I. Our Planatural Edition: A 21st Century PhiloSophia, Earthropo Ecosmic PediaVersion

B. Anthropocene Sapiensphere: A Major Emergent Transitional Phase

Schilling, Govert. Evolving Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. A science writer conveys the latest illustrated vistas whereby our local cosmos is now set within a vast multiverse. A full trajectory from a point, seed-like origin to an “embryonic” development to sentient life onto an eventual expiration is surveyed. Although an attempt is made to make meaningful by organic and human imagery, this scenario is set within an environment of birthing and dying universes, hardly an inspiration. One wonders what solace can accrue if people still do not have a phenomenal role in a greater, ordained genesis.

Mankind becomes extinct but the evolution of life carries on. (124) And just as our Universe produces an overwhelming number of offspring, there is also an impressive ancestral family tree. Our Cosmos is one of the countless children of the mother universe in which the same cycles of birth and death, creation and destruction take place. (127)

Schneider, Eric and Dorian Sagan. Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. This comprehensive conception of universe, life and human in terms of non-equilibrium energy imperatives, bordering on a sense of direction and purpose, is reviewed more in Part III, A Thermodynamics of Life.

Scott, Alwyn. The Nonlinear Universe. Berlin: Springer, 2007. This technical work contributes much to quantifying and explaining an innately developmental cosmos, and is reviewed at length in Systems Physics.

Seckbach, Joseph, ed. Genesis - In The Beginning: Precursors of Life, Chemical Models and Early Biological Evolution. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012. Volume 22 in the Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, series, due by April. (see Swan above for more) Sections range widely from Chemical Evolution, and The Role of Physics and Geophysics in the Origin and Evolution of Life, to The Distribution of Life in the Solar System and Elsewhere in the Cosmos, and History and Frontiers of Astrobiology and the Humanities. “Genesis and evolution of Life with chemical, geological and biological data in one volume.” See and compare with the 2004, No. 7 Volume: Seckbach, Joseph, et al, eds. Life in the Universe to appreciate how many advances have been made over the intervening years.

Seligman, Martin, et al. Homo Prospectus. New York: Oxford University Press,, 2016. With Peter Railton, Roy Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada, senior philosophical psychologists propose an historic adjustment in psychological studies from past and present maladies to envision a beneficial futurity. By this reprise, a positive vista of empathic “human flourishing” in community has a potential to release and invigorate a laden world culture.

We are misnamed. “Wise man” is the intended meaning of Homo sapiens, but in contrast to Homo habilis “handy man,” and Homo erectus “upright man,” our name is not a description but only an aspiration. And hardly one that we all achieve. If it is not wisdom, what is it that Homo sapiens actually does so well that no other species even approaches? Language, tools, killing, rationality, cooperation – to name a few – have been proposed. But closer examination of what other mammals, birds and social insects can do causes us to doubt our uniqueness. So we believe that the unrivaled human ability to be guided by imagining alternatives stretching into the future – “prospection” – uniquely describes Home sapiens. (ix)

Sewall, Laura. Sight and Sensibility. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1999. Sewall, a professor of ecopsychology at Prescott College in Arizona, points out how perceptually impoverished Western cultures are. Their myopic preoccupation with exclusive difference and material things makes them unable to appreciate the pervasive interrelations that unify and support human and universe.

Shermer, Michael. Science Friction. New York: Times Books, 2005. A collection from the skeptical philosopher whose project is to rightly point out and expose the outer edges of science and what people are prone to believe. Of note is a chapter on the Intelligent Design scheme which misrepresents and distorts evolutionary theory so that some kind of (divine) intervention is required. In this regard, ID also rules out a universe which can organize on its own. Shermer’s essay is one of the clearest on the subject and offers a solution as expressed in the quotation. But in so doing, it may suggest what the ID folks, and everyone, are looking for – does not a cosmos with such creative properties imply that it possesses an innate identity and purpose?

The answer can be found in the properties of self-organization and emergence that arise out of what are known as complex adaptive systems. The entire evolution of life can be explained through these principles. Complex life, for example, is an emergent property of simple life: simple prokaryote cells self-organized to become more complex units called eukaryote cells; some of these eukaryote cells self-organized into multicellular organisms; some of these multicellular organisms self-organized into such cooperative ventures as colonies and social units. (191) As a complex adaptive system the cosmos intelligently designs itself. (191)

Sherwin, Byron. Faith Finding Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. The Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies theologian and prolific author provides a succinct survey of our 21st century human condition from this tradition, that can quite parallel and complement, e.g., Teilhard de Chardin’s Christian vision. For a huge change has occurred in recent history that is largely unrecognized, let alone assimilated. Our worldly technological civilization is no longer to be seen, for various historic reasons, in some way as fallen, wounded, or flawed in need of a “Tikkun Olam” repair or restoration back to a primordial state. Rather human beings are now to be rightly appreciated as intended and empowered co-creators. This view further resonates with the writings of Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner, search herein, emeritus editor of the journal of religion and science, Zygon.

Neither the world nor the human person is created in a complete form. Completing the task of creation is the challenge posed by God. It is precisely this task of completing creation that bestows meaning and purpose upon human life. In acting as God’s “partner in the work of creation,” the individual can activate and articulate being created in the image of God, the image of the creator. (79)

Siegfried, Tom. A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2006. The science journalist now in residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara picks up the elusive quest from Roman times to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series for a natural, illustrative universality. The emphasis here is on economic and social ‘game’ activities as an approach in this regard, but an affinity is noted with statistical mechanics, scale-free networks, and information theory (see also Martin Nowak’s work). The common thread across these cases (one might add complex adaptive systems) is a competitive and/or cooperative interaction of agents.

Simeonov, Plamen, et al. Editorial. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. Online April, 2013. In this journal edited by Denis Noble, with Koichiro Matsuno and Robert Root-Bernstein, an Introduction to a special issue to continue the Integral Biomathics project, initiated by Simeonov (see herein), whose aim is both to cite the deep conceptual crisis of a reductive, mechanist (Ptolemaic) physics alien to emergent living systems and persons, and to move forward on an epochal (Copernican) revolution via a novel mathematical sense of an organically conducive evolutionary cosmos. A key feature is then to place information content as its unifying and generative quality. Contributions include a lead “Overcoming the Newtonian Paradigm: The Unfinished Project of Theoretical Biology from a Schellingian Perspective,” by Arran Gare as a 21st century Naturphilosophie, “Crisis in Science” by Marcin Schroeder, “A Quantum Model of Exaptation: Incorporating Potentiality into Evolutionary Theory” Liane Gabora, Eric Scott, and Stuart Kauffman, and “Contextual Models and the Non-Newtonian Paradigm” by Kirsty Kitto and Daniel Kortschak, with several other papers. And it need be recorded, this valiant forefront is not an exception. As this website has documented for over a decade, a worldwide collaboration is filling in and articulating this breakthrough, for we can no longer abide the dichotomy of a living, sustainable planet in a moribund multiuniverse. (In regard see my Fall 1994 paper in Environmental Ethics)

Simeonov, Plamen, et al, eds. Integral Biomathics: Tracing the Road to Reality. Berlin: Springer, 2012. With coeditors Leslie Smith and Andree Ehresmann, the Proceedings of the 1st Annual Conference on Integral Biomathics, held at Stirling University, UK, August 2011. Its Parts are: Biology and Neuroscience, Mathematics and Computation, Models and Applications, Physics and Philosophy, and a White Paper “Stepping beyond the Newtonian Paradigm in Biology towards an Integrable Model of Life.” In essence, a brave attempt to explore how emergent living systems, and human persons, are best understandable by way of previously neglected mathematical, informative, dynamics. Typical chapters are Info-Computationalism and Morphological Computing of Informational Structure by Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, (available on her website), Biological Observer-Participation by Brian Josephson (view on arXiv), and A Comprehensive Theoretical Biology Comprising Physics by Otto Rossler.

Plamen Simeonov, a German “freelance ICT consultant, author, and lecturer” with a 2002 doctorate in computer science from Technology University Ilmenau, is to be credited for his innovative advocacy of this imperative project. Someone quite needs to step up like this to bring into being the widely credible conception of a grand new genesis universe. Plamen began with a 2007 posting on arXiv “Integral Biomathics: A Post-Newtonian View into the Logos of Bios (On the New Meaning, Relations and Principles of Life in Science),” with nine updates, 2010 Abstract next. A website, INBIOSA: Integral Biomathics Support Action (www.inbiosa.eu/en), whose summary excerpt is the first quote, offers resources such as initial statements, this Conference documentation, publications, and more. The endeavor has since scoped out a space for European and international scholars to confer and publish, a follow up is an April 2013 issue of Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, with 16 articles, also noted under Simeonov.

INBIOSA brings together experienced scientists (mathematicians, computer scientists, biologists, …), with real research records, who believe that it is time for another scientific revolution. The difference between living and non-living matter, understanding the human mind, understanding how living matter can be self-aware seems to be impossible within current scientific paradigms. We believe in an intellectual community that challenges the current orthodoxy in science. This is both healthy and necessary to this transformation. INBIOSA’s purpose is to enable and support such a community of original thinkers in their pursuit of the above goals. This project aims to investigate the imperatives of mathematics and computation in a cardinal new way by comprehending the fundamental principles of emergence, development and evolution in biology. The goal will be a set of novel mathematical formalisms capable of addressing the multiple facets of an integral model and a general theory of biocomputation within an adequate frame of relevance. Its base will be the realization of a long-term fundamental research programme in mathematics, biology and computation that we call Integral Biomathics. (Website Summary)

This work is an attempt for a state-of-the-art survey of natural and life sciences with the goal to define the scope and address the central questions of an original research program. It is focused on the phenomena of emergence, adaptive dynamics and evolution of self-assembling, self-organizing, self-maintaining and self-replicating biosynthetic systems viewed from a newly-arranged perspective and understanding of computation and communication in the living nature. (Simeonov arXiv Abstract)

Slater, Philip. The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global Culture. Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2009. Chapter 3, for example, is titled “On Gender Concepts: Is Stupidity Masculine?” Slater, a sociologist and author argues that the precipitous ferment engulfing the world is actually an overdue revolution between a waning, competitive male “Control Culture,” and a rising “Integrative Culture” that is democratic, egalitarian, nurturing, and cooperative in kind. As suggested by biologist Elisabet Sahtouris, a fitting metaphor might be the transformation from a prior, no longer appropriate, pupa stage into a butterfly. Chapter 8, “On Religion: Back to Nature” goes on to deplore so many rampant exploitations, and counsel an integral, respectful spirituality.

Whereas Control Culture viewed the universe as a gigantic, clockwork machine controlled from above, Integrative culture see it as a self-generating organism – a world-view more consistent with the revolutions in science brought about Darwinian theory and quantum physics. (13) For Integrative culture is in its essence the fusing of a static but sustainable hunter-gather type of culture with the dynamism of our Western, linear, unsustainable one. (83)

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