I. Planatural Genesis: A Phenomenal, PhiloSophia, Propaedutic, WumanWise, Participatory Endeavor

C. Our Earthumanity Envisions an Animate, Self-Organizing, Encoded Procreativity

Furtak, Marcin, et al. The Forest, the Trees, or Both? Hierarchy and Interactions between Gist and Object Processing during Perception of Real-world Scenes. Cognition. Vol. 221, April, 2022. Into this year, Polish Academy of Sciences and Tel Aviv University neuropsychologists can draw upon their own research along with a review of past 21st century work to an extent that they can presently reach a strong conclusion. Taken together, these studies join our results in supporting the global to local accounts, suggesting that gist (field) is processed more readily, and earlier, than objects. (5) As reported across the website, a temporal sequence appears to go on for both evolution and an entity. A sighted occasion is viewed by way of these dual archetypal modes, whereby a contextual scene is perceived first, after which item details are noticed and situated.

The global-to-local theories of perception assume that the gist of a scene is computed early and automatically, whereas recognition of objects occurs at a later stage, requires attentional resources, and is primed by the representation of whole. To test these views, we investigated the sequence of gist- and object-recognition. We generally found that backgrounds were classified more accurately than foreground objects, while wider fields influenced object recognition. Thus these findings support global-to-local theories, implying that gists are more readily seen than details, and at an earlier stage. (Abstract excerpt)

Gagler, David, et al. Scaling Laws in Enzyme Function Reveal a New Kind of Biochemical Universalit. PNAS. 119/9, 2022. Arizona State University bioscientists including Sara Walker, Chris Kempes and Hyunju Kim enter a good example of novel Earthuman abilities which can now find life’s deeper phases to also be distinguished by common, recurrent, self-similar patterns as everywhere else. A further implication is that such a result can be traced to and rooted in physical phenomena. A section heading is Universal Scaling Laws Define the Behavior of Enzyme Classes Across Diverse Biochemical Systems. A graphic depicts how the same forms hold from Archaea and Bacteria to Eukaryotes and Metagenomes, independently of specific components. We wonder again at our emergent EarthWise faculty whom can just now come to these discoveries.

All life on Earth uses a shared set of chemical compounds and reactions which provides a detailed model for universal biochemistry. Here, we introduce a more generalizable concept that is more akin to the kind of universality found in physics. We show how enzyme functions form universality classes with common scaling behavior. Together, our results establish the existence of a new kind of biochemical universality, independent of the details of life on Earth’s component chemistry. (Abstract excerpt)

In physics, the notion of coarse-graining is critical to identifying universality classes, because it allows ignoring most details of individual systems in favor of uncovering systematic behavior across different systems. (3)

Garcia-Sanchez, Miguel, et al. The Emergence of Interstellar Molecular Complexity Explained by Interacting Networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119/30, 2022. Centro de Astrobiologia (CSIC/INTA), Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain and Swedish University of Agricultural Science researchers including Jacobo Aguirre contribute a frontier synthesis by adding and applying such equally real and vitally present interlinking webworks to nature’s intrinsic formation of nodal biomolecules. This integration is achieved and demonstrated by through novel NetWorld algorithmic computations. As the quote says, an especial value accrues by virtue of a quantified perception of commonly recurrent processes and vivifying anatomies.

The road to life is punctuated by transitions toward complexity, from astrochemistry to biomolecules and eventually, to living organisms. But studies of these original phases remain a challenge to which complexity and network theory has not been much applied. We introduce a computational framework whereby simple networks simulate the most basic elements of life as they interact to form complex structures. We observe a resultant explosion of diversity when the parameter representing the environment reaches a critical value. While this model is abstract, its predictions well mimic the molecular evolution in the interstellar medium during the emergence of chemical complexity. Altogether our work suggests that the rules leading to biological complexity may be relatively simple as they engender universal patterns. (Abstract/Significance)

All in all, we believe that (i) the similarities between the results in [30], based on models that are firmly rooted in classical ecological theory and checked with real data, (ii) those obtained from molecular abundances in interstellar clouds, and (iii) the ones introduced by our computational environment, derived from a simple framework with no a priori ecological or chemical assumptions, are not coincidental. They instead hint that the long path from the creation of the basic prebiotic compounds in the interstellar medium to the origin of life and its evolution on the early Earth could show universal patterns and common phenomena at all scales and across all stages. (8)

Gontier, Nathalie, et al. Introduction: Language and Worldviews. Topoi. 41/3, 2022. University of Lisbon, Barcelona, Porto, Seville and Pavia scholars introduce the issue’s topical subject and survey some 15 contributions, see Abstract for more. Its reach by design traces all the way back to Animal Minds and the Evolution of Communication and Language. A major essay by the lead editor well summarizes, posted next. For example see Language: The Ultimate Artifact to Build, Develop and Update Worldviews by Lorenzo Magnani, The Work of Words: Poetry, Language and the Dawn of Community by Ricardo Santos-Alexandre and Language, Thought and the History of Science by Carmela Chateau-Smith. See also Evolutionary Epistemology by Nathalie Gontier and Michael Bradie in the Journal for General Philosophy of Science. (52/2, 2021) for an issue on this companion endeavor.

This special issue on Language and Worldviews grew out of a workshop on Language Throughout the Ages (Google) that was organized by the Applied Evolutionary Epistemology Lab (appeel.fc.ul.pt) at the University of Lisbon in 2019. Language and worldviews are favorite topoi for philosophers of language or mind, science, or religion, epistemology or logic. How language establishes, mediates, constructs, or enacts a contextual milieu amongst peoples, and between basic physical, sociocultural, and biological aspects is a huge, vital realm. (Excerpt)

Gontier, Nathalie, et al, eds.. Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. The volume editors are NG, University of Lisbon, Andy Lock, Massey University, Australia and Chris Sinha, University of East Anglia, UK. The quotes next provide a good gist of this expansive scholastic collection as it has become newly enhanced by diverse global collaborations. Typical authoritative entries could be A Timeline for the Acquisition of Symbolic Cognition in the Human Lineage by Ian Tattersall, The Aboutness of Language and the Evolution of the Construction-ready Brain by Michael Arbib, The Evolution of Language and Speech by Antonio Benítez-Burraco and Dan Dediu, Animal Signals and Symbolism by Ulrike Griebel and D. Kimbrough Oller and Archewriting: The Symbolic Evolution of Script and Narrative by Rukmini Bhaya Nair. But from our late 2020s vantage, this historic collective cognitive sapience by which to accumulate a worldwise knowledge repository could be seen, in retrospect, as a intended descriptive re-presentation of a self-making participatory genesis to itself.

The capacity to symbolize and the use of symbols concern every aspect of human life. This dedicated volume investigates how such a capability arose in human development and is expressed in many areas of societal life. Thirty-nine topical chapters grouped into six themes that focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological dimensions. The handbook presents an in-depth, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive overview of the state of the art and science of this premier distinction of our individual and collective Earthumanity. (Publisher)

The Evolution of the Biological Sciences This chapter introduces the main research schools along which the field of evolutionary biology has proceeded. It was for some time as n the paradigm that combines traditional (Neo) Darwinism with those of the genomic Modern Synthesis. This 20th century view has since diversified into the Micro-, Meso-, and Macro-evolutionary schools which altogether compose an Ecological Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Eco-Evo-Devo). A 21st century version studies Reticulate Evolution (see NG) by means of symbiosis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity, and hybridization. My second chapter examines how these different aspects are implemented into the symbolic sciences such as psychology, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, and economics. (Chap. 1, N. Gontier)

Gosak,, Marko, et al. Networks Behind the Morphology and Structural Design of Living Systems. Physics of Life Reviews. March, 2022. As a good example of timely abilities to achieve a convergent synthesis of nonlinear, animate complexities, five University of Maribor, Slovenia theorists including Matjaz Perc post a 40 page, 250 reference article with regard to life’s ubiquitous connectivities across every anatomic and physiological instance. For example intercellular and multicellular interaction patterns, fluid flows, neural nets and all else can be seen to exhibit similar topological dynamics. Today collaborative teams in every land, on a daily basis, altogether compose a speciesphere scientific endeavor going on by itself. But with insane carnage not far away, such a learning, thinking Earthuman faculty whom is achieving these revolutionary findings is still unknown. For such reasons, the evident presence of an independent, universal mathematic source in manifest effect still cannot be implied. See also Dynamics of Higher Order Networks by this collegial team including Matjaz Perc at arXiv:2203.06601 for a similar exercise.

Advances in imaging techniques and biometric data methods have enabled us to apply the topological network properties to organelles, organs, and tissues, as well as the coordinations among them that yield a healthy, whole organism. We review research dedicated to these advances with a focus on networks between cells, the topology of multicellular structures, neural interactions, fluid transportation, and anatomies. The percolation of blood vessels, brain geometries, bone porosity, and relations between various parts of the human body are some examples we explore in detail. (Abstract excerpt)

Tools from the armamentarium of the complex network theory are nowadays recognized as a general and powerful theoretical framework for assessing real-world systems. Their wide applicability is to a significant extent a consequence of their natural suitability to represent and study the relations between individual components in virtually any discrete system. For these reasons, we are witnessing in the last two decades an explosion of multidisciplinary studies in which the complex network methods are applied to social sciences [223-229], linguistics [230-232], ecological systems [233-235], economics [236, 237], and a wide range of engineered and technological systems. (23)

Grossberg, Stephen. Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain: How Each Brain Makes a Mind. New York: Oxford University Press,, 2022. The octogenarian Boston University poly-neuroscientist was often asked to write a summary work about his luminous studies (search). As a result, this large format, illustrated, 700 page volume proceeds to substantiate and explain his Complementary Computation theory of dynamic cerebral processes and cognitive features. As the quotes describe, into the 21st century and 2020s a vital finding can now be established. Our human neural facility, awareness and responsive behavior is distinguished by a double basis of opposite but reciprocal functions and qualities. One version is the What/Where model of object view and spatial place, which draws on dual cortical streams. Another instance, of course, is our hemispheric halves with their archetypal contrast of dot/connect, node/link, the litany goes all the way to male and female compete/cooperate aspects.

Malleable network topologies, as they serve to inform and communicate are noted to play a significant role. In further regard, as noted in an Introduction (7), Chapter 17 traces our emergent, personal brain/mind epitome deep down to the original complex dynamics of a physical source stage. Sections such as A Universal Developmental Code, Complementarity Biological and Physical Laws, A Universal Measurement Device of and in the World express how active neural cognizance can be found to self-organize in similar accord with physical principles and phenomena. Along with April entries like The Bifocal Stance Theory of Cultural Evolution (Jagiello) and Novelty and Imitation within the Brain (Czegel), such quantified proof of a true bicameral uniVerse could provide an urgent resolve as the two poles lock into mutual war.

The work embodies a revolutionary Principia of Mind that clarifies how autonomous adaptive intelligence is achieved. Because brains embody a universal developmental code, further insights emerge about shared law in living cells from primitive to complex and onto how networks of interacting cells support developmental and learning processes in all species. These novel brain design principles of complementarity, uncertainty, and resonance are then traced to the physical world with which our brains ceaselessly interact, and which enable our brains to incrementally learn to understand those laws, thereby enabling humans to understand the world scientifically. (Publisher)

A question concerns how the complementarity organization of our brains may be related to the complementary properties of the physical world. Here I will note that this occurrence was first proposed in the 1920s by the physicist Niels Bohr from quantum mechanics. The phenomena involves different aspects such as position and momentum for waves and particles. If the brain is a kind of universal measurement system of physical environs such as light, heat and pressure. This fact raises the question of whether brains may have assimilated basic physical principles throughout evolution. (7)

What and Where Cortical Processing Streams These two types of learning, perceptual/cognitive vs. spatial motor, to on in different brain systems. The ventral>/i> stream processes information that enables us to recognize objects. It is thus called the What version. Thedorsal phase provides information about where objects are in space and how to act upon them. It is accordingly called the Where and How mode. (28) I will suggest in Figure 1.19 how they obey “computationally complementary” laws. Complementarity implies the need to balance the capabilities of each version against those of the other. (aka herein as a Golden Mean). (28)

Complementary Processing Streams for Perception/cognition and Space/action. I have called this paradigm Complementary Computing because it describes how the brain is organized into complementary parallel processing streams whose interactions generate biologically intelligent behaviors. A singly cortical stream can compute some properties well, but cannot, by itself, process orther computationally complementary properties. Pairs of cortical streams interact, using multiple stages, to generat emergent features that overcome their complementary deficiencies to compute complete information with which to represent or control some intelligent faculty. (29)

Universal Design for Self=Organizing Measurements and Prediction Systems. Implicit in these conclusions is the fact that principles, mechanisms and architectures in this book are about fundament problems of measurement and how a self-organizing system and represent and predict outcomes in a changing world. Mind and brain are explained by these theories because they are natural computational embodiments of these occasions. (34)