpaceTimeMatter

2020: When this section was first posted in the early 2000s, only rare, spurious inklings of intrinsic celestial self-similarities and self-organizing topological dynamics could be found. Two decades later, a pervasive structuration and activity has been well quantified across galactic cluster, interstellar medium, stellar coronae and more onto elemental atomic and material phases. The once formless, sterile, forbidding void can presently evince still another robust instance of the one, same vivifying code basis as everywhere else.

The concept of the cosmic web views the Universe as a set of discrete galaxies held together by gravity. Yet, little is known about the characteristics of the underlying network. Here we explore seven network construction algorithms that use various galaxy properties to assign a network to galaxy distributions provided by simulations and observations. We show that the properties of the networks generated from simulations and observations are identical, unveiling a deep universality of the cosmic web. (Bruno Coutinho, 2016)

Gaite, Jose. Scale Symmetry in the Universe. Symmetry. 12/4, 2020.

Watkins, Nicholas, et al. 25 Years of Self-Organized Criticality. Space Science Reviews. 198/1, 2016.

G. Anthropic, Biotropic, Earthropic Principles

2020: Since the 1970s, a notice of curious phenomena and parameters with just the right, fine-tuned properties and values so that living systems can form and we human beings evolve continues in place. While at odds with the olden pointless accident view, their actual presence would much accord with a phenomenal natural genesis.

Lewis, Geraint and Luke Barnes. A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

H. An Astrochemistry to Astrobiological Fertility

2020 Early quantified signs that dark, cold outer space can yet contain an array of precursor biochemicals came in the 1980s. Into the 21st century, by way of satellites, spectroscopy, 3D graphic analytics, computational advancesand more, many increasingly complex biomolecules suitable for a life’s further evolution were being found. By 2020, a fecund materiality seems to be “pregnant” with an emergent, quickening development, as Nobel chemist Christian De Duve famously remarked. Here is another way that an actual organic ecomos is newly known to be suffused with all manner of biological fertility.

In this review, the origins of astrochemistry and applications of quantum chemistry to the discovery of new molecules in space are discussed. Astrochemistry is a natural application of quantum chemistry. The chemistry of the Earth is a small snapshot of the chemistries available in the universe at large, and quantum chemistry can foster new knowledge in molecular science as well as in astrophysics. (Ryan Fortenberry, 2017)

Meadows, Victoria, et al, eds. Planetary Astrobiology. Tempe: University of Arizona Press, 2020.

Oberg, Karen and Edwin Bergin. Astrochemistry and Compositions of Planetary Systems. Physics Reports. October, 2020

I. ExoPlanets, Solar Systems, Habitable Zones, Biosignature Census

2020: This large section with 170+ entries reports and documents a most significant ecosmological revolution of our Earthomo century. As hinted in the 1980s, first verified in 1995, today after an intense, multifaceted worldwide effort, it is robustly evident that planetary systems in solar and galactic habitable zones are a common, distinctive occurrence across a conducive ecosmos. A previously barren, hostilty is being newly filled with maybe some quintillion near and far objects of every possible variety.

Into the later 2010s, the collaborative astronomical community, aided new telescopes, instrumental techniques, computational analysis and more are commencing on decadal projects to take an ecosmic census. An emphasis is tuned toward finding Earth-like analog worlds whence a key approach is to discern atmospheric “biosignatures” which could imply a favorable, lively environment. And how special are we cooperative seekers already to be able to embark on an outward mission of spatial and temporal futurity.

The universe and life are both in space and time. If that was the age of the universe, then this is the age of life on Earth. Think about those oldest living things on Earth, but in a cosmic proportion. So life might be insignificant in size, but it is not insignificant in time. Life and the universe compare to each other like a child and a parent, parent and offspring. This tells us that that insignificance paradigm that we somehow got to learn from the Copernican principle, (removing human/Earth from a center) it's all wrong. There is immense potential in life in this universe - now that we know that planets are common. And if we are to be stewards of our Earth and its biosphere, we'd better understand the cosmic significance and do something about it. (Dimitar Sasselov, 2012)

Adams, Fred, et al. Energy Optimization in Extrasolar Planetary Systems. arXiv:2002.10661.

Raymond, Sean and Alessandro Morbidelli. Planet Formation. arXiv:2002.05756.

IV. ECOSMOMICS: A SURVEY OF ANIMATE COMPLEX NETWORK SYSTEMS

2020: As our Earthly and Ecosmic organic abide becomes gravid with quickening life so to engender our sapient selves, it would seem that it should be accompanied with and possess a natural genotype-like source code. From the later 20th century to today, the actual presence of a deeply immaterial, mathematic, encoded domain has been identified, studied, distilled and articulated. Most notably this is a premier 21st advance, quite absent from materialist, mechanic schemes, which makes all the informative difference. This brief note is in reference to the extensive, newly updated chapter introduction.

Notably, this generative factor seems to have three phases and aspects – an independent, universal programmic presence, which then is exemplified in all the manifest phenotype-like occasions that it forms, and just now, by virtue of a worldwise acumen, may pass on to our evolitionary intent for a better future. As Universality Affirmations will report, by this year it can be said that a common, self-organizing complex network system with dual interactive node member and link community aspects has at last been found, which is an awesome historic discovery and achievement.

“Complexity” is the Latin word which refers to a multitude of twisting and folding structures similar to what one finds in the foliages of a tree or the flocking behavior of birds. Phenomena seen as complex evokes feelings of perplexity, but when expressed in mathematical terms, it can reveal deep geometrical, dynamical, statistical properties and global unifying features. We thus discover that the most interesting systems of natural, biological and social sciences are far from equilibrium, and exhibit self organized, emergent patterns that cannot be explained by the behaviour of individual components. (Tassos Bountis, 2016)

Krakauer, David, ed. Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute 1984 – 2019. Santa Fe, NM: Santa Fe Institute Press, 2019.

Munoz, Miguel. Colloquium: Criticality and Dynamical Scaling in Living Systems. arXiv:1712.04499.

Thurner, Stefan, et al. Introduction to the Theory of Complex Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

1. Network Physics: A Vital Anatomy and Physiology

2020: From the 2002 Statistical Mechanics of Complex Networks paper by Reka Albert and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi to The Network Takeover by ALB in 2010 to this bidecadal year, a novel Network Physics section with 143 entries can report a whole scale revolution about ecosmos to ecologies and economies has occurred. An organic universe to human genesis appears to be suffused by a heretofore unseen anatomic topology and connective physiology which embodies, joins, relates and vivifies its evolutionary procreation. From galactic clusters to protein metabolism, animal groupings and onto literary texts and especially cerebral cognition, a similar multiplex, neural net geometry is in proactive effect. Again all these phenomenal findings well imply an independent, universally exemplified, informed mathematical source.

Gysi, Deisy and Katja Nowick. Construction, Comparison and Evolution of Networks in Life Sciences and Other Disciplines. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. May 2020.

Porter, Mason. Nonlinearity + Networks: A 2020 Vision. arXiv:1911.03805.

Vespignani, Alessandro. Twenty Years of Network Science. Nature. 558/528, 2018.

2. Biteracy: Natural Algorithome Programs

2020: A companion endeavor alongside complex systems science is the computational algorithmic appraoch. By way of contributions such as Alan Turing’s earlier morphogenesis, Stephen Wolfram’s cellular automata, onto Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic’s informational philosophy and Susan Stepney’s collegial writings, life’s oriented emergence is seen to involve complementary analog/digital codings. Again tripartite phases of an original independent “biteracy,” their exemplary presence along the way, and our human/Earth “iteracy” observance and interpretation becomes evident.

An offshoot is lately informing the AI field based on neural nets, see section above. A resultant, implied notice is that as they wend their programmic way, a selective optimization process of some sort is going on (see also Universal Evolution). From an early genetic algorithm to many physical and creaturely versions at present, such an iterative betterment sequence seems to be in effect from quantum to biological evolution to planetary occasions.

Natural Computing is the field of research that investigates human-designed computing inspired by nature as well as computing taking place in nature. It investigates computational techniques inspired by nature, and natural information processing phenomena. Examples include neural computation inspired by the function of the brain, evolutionary computation from Darwinian evolution, cellular automata by intercellular communications, and swarm intelligence from groups of organisms. A further aspect investigates the computational nature of self-assembly, developmental processes, biochemical reactions, brain processes, and systems biology approaches. Grzegorz Rosenberg, 2014)

Hillberry, Logan, et al. Entangled Quantum Cellular Automata, Physical Complexity, and Goldilocks Rules. arXiv:2005.1763.

Molina, Daniel, et al. Comprehensive Taxonomies of Nature-and Bio-inspired Optimization. Cognitive Computation. 12/897, 2020.

Stepney, Susan, et al, eds. Computational Matter. International: Springer, 2018.

3. A Rosetta Ecosmos Literacy: Systems Linguistics

2020: By this date many diverse studies have quantified that even our vernacular languages and written literature can necessarily be seen as reflections of nature’s independent complex, fractal network systems. As another aspect, an intrinsic textual literacy is found to have an expressed occasion from quantum compositions through the evolution of a relative accumulated knowledge repository all the way to our alphabetic paper volumes and now online ebook/ejournal modes.

In physics, Feynman diagrams are used to reason about quantum processes. In the 1980s, it became clear that underlying these diagrams is a powerful analogy between quantum physics and topology. This led to a burst of work on topological quantum field theory and “quantum topology”. But this was just the beginning: similar diagrams can be used to reason about logic, where they represent proofs, and computation, where they represent programs. With the rise of interest in quantum cryptography and quantum computation, it became clear that there is extensive network of analogies between physics, topology, logic and computation. (John Baez A Rosseta Stone 2011)

Kenna, Ralph, et al, eds. Maths Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient Narratives. International: Springer, 2017.

Ramirez-Arellano, Aldo. Fractality and Complexity of the Narrative, Essay, and Research Article. Entropy. 22/8, 2020.

4. Universality Affirmations: A Critical Complementarity

2020: From the 1960s general systems theory, the Santa Fe Institute in the 1980s, many theoretical versions, the complexity science project was moved by an incentive to find a common source code that recurs in reliable self-similar kind everywhere. As the introduction above describes, only just now due to our global collaborations has an actual articulation and fulfillment been achieved.

A further, consequent aspect from the later 2010s is that natural phenomena from quantum to genomic, cerebral and social phases has been found to reside at a critical poise between more or less coherent, closed/open, conserve/create, particle/wave modes. To wit, it is proven that living systems prefer and arrive at a dynamic, golden mean balance. This natural sweet spot which all complexities actively seek has been dubbed a self-organized criticality. A newer model is known as a chimera state which abides in both options at the same time.

Phase transitions and critical phenomena are of ubiquitous importance from the femtometre scale in quantum chromodynamics to galaxy formation in the universe, from the folding, adsorption of bio-polymers, from percolation in complex social networks to fragmentation transitions in atomic nuclei. (Michael Bachmann, 2017)

In summary, we have reviewed different types of mechanisms for self-organization to the vicinity of phase transitions. This could be especially important in biology, where the idea that living systems can obtain important functional advantages by operating at the edge of two alternative/complementary types of phases/state has attracted a great deal of attention and excitement. (Victor Buendia, 2020)

Chialvo, Dante. Life at the Edge: Complexity and Criticality in Biological Function. arXiv:1810.11737.

Munoz, Miguel. Colloquium: Criticality and Dynamical Scaling in Living Systems. Reviews of Modern Physics. 90/031001, 2018.

Wilting, Jens and Viola Priesemann. 25 Years of Criticality in Neuroscience. arXiv:1903.05129.

B. Our Own HumanVerse Genome Studies

2020: In 2000 genome sequencings were just possible, but prior point gene to disease or malady model was still in place. By 2010, it was realized that much more was going on beyond discrete nucleotides. As the presence of complex gene regulatory networks was becoming known as they served to join the biomolecular components. A notice of “epigenetic” influences beyond the genome added a further interactive dimension. A whole scale approach dubbed “genome wide association studies” viewed genetic influences, broadly conceived, all the way to natural and social environs.

By this year, TV documentaries such as The Gene by Ken Burns based on Siddhartha Mukherjee’ book, The Gene Doctors about medical applications, and CRISPR: The Realities of Gene Editing (as now readily doable) were being aired. A popular interest arose to fill in one’s family tree ancestry by low cost sequence studies. But the prime 21st century advance is a public awareness of how pervasively our lives, broadly conceived, are the ordained result of this generative source.

The ENCODE project represents a major leap from describing and comparing genomic sequences to surveying them for direct indicators of function. The data produced by the ENCODE consortium can help locate specific landmarks, guide hypothesis generation, and lead to principles and mechanisms underlying genome biology. (Adam Diehl, 2016)

Koonin, Eugene and Artem Novozhilov. Origin and Evolution of the Universal Genetic Code. Annual Review of Genetics. 51/45, 2017.

Misteli, Tom. The Self-Organizing Genome: Principles of Genome Architecture and Function. Cell. 183/1, 2020.

Snyder, Michael, et al. Perspectives on ENCODE. Nature. 583/693, 2020.

1. Paleogenomics, Archaeogenomics: Natural Ancestry

2020: As a result of steady advances in DNA sequence techniques. Into the 2010s it has become possible for our Earthhomic sapience to recover and recreate the hominid and primate lineages from when we came. In addition, all manner of prior migrations, ethnic mixings, ancient settlements, animal domestications, and even linguistic, artifactual and cultural mores can be genetically revealed. Frontier projects are proceeding to fill in past creaturely evolutions for canine and equine species even onto invertebrates. See Multiple Ancestries of Homo Sapiens above for more.

In the field of human history, ancient DNA has provided answers to debates about major movements of people and has begun to inform on other facets of the human experience. The field is now moving from large-scale supraregional studies to local socioeconomic processes, inheritance rules, marriage practices and technological diffusion. This approach often involves working across disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and genetics. (Fernando Racimo, 2020)

Reich, David. Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. New York: Pantheon, 2018.

2. The Deep Affinity of Genomes and Languages

2020: As our worldwise personsphere likely proceeds to learn and know on her/his own, an ecosmic correlation and cross-translation between these archetypal generative codes is evident. Both phases take on a commonly manifest textual, informative scriptome guise. A novel indicative sign, as entries convey, is an on-going transfer and avail of common sequencing and parsing techniques in both realms.

Polymeric macromolecules, when viewed as strings of symbols, can be treated in terms of formal language theory to provide a mathematical foundation for both collections and in terms of their individual structures. Analogies between macromolecules and human natural language are used to provide intuitive insights into the relevance of grammars, parsing, and analysis of language complexity to biology. (David Searls, 2013).

Faltynek, Dan, et al. On the Analogy between the Genetic Code and Natural Language. Biosemiotics. Online April, 2019.

3. Whole Genome Regulatory Systems: DNA + AND

2020: As international genetics research advanced the 2010s, an approach dubbed genome-wide association studies or GWAS arose so to view and treat entire genomes, which are still a malleable concept. Further expansions involved “epigenetic” influences beyond a nucleotide basis, along with revelant community, ethnic, regional, and environmental aspects. By so doing integral genomes become seen and understood as similar self-organized, networked, critically poised composite entities. As a result, genomes, akin to neural connectomes, become akin to other natural and social phases within a nascent ecosmos Omicsphere.

An expansive functionality and complexity has been ascribed to the human genome that was unanticipated for the draft sequence a decade ago. We are now challenged to integrate and interpret this complexity to achieve a coherent view of genome biology. We argue that an understanding of its three-dimensional structure is central to the regulatory and transcriptional architecture of the genome. Accordingly, we propose that the local and global genome provides a consistent, integrated, and intuitive framework for the regulatory and transcriptional complexity of the human genome. (Tim Mercer, 2013)

Cowen, Lenore, et al. Network Propagation: A Universal Amplifier of Genetic Associations. Nature Reviews Genetics. 18/9, 2017.

Verd, Berta, et al. Modularity, Criticality, and Evolvability of a Developmental Gene Regulatory Network. eLife. 8/e43832, 2019.

V. SYSTEMS EVOLUTION A 21ST CENTURY GENESIS SYNTHESIS

2020: With some 330+ references, this chapter reports and documents an overdue extended and revised evolutionary synthesis. This main course correction is in the air as evolution itself was for Darwin. As the introductory list of novel reasons cites, the project involves a (re)integration of developmental stages, aka evo-devo, major transitions scale, network topologies, symbiosis and modularity, an axial trend for brains, intelligence and knowledge, cooperative behaviors, free members in mutual groups, song, dance and protolanguage, deep anatomic homologies, and so on.

Another prime quality, quite absent from the old synthesis, is the procreative presence of natural, independent, self-organizing complex source codings. Statistical physics inputs as a common ground are also being recognized. By way of a cognizant personsphere, (the premise of this site and our worldwise selfie) life’s encoded, fleshed out, quickening, ever learning, oriented ascent that got us creatures and peoples well now takes on a guise of a maternal embryonic gestation. So this surmise may proceed from a once Darwin’s day to our current and future promise of a 21st century genesis synthesis.

‘Emergence’ views from above the process by which complex structures and behaviors arise from simple components and rules. “Adaptive self-organization” is grounded in these elements and describes how their application can result in collectivities on a large scale. The way in which adaptive self-organization allows non-living molecules to produce a living cell, and allows cells to produce an able multicellular body, will form a theme that runs through this book. (Jamie Davies, 2014)

The universe as it exists in our region was not improbably fashioned for odd living organisms, nor were odd living organisms made by a strange condition of the universe in our region. Living organisms are the universe in one of its own manifestations. Namely, life as we know it is a manifestation of the universe at a particular point in space and time in its evolution. And species of life on Earth that are self-aware – magpies, elephants, dolphins, apes, humans – are the universe that as it becomes aware of itself. (George McGhee, 2019)

The mathematical perspective of systems biology allowed us to decipher the complex phenotypic meaning of genotypic texts in nature’s libraries, which is crucial to understanding innovability. It led us to grasp that genotype networks are the common origin of innovations in metabolism, regulation, and macromolecules that created life as we know it. The mathematics of biology allowed us to see that these libraries self-organize with a simple principle, as simple as the gravitation that molds diffuse matter into galaxies. (Andreas Wagner, 2014)

Bonduriansky, Russell and Troy Day. Extended Heredity: A New Understanding of Inheritance and Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Bonner, John T. The Evolution of Evolution. Journal of Experimental Zoology B. 332/8, 2020.

Jain, Kavita and Luca Peliti. Special Issue on a Statistical Theory of Biological Evolution. Journal of Statistical Physics. 172/1, 2018.

A. A Major Evolutionary Transitions Scale

2020: A major revision since 1995 is a theoretical view that life’s developmental evolution can be well characterized by a nested, episodic, recurrent, directional sequence of being and becoming. Although life’s course through myriad forms and stages quite meanders with many extinctions, this regnant, scalar procession from gene replicators all the way to talkative peoples is a central, widely applied, orienting structure of the new genesis synthesis. Its further projection and culmination as a personal sapiensphere, which seems obvious if of a mind to allow and perceive, is a prime basis of this documentary website.

From Lower to Higher Level Evolutionary Units: The first common feature is the transition from independent replicators to form higher level units: for example, genes ganged up in protocells, prokaryotes joined to constitute the eukaryotic cell, protist cells stacked together to form multicellular organisms, and so on. In order for such a transition to be successful, evolution at the lower level must be somehow constrained by the higher level. I adopt the view of (Andrew) Bourke (search), who suggested that major transitions should typically be cut into three phases: the formation, maintenance, and transformation of social groups. (Eors Szathmary, 2015)

Carmel, Yohay and Ayelet Shavit. Operationalizing Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. February, 2020.

West, Stuart, et al. Major Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112/10112, 2015.

B. Systems Network Biology and Genetics

2020: Since the 2001 human genome sequence, a broad movement has sought to quantify and involve the equally real regulatory and vivifying connectivities between the biomolecular nucleotides. Recent endeavors factor in network topologies and involve deep learning methods. As the 130 sample references convey, an international effort aided by online advances in technique and computation is well along with an integral understanding of 3D and 4D organismic epi/genomes and metabolomes.

Erwin Schrödinger pointed out in his 1944 book "What is Life" that one defining attribute of biological systems seems to be their tendency to generate order from disorder defying the second law of thermodynamics. Almost parallel to his findings, the science of complex systems was founded based on observations of physical and chemical systems showing that inanimate matter can exhibit complex structures although their interacting parts follow simple rules. This is a process known as self-organization and it is now widely accepted that multi-cellular biological organisms are themselves self-organizing complex systems in which the relations among their parts are dynamic, contextual and interdependent. In order to fully understand such systems, we are required to computationally and mathematically model their interactions as promulgated in systems biology. (Kurt Saetzler, 2012)

Cavagna, Andrea, et al. Physical Constraints in Biological Collective Behavior. Current Opinion in Systems Biology. 9/49, 2018.

O’Malley, Maureen, et al. A Philosophical Perspective on Evolutionary Systems Biology. Biological Theory. 10/1, 2015.

C. Evoinformatics: A Biosemiotic Quality

2020: By way of a Biosemiotics book series (Springer), a journal by this name, international conferences and advocates such as Marcello Barbieri and Jesper Hoffmeyer, an informational, communicative presence and role has been found and articulated for many code versions beyond genes alone. An array of microbial, cellular, metabolic sensings, signings and relative cross-talk across evolutionary organisms has been well scoped out and confirmed.

The fact that agency is an essential aspect of life introduces new explanatory avenues into the map of evolutionary thought. There is hardly any process in animate nature that is not regulated through the ability of living systems to read and interpret relevant signs in their environment. Semiotics – the science of signs – therefore ought to become a key tool for the “life sciences” in general and biology in particular. The semiome thus defines the scope of the organism's cognitive and communicative activity. (Jesper Hoffmeyer, 2014)

Marcello, Barbieri. The Semantic Theory of Language. Biosystems. January, 2020.

Velmezova, Ekaterina, et al, eds. Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics. International: Springer, 2015.

D. An Evolutionary Intelligence Arises

2020: Since 2015 we have reported a growing sense that as life evolves it does so by a directional emphasis on cerebral and cognitive qualities more so than somatic anatomy. An implication is that a developmental gestation seems to be skewed to and involved with becoming smarter and more informed. In this way, one can become a self-aware member in a coherent community.

The mechanisms of variation, selection and inheritance, on which evolution by natural selection depends, are not fixed over evolutionary time. Current evolutionary biology is busy with understanding how developmental organisations modify the distribution of phenotypic variation, ecological relationships modify the selective environment, and reproductive relationships modify the heritability of the evolutionary unit. We then synthesise the findings from a new theoretical approach by converting well-understood theories of cognitive learning. (Richard Watson, 2015)

Watson, Richard and Eors Szathmary. How Can Evolution Learn? Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 31/2, 2016.

VI. Earth Life Emergence: Development of Body, Brain, Selves and Societies

A. A Survey of Common Principles

2020: As Universality Affirmations above and other places have reported and confirmed, by this binocular, bicameral year an archetypal complementarity within an integral triality has been found in relative kind everywhere. From digital + analog = source program, node + link + network, feminine + masculine = family, and proceeds ever on. In a self-similar ecosmos one universally iterated code is in effect and rises from particle + wave = light, left + right brain = cognizant knowledge all the way to me + We = US. In regard, we seek to enter and center this momentary fulfillment of our historic decipherment endeavor as a premier EarthMost accomplishment.

Self-organized collective coordinated behaviour is an impressive phenomenon in natural and artificial systems as coherent global structures or dynamics emerge from interactions between individual parts. In this review, we identify three main types of self-organized scale-invariant systems: spatial structures, topologies and dynamics. (Yara Khaluf, 2017)

Asllani, Malbor, et al. A Universal Route to Pattern Formation. arXiv:1906.05946.

Earnest, Tyler, et al. Simulating Biological Processes: Stochastic Physics from Whole Cells to Colonies. Reports on Progress in Physics. 81/5, 2018.

B. Nested Gestation of Communal Creatures

1. Geosphere, Hydrosphere, Atmosphere

2020: A universally encoded pattern and process has even been found in effect across all manner of geologic landforms, oceanic seas and atmosphere phenomena. The benefit of these wiseworld mathematical findings would be better information and knowledge to understand, mitigate, and manage. Active examples are earthquake studies, forest fire control, drought prevention, and so on.

We show that increasingly complex ridge and valley networks are produced by nonlinear partial differential equations to describe the interplay between soil creep, runoff erosion, and tectonic uplift. The results shed light on the physical mechanisms responsible for the observed landscape self-organization. The formation of regular prefractal networks reveals a tendency to evolve toward optimal configurations typical of nonequilibrium complex systems. (Sara Bonetti, 2020)

Ferreira, Douglas, et al. Long-range Correlation Studies in Deep Earthquakes Global Series. Physica A. Online August 27, 2020.

Rak, Rafal, et al. Universal Features of Mountain Ridge Networks on Earth. Journal of Complex Networks. May, 2019.

2. The Origins of Life

2020: Across some 160 entries, our late recreation of the precursor biochemical, replicant, metabolic, protocellular, autocatalytic occasions of life, senses and evolvement is well along. By any light, a spontaneous, oriented fertility seems to occur wherever possible on its incarnate own. Into the 21st century, animate life, developmental gestation, and our Earthomo presence becomes deeply rooted in an increasingly conducive ecosmos. Current projects involve a novel factoring in independent self-organizing agencies and network topologies.

As a further consolidation, life’s common cellular makeup has been distilled into three main metabolic, replicative and compartmental features. The two camps of RNA or metabolism first are likewise combining their views. From mid 20th century glimpses over an opaque gulf between universe and human, these robust affirmations find living systems, their birthings and blossomings, and our late Gaian witness to trace a quickening continuity.

Self-organizing precipitation processes, such as chemical gardens forming biomimetic forms, offer much potential to help explore, quantify, and understand nonequilibrium physicochemical systems with regard to life's original emergence. Advances in this area require a combination of expertise in physics, chemistry, mathematical modeling, and biology, as well as in nonlinear complex systems and materials sciences. (Cardoso, Silvana, 2020)

Goldenfeld, Nigel, et al. Universal Biology and the Statistical Mechanics of Early Life. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Vol. 375/Iss. 2109, 2017.

Preiner, Martina, et al. The Future of Origin of Life Research. Life. 10/3, 2020.

3. Microbial Colonies

2020: This substantial, omnipresent prokaryote, biofilm phase lately gains all manner of organismic, environmental, human microbiome, medical status. Since circa 2000 it has become studied and quantified as an iconic occasion of life’s universal, self-organizing, fractal, complexifying dynamics. Life’s baslc cellular phase is no longer composed of isolate bacteria but distinguished by the same scientific integration as everywhere else. In regard, bacterial activities are seen to epitomize how colonies survive and thrive by quorum sensing, symbiotic assemblies, a relative intelligence (slime molds) and more.

In this paper, we try to show how complex adaptive systems and bacterial colonies self-organize within a pool of environmental resources and constraints. Our approach relies on individual and collective decision-making to (1) improve the system, as the whole must be optimal in the same step; (2) deal with conflicting interests; (3) protect itself against intrusion; and (4) adapt, evolve, learn and organize. The individual decision-making is as crucial as collective decision-making and interactions to emergent patterns and self-organization births. (Danilo Cunha, 2018)

Allen, Rosalind and Bartlomiej Waclaw. Bacterial Growth: A Statistical Physicist’s Guide. Reports on Progress in Physics. 82/1, 2018.

Shis, David, et al. Dynamics of Bacterial Gene Regulatory Networks. Annual Reviews of Biophysics. 47/447, 2018.

4. Cellular Holobiont Symbiosis

2020: Since circa 2000, the study of life’s central stage and mode of nucleated eukaryotic cells within metabolic organisms has seen several paradigm shifts. With the 2011 passing of Lynn Margulis, the pioneer advocate of beneficial symbiotic unions, her 40 year contribution has now become well proven, accepted and applied. As a corollary, a novel sense of creaturely and our human individualual composition arose. While still being worked out, the somatic inclusion of a resident bacterial microbiome has been dubbed a “holobiont” to denote this altogether selfhood.

Another bicecadal advance with regard to cellular formations and metabolisms has been the recognition and evidential proof that mathematic self-organizing processes actually have a primary generative role. The collegial NIH scientist Tom Misteli is a leading researcher. In addition, the anatomy and physiology presence of dynamic network topologies are being found everywhere in animate effect. Nathalie Gontier, a University of Lisbon biophilosopher, well describes this reticulate propensity.

In her influential 1967 paper, Lynn Margulis synthesized a range of data to support the idea of endosymbiosis. Building on this work, she applied the methodology to promote the role of symbiosis more generally in evolution. As part of this broader project, she coined the term ‘holobiont’ to refer to a unified entity of symbiont and host. This concept is now applied with great gusto in microbiome research. (Maureen O’Malley, 2017)

Gilbert, Scott and Alfred Tauber. Rethinking Individuality: The Dialectics of the Holobiont. Biology & Philosophy. Online October, 2016.

O'Malley, Maureen. From Endosymbiosis to Holobionts. Journal of Theoretical Biology. Online March, 2017.

5. Multicellular Fauna and Flora Organisms

2020: As some 100 entries convey, life’s developmental procession presses forward to a further phase of cellular, organelle, neuronal, genetic, mobile complex, cognizant organisms in viable groupings. From glimpses at century’s turn to this day, a persistent self-assembly of widely diverse, environmentally adapted cellular creatures is seen to have occurred several times. As this evolutionary emergence takes place wherever it can, this advance can again be viewed as another major emergent transition.

Biology is marked by a hierarchical organization: all life consists of cells; these cells assemble into groups such as endosymbionts or multicellular organisms; in turn, organisms assemble into yet other groups, such as primate societies or ant colonies. The construction of new organizational layers results from hierarchical evolutionary transitions, in which biological units form groups that evolve into new units of biological organization. (Jordi Van Gestel, 2017)

Fisher, R. M., et al. The Evolution of Multicellular Complexity: The Role of Relatedness and Environmental Constraints. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. July, 2020.

Knoll, Andrew. The Multiple Origins of Complex Multicellularity. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. 39/217, 2011.

6. Cooperative Societies

2020: In most species, individual creatures live together in communal, communicative groupings for much survival advantage. By this view life moves on to still a further integrative transition. While 20th century evolution texts tended to view animal entities as engaged in rank, fittest, survivalist competitions, many studies as noted now find an equally present, more significant proclivity for mutually beneficial behaviors. As a result, a compete and cooperate version moves on to a preferred reciprocity of semi-autonomous members within a fluidly coherent assembly. Airborne bird flocks such as starlings are an iconic image, but this mutuality extends across Metazoan lineages even to invertebrates.

With this coherency in place, a crucial attribute can be observed. By many names such as competitive coherence, creative union, ubuntu village, and social protocell, at liberty entities within an interactive group membership reveals an optimum complementary balance. For our own Earthmost futurity it would behoove we peoples (as elections destructuvely pit me versus We) to appreciate and practice this universal, exemplar that serves life from microbes to ecovillages. Simply put, our very survival and futurity could depend on a wumanwise appreciation of me + We = US local and global communities.

The Essential Tension explores how agents that naturally compete come to act together as a group. The work investigates the balance between competition and cooperation in a range of contemporary biological problems from flocking and swarming to the evolution of multicellularity. As a result of the essential tension between competition and cooperation, multiple levels may be essential in order for evolutionary processes to occur at all. (Sonja Bahar, 2017)

Sterelny, Kim, et al, eds. Cooperation and Its Evolution. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013.

Kappeler, Peter, et al. Social Complexity: Patterns, Processes, and Evolution. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. 73/1, 2019.

7. Dynamic Ecosystems

2020: As many citations attest, a prime essence of a one genetic-like code universality is that its self-organizing complex network system can be found in visual effect everywhere. Indeed, even Charles Darwin’s tangled bank metaphor for prolific diverse biotas has become amenable to this analysis. Across all environs from deserts to glaciers, equator to poles, all manner of vegetation densities, predator-prey, keystone species, coral reef, are now known to guided by and exhibit archetypal patterns and processes. From aboriginal vision, shamanic, indigenous sensitivities to infosphere 21st century insights, if we have a mindfulness to observe our environmental abide can appear and teach as a natural revelation.

Complex adaptive systems provide a unified framework for explaining ecosystem phenomena which have to led to new techniques such as coupling ecological and evolutionary dynamics across multiple scales of organization. As a result, three universal features of complex adaptive systems, emergent patterns; tipping points and critical phenomena; and cooperative behavior are now well understood. With many anthropogenic perturbations going on, we discuss how complex adaptive systems can manage public goods and better preserve critical ecosystem services. (George Hagstrom, 2017)

Peters, Debra, et al. An Integrated View of Complex Landscapes. BioScience. 68/9, 2018.

Vandermeer, John and Ivette Perfecto. Ecological Complexity and Agroecology. London: Routledge, 2017.

8. Multiple Ancestries of Homo Sapiens

2020: An historic, expansive revision with regard to our pedigree is occuring in the later 2010s by way of novel abilities to sequence ancient, hominid DNA, specifically reported in Paleogenomics. The familiar tree-like branchings based on fossil bones are being pruned and redrawn by way of Neanderthal cross-breedings and so on all the way to great ape primate origins. There are meanderings and dead ends but a main vectorial procession toward intelligence, awareness, knowledge gain by capable creatures in viable groupings is persistently evident.

Human beings are the only extant species with cumulative, evolving cultures. Thanks to their accumulated knowledge and techniques our early ancestors were able to leave their cradle in Africa and swarm out across the planet, adjusting to a whole range of new environments. It seems that unlike other animals, humans are predisposed to acquire, store and transmit cultural information in such ways that our cultures can genuinely evolve. (Chris Buskes, 2019)

Dunbar, Robin. Human Evolution: Our Brains and Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Maslin, Mark. The Cradle of Humanity: How the Changing Landscape of Africa Made Us So Smart. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

C. A Quickening Encephalization and Sensibility

1. The Evolution of Cerebral Form and Cognizance

2020: By our worldwise retrospective, Earth life’s viviparous developmental course is seen to proceed by a distinct, continuous ramification from earliest neural rudiments to sequentially complexify brain architectures, cognitive acumens and cooperative behaviors. Cerebral faculties are found to avail modular functions, an interplay of concerted orientation and mosaic diversity, relative neocortex abilities, along with altogether networking with each other.

Evolution of Nervous Systems is a unique, major reference for evolution and nervous systems. All animals mediate their behaviors, yet these sensory abilities all evolved from a common, simpler ancestor. This second edition remains rich in detail and broad in scope, outlining the changes in brain and nervous system organization that occurred from the first invertebrates and vertebrates, to fishes, reptiles, birds, mammals, and primates, including humans. (Jon Kaas, 2016.)

Briscoe, Steven and Clifton Ragsdale. Homology, Neocortex, and the Evolution of Developmental Mechanisms. Science. 362/190, 2018.

Liebeskind, Benjamin, et al. Evolution of Animal Neural Systems. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 48/377, 2017.

2. An Emergent Bicameral Brain

2020: Still another 21st century discovery of much import is the steady presence of a bilateral, hemispheric, archetypal endowment across every Metazoan creature. This common property was unknown before 2000 but has since been robustly verified from our human double brain through mammalian, avian, reptilian, and aquatic kingdoms all the way to insects and invertebrates. It is surmised that a broad reciprocal ability to peck for seeds with the right eye which informs the left side while the left view which goes to the right brain scans for predators is optimum for evolutionary survival. In regard this binocular quality of characteristic dot focus and holistic image to left and right hemispheres seems to hold through all past and present instances. And as this optimum bigender complementarity reaches our homo to anthropo to Earthomo sapience, a true microuniverse could be seen to ordain our cerebral capacity.

A lateralized brain, in which each hemisphere processes sensory inputs and carries them out in different ways, is common in vertebrates, and it now reported for invertebrates too. As shown in many animal species, having a lateralized brain can enhance the capacity to perform two tasks at the same time. Why is this the case? Not only humans, but also most non-human animals, show a similar pattern of directional asymmetry. (Giorgio Vallortigara, 2019)

Forrester, Gillian, et al, eds. Cerebral Lateralization and Cognition. Progress in Brain Research. Volume 238, 2018.

Rogers, Lesley and Giorgio Vallortigara, eds. Lateralized Brain Functions: Methods in Human and Non-Human Species. Switzerland: Springer, 2017.

3. Animal Intelligence and Sociality

2020: As the cover image bookends, a revolution has taken place since the early 1990s when animals were still seen as instinctive, dumb beasts. Today, as we well know, all great and small creatures are known to possess an intelligent sentience, personality, clever behaviors, quorum senses, empathy, salutary groupings and more. Rather then anthromorphic concerns as before, it seems that animals actually have a whole human-like array of cognitive and communal qualities. As references here and elsewhere convey, it could appear as if an independent, common cognitive and social repertoire extends through life’s evolutionary fauna and flora from the earliest neural occasion to our nascent personsphere.

Domestic chickens have been the focus of a revolution in our understanding of neuroanatomical, cognitive, and social complexity. Here I examine cognition, emotions, personality, and sociality in chickens. My conclusion is that chickens are just as cognitively, emotionally and socially complex as other birds and mammals in many areas. (Lori Marino, 2017)

Birch, Jonathan, et al. Dimensions of Animal Consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Science. August 2020.

Vonk, Jennifer and Todd Shackelford, eds. Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. International: Springer, 2019.

4. Organisms Evolve Rhythmic Protolanguage Communication

2020 Our linguistic abilities are often seen as a definitive human quality. But into the 2010s by way of novel technigues aided by international efforts, akin to paleogenomic studies a precursor course across creature, primate, and hominids onto to early rudiments is now being recovered. A notable finding is that original occasions had a holistic, prosody, musical basis, aided by communal dance. This sequential phase predates later discrete, hieroglyph, alphabetic stages. Active studies consider gestural signs, meaningful utterances, how grunts became grammear and so on. If traced to bacterial quorum sensings by chemical and/or electrical means, there seems to be inherent propensity for Earth life’s evolution to gain to communicate by any and all means.

I present a model for a joint prosodic precursor of language and music in which ritualized group-level vocalizations served as the ancestral state. This early phase combined affective and intonational aspects of prosody, along with holistic and combinatorial mechanisms of phrase generation. From this common stage, there was a bifurcation to form language and music as separate, though homologous, specializations. (Steven Brown, 2017)

Bichakjian, Bernard. Language Evolution: How Language was Built and Made to Evolve. Languages Sciences. Online March, 2017.

Fitch, W. Tecumseh. Special Issue on the Biology and Evolution of Language. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 24/1, 2017.

D. An Enhancement of Autonomous Individuality

2020: As the section intro advises, from our Earthomo sapiens vantage the long arduous trajectory of an ecosmic evolutionary developmental genesis does take on the vectorial guise of a self-making, liberating, realizing individuation. As references attest, it is vital that entity members in communal groupings possess and enhance a semi-autonomous freedom for optimum survival. This reciprocity is in effect from slime molds to social insects, bird flocks, mammals and so on.

Autonomy has a historical dimension which appears as the result of an entailment of reproductive cycles, starting from self-maintaining chemical systems which progressively increase their complexity. Reciprocally, the evolution of biological complexity cannot be understood just as the outcome of natural selection, but results from the fundamental interplay with self-organizion. In this respect, the autonomous perspective renews biological ontology by organizing it around units of autonomy instead of units of selection. (Alvaro Moreno, 2015)

Clarke, Ellen. A Levels-of-Selection Approach to Evolutionary Individuality. Biology & Philosophy. Online October, 2016.

Moreno, Alvaro and Matteo Mossio. Biological Autonomy: A Philosophical and Theoretical Enquiry. Berlin: Springer, 2015.

E. Universal Gestation: Phylogeny and Ontogeny

2020: A century and half of intensive, wide ranging studies after Ernst Haeckel’s later 1800s recapitulation views, which where then in favor, it can again be affirmed that Earth life’s long phylogenetic bodily, cerebral, linguistic and societal evolution does necessarily have a similar appearance and track to the ontogenetic growth, motor skills, mental acumen, and especially linguistic learning of each individual organism.

Thus, some of the earliest steps of embryonic development in modern bilaterians reproduce a level of anatomical organization observed in the most basal nonbilaterian multicellular animals, and there is strong evidence that both are regulated by the same set of developmental genes, so-called ‘toolkit genes’ whose origin predates the Cambrian Explosion. (Arhat Abzhanov, 2013)

Abzhanov, Arhat. Von Baer’s Law for the Ages. Trends in Genetics. 29/12, 2013.

Kohsokabe, Takahiro and Kunihiko Kaneko. Evolution-Development Congruence in Pattern Formation Dynamics. Journal of Experimental Zoology B. 326/1, 2016.

VII. WumanKinder: An Emergent Earthomo Transition in Individuality

A. Integral Microcosmic Persons

1. Systems Physiology and Psychology: Somatic and Behavioral Development

2020: As the new introduction surveys, here is still another instance whence every aspect of each person’s body, brain and behavior lifelong course from infancy to youth to adulthood has been reconceived and explained by way of the self-organizing dynamic complexity sciences.

We study how diverse physiologic systems in the human organism collectively interact to produce distinct physiologic states and functions, which enters the new interdisciplinary field of Network Physiology. Applying a system-wide integrative approach, we identify distinct patterns in the network structure of organ interactions. We find a direct association between network topology and physiologic function, and show how health and physiologic states emerge from networked interactions among nonlinear multi-component complex systems. (Ronny Bartsch, 2015)

Bjorklund, David and Bruce Ellis. Children, Childhood, and Development in Evolutionary Perspective. Developmental Review. 34/3, 2014.

Dehaene, Stanislav. How We Learn. New York: Viking, 2020.

Ivanov, Plamen, et al. Focus on the Emerging New Fields of Network Physiology and Network Medicine. New Journal of Physics. 18/100201, 2016.

5. Half the UniVerse: A Woman's 2020 Wisdome

2020: We reach this most important section of human gender studies. Again we do not seek to define or categorize, but to respectfully consider an incarnate guidance by way of a phenomenal universe to human bigender complementarity. As the yin/yang Tao image ever depicts, the certain roles or modes are actively malleable. (I write in November as as awful election pits men vs. women in win/lose conflict.) One might cite warrior or worrier, particle or wave, node/link, the list goes on, while a future for children lies in the balance. If our whole bicameral sapiensphere can come to her/his own Sophian wisdom, these polarities might be resolved by a viable me + We = US, fellows + mellows = knowledge. And so on triality.

Most notably, the brains of men exhibit a far smaller degree of interconnectedness, both within and across the hemispheres, than do those of women, whom, conversely, exhibit a significantly greater degree of interconnectedness both across the hemispheres and across lobes within a hemisphere. Essentially, men’s brains on average appear wired for more localized, modular function compared with those of women, whose brains appear wired for more connectionist, cross-module function. (Larry Cahill, 2014)

Our analysis has revealed that the human connectome possesses a complex structure on the scale between the node’s edges and the mesoscopic anatomical communities within the cerebral hemispheres. Therefore, the female connectome appears to have a different structure not only in the number of edges but also in its organization expressed by these higher-order connections. It might be conjectured that these excess connections imply an additional functionality of the female connectome, which can have evolutionary, biological, biochemical, and even social origins. (Bosiljka Tadic, 2019)

Cahill, Larry. An Issue whose Time Has Come. Journal of Neuroscience Research. 95/1-2, 2017.

MacGregor, Sherilyn, ed. Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. London: Routledge, 2017.

6. Our Holosymbiotic Personal Selves

2020: Into the 2010s, individual identity studies, broadly conceived, have likewise proceeded by way the sciences of complex network systems to reach deeper and wider understandings. One’s personal psyche is seen to arise from and be sustained by the same self-organized, fractal, autopoietic mutualities as life’s developmental course. We cite a Holosymbiotic image by reference to the Cellular Holobiont Symbiosis section above. Another 21st century theme is a view that personal beingness ought to be situated in their behavioral, societal, and environmental milieu. In response, an embodied, extended body and mind perception has come forth. Altogether now each individual entity could be seen to be graced by an integral me + We vitality both in their microbiome persona and within their reciprocal communities.

In approaching the conscious mind, I privilege the self. I believe conscious minds arise when a self process is added onto a basic mind process. There is indeed a self, but it is a process, not a thing. In the perspective of evolution and of one’s life history, the knower came in steps: the protoself and its primordial feelings; the action-driven core self; and finally the autobiographical self, which incorporates social and spiritual dimensions. (Antonio Damasio, 2010)

This article reviews the extended self whose boundaries fluidly shift across biological, artifactual, and sociocultural phases. We cite a minimal personal and narrative self and how philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists see embodiment, cognition, emotion, consciousness, and moral character traits as extended in scope. (Richard Heersmink, 2020)

Ciaunica, Anna. The Relational Self: Basic Forms of Self-Awareness. Topoi. 39/2, 2020.

Gilbert, Scott, et al. A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals. Quarterly Review of Biology. 87/4, 2012.

7. Archetypal Psychology

2020: While this vital mythic milieu generally guided by Carl Jung’s deep insights, abides as an eternal resource, and as we people and planet suffer so, there is an urgency to recover this forever and future feminine wisdom essence. OK

This paper presents an Anthropocene model of psychological transformation from the fields of depth psychology and anthropology known as an archetypal death-rebirth process. It gives purpose and meaning to the tribulations and, crucially, offers hope through the vision of renewal. (Carol Berzonzky, 2020)

Cambray, Joseph and Leslie Sawin, eds. Analytical Psychology: Applications from Scientific, Historical, and Cross-Cultural Research. London: Routledge, 2018.

B. EarthKinder: A Personsphere Progeny

1. A Cultural (Geonome) Code

2020: As we continue to report how complex network systems are informing and being applied in every natural and social realm, this section shows that even human literate human cultures and conversational dialogue can (necessarily) be seen as an exemplary instance. Many studies have found textual books and communicative speech to quite hold to and display fractal, self-organized similarities. Within our Earthomo compass as a major emergent transition, could a “geonome” lingua franca be considered so as to identify a global accumulated knowledge repository and naturome narrative?

Human languages are extraordinary complex adaptive systems that feature hierarchical sound structures, express elaborate meanings and use syntactic and semantic structures to relate sound to meaning. This paper presents a basic cycle observed in the historical language record, whereby grammatical meanings move from lexical to syntactic and then to a morphological mode. (Luc Steels, 2016)

Diessel, Holger. The Grammar Network: How Linguistic Structure is Shaped by Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Kirby, Simon. Culture and Biology in the Origins of Linguistic Structure. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 24/1, 2017.

2. Complex Local to Global Network Biosocieties

2020: To move on, multiplex, linguistic near and far cultures have likewise been reinterpreted by way of the same nonlinear self-organizing network systems. The diverse worldwide project also draws on algorithmic programs and a statistical physics depth. As Frank Schweitzer, Matjaz Perc, Poleminia Amazeen, Dirk Helbing, Neil Johnson and many others advise, by a proper, respectful understanding of intrinsic forces and formations, a much better understanding of and guidance for our neighborhood and national abidances can be achieved. Apropos, an intense effort to study the COVID epidemic by way of topological complexities has identified consistent profiles for disease vectors, intensities and patterings. The next Planetary Physiosphere section surveys further evidence across many scales from villages to urban centers.

Recently, massive datasets that capture human movements and social interactions have advanced understandings of human behavior. By way of three different mobile phone datasets, we discovered a new scaling relationship, mediated by a universal flux distribution, which trace critical links within the spatial dependencies in human mobility and social networks. Therefore, these phenomena are not independent but connected through a deeper underlying reality. (Pierre Deville, 2016)

Blanton, Richard and Lane Fargher. How Humans Cooperate. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016

Drozdz, Stanislaw, et al. Complexity in Economic and Social Systems. Entropy.22/9, 2020..

Perc, Matjaz, et al. Statistical Physics of Human Cooperation. Physics Reports. Online May, 2017.

3. Planetary Physiosphere: Anatomics, Economics, Urbanomics

2020: While cities swell and suburbs sprawl, a commonwealth of analytic and holistic studies have found our habitations from villages to urban centers can well represent one more epitome of nature’s organic, self-organized fractal network complexities. Together with cellular automata methods, even this intense human phase can gain a broader and deeper coherence by way of reliable formations and activities. The take home promise would be an ability to intentionally avail their presence and guidance from sustainable person to planet scales.

Toward a Living Architecture is the first book-length survey of the emerging field of generative architecture and its nexus with computation, biology, and complexity. Christina Cogdell applies the sciences such as complex systems, evolutionary theory, genetics and epigenetics, and synthetic biology in this field. A narrative from the computational toward the biological and from current practice to visionary futures uses life-cycle analysis to parse material, energetic, and pollution issues between an array of design and construction approaches. (Christian Cogdell, 2019)

D’Acci, Luce, ed. The Mathematics of Urban Morphology. Springer: Birkhauser, 2019.

Pumain, Denise and Juste Raimbault. Perspectives on Urban Theories. arXiv:1911.02854.

4. A Complementarity of Civilizations

2020: As we have so far referenced, nature’s independent generative code is in exemplary effect from galaxies and life’s origin all the way through an evolutionary gestation to our current Earthomo personsphere. This section documents how it is manifestly evident even on the scale of global East/West and South/North complements. As these 100+ entries convey, just as our cerebral brains come with bicameral hemispheres, so the same reciprocal individual/community archetypes are in distinctive, albeit fluid, presence across ethnic, national and continental cultures. And once more if we just might gain and ground such understandings, the many clashing polarities that so confound us could at last be resolved.

It is now widely accepted that East Asians hold a holistic assumption that every element in the world is interconnected, while Westerners tend to view the universe as composed of independent objects. East Asians attend toward the relationship between objects and the field to which the objects belong. In contrast, Westerners focus more on an object itself rather than the contextual field. The difference allows East Asians to see the “whole picture” with more ease than individual parts, whereas the reverse holds for Westerners. (Incheol Choi, 2007)

De Oliveira, Stephanie and Richard Nisbett. Beyond East and West: Cognitive Style in Latin America. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 48/10, 2017.

Nwoye, Augustine. Remapping the Fabric of the African Self: A Synoptic Theory. Dialectical Anthropology. 30/1-2, 2007.

5. Bicameral World Religions Please refer to the main section.

6. Contrasts of Religion and Science Please refer to the main section.

7. Systems History: Personal and Planetary Individuation

2020: As religion and science above, this endeavor has issues because while our human/Earth appearance can rightly be traced to ancient cosmic rootings, this vista isbeset by olden denials of any greater reality. Our occasion can surely be set in this wider expanse, but that is the end of it. In the meanwhile, an array of science scholars, e.g. at the Santa Fe Institute (David Krakauer, Geoffrey West, et al) are engaging how even one more seemingly chaotic phase can yet reveal inherent complex network systems.

The fact that we live in an expanding universe with a finite age which has changed dramatically over time introduces a historical perspective to many the physical processes that science tries to explain. I have argued that the problem of the origin of life, on Earth and elsewhere, must fully embrace this evolutionary cosmic point of view. Investigating the history of cosmic habitability - i.e., of the propensity of the universe to host life - can illuminate many aspects of contemporary research . (Amedeo Balbi, 2020)

Christian, David. Origin Story: A Big History of Everything. New York: Little Brown, 2018.

Korotayev, Andrey and David LePoire, eds. The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures: A Big History Perspective. International: Springer, 2020.

VIII. Pedia Sapiens: A New Genesis Future

A. The Old World: Its Critical Life Support Condition

2020: Since this pandemic plus year needs much more articulation to engage and do justice, we first refer to the section introduction in the full annotated anthology..

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced. (Al Gore, 2007)

Brooks, Rosa. How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.

Diamond, Jared. Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis. New York: Little, Brown, 2019.

Turner, Monica, et al. Climate Change, Ecosystems and Abrupt Change. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. January 2020.

1. An Anthropocene to Earthropocene Moment

2020: We here wish to propose an Earthropocene era beyond and encompassing an earlier individual and composite homo/anthropo stage. This new word would seem more appropriate for this whole precious ecosphere, which altogether is our proper abide. But a revolutionary shift from an old age of materialist, purposeless models, barbaric warlords, nuclear nations, the list goes on as the citations aver, is immediately imperative.

The premise is that Earth’s entry into the “Anthropocene” represents what might be, from an astrobiological perspective, a predictable planetary transition. Our classification discriminates planets by the forms of free energy generation driven from stellar forcing. We then explore how timescales for global evolutionary processes on Earth might be synchronized with ecological transformations driven by increases in energy harvesting and its relative impact. (Adam Frank, 2017)

Lewis, Simon and Mark Maslin. The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.

Steffen, Will, et al. Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115/8252, 2018.

2. Global Climate Change as a Complex Dynamical System

2020: This is a newer subsection about how even hyper-complex world weather, now traced back to paleological times, can be appreciated and quantified by the same nonlinear self-organizing, scalar dynamics as everywhere else. In regard, "global warming" is a misnomer for these currents and forces portend more extreme oscillations on the way to abrupt, catastrophic change. It would serve climate scientists, under such siege from deniers, to say they are “physicians of the planet” giving wellness and illness reports.

Fan, Jingfang, et al. Statistical Physics Approaches to the Complex Earth System. arXiv:2009.04918.

Ghil, Michael and Valerio Lucarini. The Physics of Climate Variability and Climate Change. Reviews of Modern Physics. Online March, 2020.

Selvam, Amujuri Mary. Self-Organized Criticality and Predictability in Atmospheric Flows. International: Springer, 2017.

B. A New CoCreation: A Singular Evolitionary Advance

1. Mind Over Matter: Quantum, Atomic, Chemical Connectomics

2020: In the past few years, building on decades before, a strong capability has arisen to delve deeply into any substantial domain so as to wholly quantify by theory and experiment. By this information and empowerment, an inviting frontier opens to begin a new intentional cocreation. As the bibliography samples and conveys, it is apparent across these no longer inorganic title phases that our collective human acumen can consider quantum computational systems, “artificial” atomic elements, tailored chemical compositions, and more. In a widest view, at the same time Earth is beset by so many perils, an ecosmos genesis might be trying, by its innate nature, to pass on its procreative futurity to our respectful, encoded “evolutionary” continuance.

The challenge for the chemist is not the use of artificial intelligence but the intelligent use of algorithms and automation for novel discoveries rather than just new molecules that are predictable. This development is crucial if chemical technologies are to shake the perceived failure of the combinatorial synthesis revolution. Ultimately, the development of such tools should allow developments that would not have been possible in isolation. With such approaches, the chemist will be able to boldly go into the unknown and actively seek chemical novelty. (Leroy Cronin, 2018)

Canfield, Paul. New Materials Physics. Reports on Progress in Physics. 83/016001, 2020.

Faber, Felix, et al. Alchemical and Structural Distribution Based Representation for Universal Quantum Machine Learning. Journal of Chemical Physics. 148/241717, 2019.

2. Second Genesis: Emergent Life Gains an EarthWise CoCreativity

2020: While Mind/Matter above was about a conducive substantiality, this section surveys how our Earthomo MindKinder is achieving similar understandings and abilities to take up and over life’s prior trial and error contingency in an intentional, directed and respectful way. As the entries convey, all manner of cellular, metabolic, network anatomy and physiology can be healed and enhanced. A prime breakthrough is the editing ease of CRISPR genetics. Beyond this, new ways to expand and rewrite life’s genomic source code seem to be patentially passing, as intended, to our wumanwise futurity.

Davies, Jamie. Real-World Synthetic Biology. Life. 9/1, 2019.

Ostrov, Nili, et al. Synthetic Genomes with Altered Genetic Codes. Current Opinion in Systems Biology. Online October 2020.

3. Positive Personal Enhancement within Community Please refer to the main section.

4. Sustainable Ecovillages: me + We = US

2020: As the extended introduction cites, by way of 21st century learnings about an organic genesis whose developmental emergence proceeds by nested member/group symbiotic unions, a next evident phase can be sighted. Akin to protocells at life’s origin, at our far removed global transition scale, it could appear that supportive communities of a nominal 100 at liberty members is an appropriate “social protocell” version. A source guide is the collegial work of anthropologist Robin Dunbar (search) who finds this group size to be a natural preference.

Here, we make the radical proposition that the cultural communities within which Homo emerged may be understood as a novel form of organism. The argument begins from a deep congruence between robust features of Pan community life cycles and protocell models of the origins of life. If a cultural tradition, meeting certain requirements, arises in the context of such a “social protocell,” the outcome will be an evolutionary transition in individuality. (Claes Andersson and Petter Tornberg, 2020)

Litfin, Karen. Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community. London: Polity Books, 2014.

Miller, Frederica. Ecovillages Around the World, Scotland: Findhorn Press, 2018.

5. A 2020 Naturome Bicameral Democracy

2020: In this Chapter VIII about a better future informed and guided by one universal genetic-like, bigender code, a public segment in most need is that of local to national governance. As we sadly know, this domain is torn apart, split in half, with bipolar persuasions locked in mutual conflict. But we can’t go on like this, as our 2020 election still festers. How obvious does it have to be for us that the two archetypal modes are natural critically poised, complements.

Fiske, Susan. Political Cognition Helps Explain Social Class Divides. Cognition. 188/108, 2019.

Wiesner, Karoline, et al. Stability of Democracies: A Complex Systems Perspective. European Journal of Physics. 40/1, 2019.

6. A Viable Gaiasphere: Planetary Patriots and Matriots

2020: After some 85 chapters, sections and subsections we reach an Earthwise imperative to now achieve a sustainable MEGA-Earthica (Make Earth Great Always). It is concerned with how to gain a knowledgeable awareness and decisive initiative so as to heal, mitigate, stabilize and foster our rarest bioabide. With some 8,500 annotated references in place, we seek to offer ways that a revolutionary cocreative, encoded genesis uniVerse which our Earthomo sapience seems to have found might inspire, inform and guide. One example from Ecovillages above could be an interlinked local/continental/global profusion of these “protocellular” communities.

The era of the collective mind is already underway in twenty-first century society. As the leading edge of thought, it is re-examining long-standing biological and social features of humanity and rethinking the question of what it means to be human. There can be a new freedom and dignity in the future of the collective mind. New ways of experiencing, knowing, being and becoming that can put humanity in reach of new kinds of worlds through a collective and ethically-guided influence on inevitable transformational change. (Valerie Brown, 2014)

Alberti, Marina. Cities That Think like Planets. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016.

Kelbessa, Workineh. African Environmental Ethics,.Environmental Ethics. 37/4, 2016.

Lenton, Timothy and Bruno Latour. Gaia 2.0. Science. 361/1066, 2018.

C. An Earthropic Principle: Novel Evidence for a Special Planet

2020: With regard to this incredible significance, we deign to dub an EarthMost identity so to properly name and represent. As a Pedia progeny now may embark on her/his ecosmic wisdom quest, self quantification and evolitionary continuance we are aware of how rudimentary our current understandings must be. What a fantastic, open, ordained, well earned, future destiny can beckon for children. But in this geonatal moment, when a decisive self-selection between end or begin, kinder or cinder, must be made, this august finding could bring a vital incentive.

Thirteen Reasons: 1. Our planet recycles life-friendly carbon over time, 2. We have an ozone layer to block harmful rays, 3.We have a big moon to stabilize our axial wobble, 4. Earth’s varied surfaces support many life-forms, 5. Our magnetic field deflects solar tempests, 6. We’re at just the right distance from the sun, 7. We’re situated safely away from gas giants, 8.The sun is a stable, long-lasting star, 9. Wehave the right stuff to host a dynamic core, 10. We have Giant planets that protect us from afar, 11. Our sun offers protection from galactic debris, 12. Our galactic path steers us clear of hazards, and 13. Our location is far from stellar crowds. (Manuel Canales, 2015)

Gribbin, John. Alone in the Milky Way. Scientific American. September, 2018.

Raymond, Sean, et al. Solar System Formation in the Context of Extrasolar Planets. Meadows, Victoria, et al, eds. Planetary Astrobiology. Tempe: University of Arizona Press, 2020.

Smith, Howard A. The End of Copernican Mediocrity.Zoe Imfeld and Andreas Losch, eds. Our Common Cosmos. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

D. Ecosmocene Destiny: The Greening of the Galaxy

2020: As we Earthlings become freely empowered to imagine our near and far cocreative destines, this final section gathers a diverse array of imaginations. A visionary Russian Cosmism view (George Young, Historic Prescience) has long felt that human beings are ordained to take up and complete the ecosmic future of a universal genesis. To take license once more, in addition to Guardians of the Galaxy, might we actually aspire to be Champions of the Cosmos?

Armstrong, Rachel, ed. Star Ark: A Living, Self-Sustaining Spaceship. International: Springer Praxis, 2017.

Dyson, Freeman. A Vision of a Green Universe. New York Review of Books.October 13, 2016.

Zenil, Hector. Reprogramming Matter, Life, and Purpose. arXiv:1704.00725.