I. Planatural Genesis: A Phenomenal, PhiloSophia, Propaedutic, TwinKinder, PersonVerse Endeavor

C. Our Earthumanity Glimpses an Animate Family Ecosmos Cocreative MultiUniVerse

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)

Grudic, Michael, et al. Does God Play Dice with Star Clusters?. arXiv:2307.00052.. We especially record this entry by Carnegie Observatories, UT Austin, Harvard Smithsonian, Northwestern University, and CalTech astrophysicsists including Stella Offner and Philip Hopkins because of an answer to this profound galactic question. By way of a mathematical finesse of a deep physical lawfulness, an intrinsic non-random process does seem to arrange and order natural stellar activities. As the second quote says, these findings were once masked by prior stochastic viewpoints, but have now become evident. So into 2023 might we Earthlings begin to realize that an innate provenance exist on its procreative own?

It is common to assume that stellar masses are independently and identically distributed according to some population known as the universal initial mass function (IMF). However, stellar masses resulting from causal, long-ranged physics cannot be truly random and independent. To compare stochastic sampling with a physical model, we run a suite of 100 STARFORGE radiation magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of low-mass star cluster formations. In a sequence, massive stars start accreting sooner and finish later on average star. Therefore stochastic sampling may describe the end result fairly well, if the correct IMF -- and its environment-dependent upper cutoff -- are known. (Excerpt)

Although star formation is not random and uncorrelated in our deterministic simulations, stochastic sampling does appear to provide an adequate description of the end result of star formation, with the major caveat that the high-mass slope and truncation for the system in question must be known, or generally allowed to vary as a model parameter. Stars do not form through a roll of the dice, but the laws of physics may conspire to make
it appear so. (7)

Hausmann, Markus, e al. Laterality Entering the Next Decade: The 25th Anniversary of a Journal Devoted to Asymmetries of Brain, Behavior and Cognition. Laterality. 26/3, 2021. We cite this review/preview entry by Durham University (MH), Victoria University of Wellington (Gina Grinshaw) and University of New England, Australia (Lesley Rogers, search) scholars as a way in this late year to record the robust verification that has appeared on these scientific journal pages of an optimum bicameral asymmetry at each and every evolutionary phase and instance. As the citations note, and this resource documents, its vital occasion can be seen in effect from atomic light to (in)vertebrate animal organism all the ascendant way to our exemplary human faculties. Into these fraught 2020s, such an actual discovery of a natural complementarity between node - link, DNA – AND, dot – connect, me – We = US archetypes can now be achieved. As a result, it could at last bring these innate reciprocal attributes to inform and resolve political, engendered, combative, warlord cultures worldwide. In regard, Laterality remains the only journal of its kind dedicated to gather and report and this once and future Yang + Yin = Taome optimum poise.

In 1996, Phil Bryden, Mike Corballis, and Chris McManus released the first issue of Laterality. These founding editors pointed out in their editorial how surprisingly long it took to have a journal devoted entirely to laterality, its unanswered questions and wide-ranging problems. They mentioned left-right asymmetries inside sub-atomic structures, the pharmacology of chiral molecules, anatomical asymmetries of the viscera, Broca's discovery of the left-brain dominance in language production, and so on. One-hundred and twenty-eight issues later, Laterality celebrates with a special Issue: Laterality research entering the next decade. It opens with an opinion paper by Sebastian Ocklenburg, et al which outlines ten trends going forward into the 2020s. (Excerpts)

In the 2010s, significant progress has been made in key areas including neuroimaging, genetics and comparative research. Here, we discuss which trends which may shape laterality research in the 2020s such as ntegrating cross-cultural samples, combined meta-analysis and databank studies, the treatment of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, molecular correlates of environmental factors, graph-theory and machine learning method and so on. These disparate aspects will open the way for novel questions, enhanced collaborations and boost the reliable validity of evidential findings for this widely pervasive cerebral and cognitive feature. (Ocklenburg excerpt)

It is surprising how long it has taken to have a journal devoted entirely to Lateriality. Left-right asymmetries appear at almost all level of scientific endeavor from deep inside sub-atomic structures, through to the biochemistry of dextral sugars and animo-acids, to chiral molecules, and onto the intrinsic asymmetry of brains and language and galactic handedness. (Initial issue editorial excerpt, 1/1, 1996)

Laterality: Asymmetries of Brain, Behaviour, and Cognition publishes high quality research on all these aspects of human and non-human (vertebrate and invertebrate) species, including its psychological, behavioural, neural, genetic or other biological manifestations. The field of laterality is broad so the editors will consider papers which also illuminate the evolution of biological, neural, or behavioural asymmetry; papers on cultural, linguistic, artistic, and social expressions; as well as on its development, function, and historical origins.

Heylighen, Francis, et al. The Third Story of the Universe: an evolutionary worldview for the noosphere. cris.vub.be/ws/portalfiles/portal/110058395/Third_Story_working_paper.pdf. Center Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel polyscholars FH, Shima Beigi and Clement Vidal achieve a March 2024 working paper synopsis to date of this unfolding worldwise 21st century life-centered revolution. A main guide is the visionary writings of the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin about complexity, consciousness and the imminent collective noosphere. A presentation was made at The Noosphere at 100 conference, see Earth Learns for more.

This report is a first survey of a new, evolutionary narrative, called the Third Story, intended to replace and complement the earlier religious (First) and mechanistic (Second) worldviews. We contend that confusions due to a world that is ever more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) have eroded people’s sense of the world as comprehensible and manageable. The First Story provides meaning and values, but they no longer provide an accurate guidance. The Second Story sees the universe as a clockwork mechanism governed by the laws that allow us to build technologies but without any basis. Our Third Story version views nature as organizing itself towards increasing complexity and consciousness so as to produce matter, life, mind and society. Its implicit value is to invite individuals to work towards a global integration of the noosphere as an Earthuman superorganic ecosystem.

The Third Story is the newly emerging scientific worldview which sees the universe as self-organizing and evolving towards greater complexity and consciousness. It retains the understanding, prediction and technology provided by the Second Story, but adds that we are free in making informed decisions. It further gives a sense of wholeness and coherence by seeing individuals as part of the global superorganism or noosphere. Thus the Third Story appears to combine the benefits of First and Second Stories without their limitations, while offering a comprehensive, science-based worldview that includes a concrete sense of purpose, ethics and values. (22)

Hickey, Ravmond. Life and Language Beyond Earth.. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022. An emeritus professor at the University of Duisburg and Essen, Germany and the University of Limerick, Ireland writes his comprehensive, up to date, survey of life’s evolutionary development both on our home bioworld and across analogous interstellar realms. The well researched and written text assumes that habitable planets will hold to a mainly similar Darwinian creaturely course as occurred on Earth. His especial emphasis is then a persistent appearance of communicative and language-like faculties for diverse social group viability. Visit the author’s website at raymondhickey.com for chapter abstracts and more. Here next is its full table of contents.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Approaching the topic; 2. Looking beyond Earth; 3. Striving to understand; Part II. The Universe We Live In: 4. Trying to grasp size; 5. Star formation and planets; 6. The likelihood of life; 7. Possible conditions on an exoplanet?; 8. How and where to look for exolife; 9. The limits of exploration; 10. Assessing probabilities; Part III. Our Story on Earth: 11. The slow path of evolution; 12. How does the whole work?; 13. The road to Homo sapiens; 14. The rise of human societies; Part IV. The Runaway Brain: 15. The brain-to-body ratio; 16. How brains develop; 17. Our cognition; 18. Consciousness; 19. Artificial intelligence; Part V. Language, our Greatest Gift: 20. Looking at language; 21. Talking about language; 22. The view from linguistics; 23. The language faculty and languages; 24. Language and the brain; 25. Acquiring language; 26. Humans and animals; Part VI. Life and Language, Here and Beyond: 27. Preconditions for life; 28. What might exolife be like?; 29. Looking for signs of life; 30. The issue of first contact; 31. Language beyond Earth; 32. How human language arose; 33. The language of exobeings; 34. Looking forward.

Hidalgo, Carlos, editor-in-chief.. EPS Grand Challenges: Physics for Society in the Horizon 2050.. Europe: IOP Science., 2024. The European Physics Society publishes a series of leading edge volumes as this, Google terms. This is an 800 page edition with over 100 senior authors such as Sara Seager, Jurgen Kurths, Frances Westall, Jacob Biamonte, Marc Barthelemy and Thiery Mora. Its relevance is evident by two main parts: Physics as global human enterprise for understanding Nature and Physics developments to tackling major issues affecting the lives of citizens. While a collection of disparate subjects, altogether as it looks ahead, one gets a sense of current advances and adventures by way of myriad planetary collaborations.

There are many images of science and of scientists. Some would imply that science will eventually reach the limits of knowledge while others create an expectation of endless horizons. In this book, we will look at all these aspects, going from particles, to atoms, cells, organisms, stars, galaxies and our own place in the universe. We explore what makes us, human beings, unique by an ability to imagine and shape the future through the scientific method. The book is an EPS action designed to address the social dimension of science and the grand challenges in physics so to benefit developed societies, raise standards of living at the global scale, and provide basic understanding of nature on the 2050 horizon.

Physics bridging the infinities. Chapter 2 presents an introduction and sections on: particle physics: physics beyond the Standard Model; the origin of visible matter; quantum gravity—an unfinished revolution; what is the Universe made of? Searching for dark energy/matter; a gravitational universe: black holes and gravitation waves; stars, the Sun, and planetary systems as physics laboratories; physics of the Earth's interior.

Physics for understanding life. Chapter 4 presents an introduction and sections on: searching for life in the Universe: our place in the Universe; artificial intelligence: powering the fourth industrial revolution; artificial life: sustainable self-replicating systems; toward a quantitative understanding of life; the emergence of life: the Sun–Earth connection.

Physics for secure and efficient societies. Chapter 7 presents an introduction and sections on: second quantum revolution: quantum computing and cybersecurity; sensors and their applications; the space sector: current and future prospects; large-scale complex sociotechnical systems and their interactions.

Holford, Mande and Benjamin Normark. Integrating the Life Sciences to Jumpstart the Next Decade of Discover. Integrative & Comparative Biology. 61/6, 2021. Hunter College and UM Amherst biologists introduce this special edition of 29 papers which relate to the new National Science Foundation Big Ideas initiative: Understanding the Rules of Life. As we note, this 2020s span (along with its trauma and tragedy) seems to be a singular moment when many scientific fields from quantum and evolutionary to societal and cosmic have reached an epic phase of convergent synthesis. A strong, steady theme can then be seen to course through these entries. Living systems, in both their Earthly development and organismic function, are found to be distinguished by nested networks which join all their cellular, modular, communal scalar domains. With this overall frame in place, researchers can now go on to discern a common pattern and process which recurs in kind at every spatial and temporal instance.

Other typical entries are The Axes of Life: A Roadmap for Understanding Dynamic Multiscale Systems; Charting a New Frontier Integrating Mathematical Modeling in Complex Biological Systems from Molecules to Ecosystems; From Flatland to Jupiter: Searching for Rules of Interaction Across Biological Scales; Complex Temporal Biology: Towards a Unified Multi-Scale Approach to Predict the Flow of Information; and Deep Learning for Reintegrating Biology. In regard, a Grand Challenge is scoped out that does allude to a vivifying self-similar lawfulness which exists on its independent own. But such an imperative revolutionary admission by our EarthWise scientists remains in abeyance. (As a note, a working “Discovery Decade” title had been in place for our Chap. IX 2022 Summary Edition before I came across this project.)

NSF’S Big Ideas: Understanding the Rules of Life Life on our planet is arranged in levels of organization ranging from the molecular scale through to the biosphere. There exists a remarkable amount of complexity in the interactions within and between these levels of organization and across scales of time and space. The NSF Rules of Life Big Idea seeks to enable discoveries to better understand such interactions and identify causal, predictive relationships across these scales.

Hooft, Gerard t. et al.. The sounds of science a symphony for many instruments and voices.. Physica Scripta. 99/052501, 2024. As the abstract says, this 54 page edition is a second endeavor to gather diverse, select authorities including Nobel laureates to survey these conceptual frontiers. A first 2020 edition with this title appeared in this journal (95/6) edited by Gerianne Alexander. Typical entries are What characterises topological effects in physics? by Gerard ’t Hooft, Towards a machine that works like the brain: the neuromorphic computer by Ivan Schuller, et al, What can we say about the ‘Value of information’ in Biophysics? by Lázaro Castanedo, et al, What philosophers should really be thinking about by Roland Allen and Suzy Lidström and How much of physics have we found so far? By Anton Zeilinger. But again some 20 men and 3 women contribute essays with a specific focus sans any common theme. While disparate approaches within an intelligible cosmos are pursued, there is rarely a sense of closing on a real discovery. (see also at arXiv:2404.11724.)

Despite its amazing quantitative successes and contributions to revolutionary technologies, physics currently faces many unsolved mysteries ranging from the meaning of quantum mechanics to the nature of the dark energy and the future of the Universe. It is clearly prohibitive for the general reader, and even the best informed physicists, to follow the vast number of technical papers published in the thousands of specialized journals. For this reason, we have asked the leading experts across many of the most important areas of physics to summarise their global assessment of some of the most important issues. In lieu of an extremely long abstract summarising the contents, we invite the reader to look at the section headings and their authors, and then to indulge in a feast of stimulating topics spanning the current frontiers of fundamental physics from The Future of Physics by William D Phillips and What characterises topological effects in physics? by Gerard t Hooft through the contributions of the widest imaginable range of world leaders in their respective areas.

Hsieh, Shannon, et al.. The Phanerozoic Aftermath of the Cambrian Information Revolution. Paleobiology. 48/3, 2022. Akin to Cellular Self-Organization: An Overdrive in Cambrian Diversity by Filip Vujovic, et al in BioEssays (July 2022), University of Illinois, Chicago and University of Connecticut paleoecologists including Roy Plotnick achieve a similar perception of rapid, wide-spread cerebral and cognitive advances as organic forms suddenly leapt forward from simpler stages. Many studies from the Burgess Shale to Devonian phases of “nervous system complexities” provided an empirical basis. As a result, a graphic radiation can be sketched from no CNS to ganglia onto a relative brain. In their rare purview, soma and sensory together are seen to constitute life’s radical emergent, quicker transition (on its way to our late planetary reconstruction). (See V. Evolution for more)

Jafari, Sajad, et al. Collective Behavior of Nonlinear Dynamical Oscillators. European Physical Journal Special Topics. December, 2022. Teheran Polytechnic and Changzhou University physicists introduce, survey, and summarize a collection of 35 entries herein and elsewhere about the recently quantified presence of a universal propensity to seek and reside at an optimum dynamic, reciprocal condition. Some technical papers are Complete Synchronization Analysis of a Neocortical Network Model, Impact of Repulsive Coupling in Exhibiting Distinct Collective Dynamical States, and Dynamics and Chimera State in a Neural Network with Memristor Coupling as researchers try to define and express this favored feature. And we also wish to record that while Iran, China along with the USA, Russia and everywhere else is in total chaos, such current findings yet remain unknown, not supposed to exist, cut off and unable to contribute this phenomenal resolve.

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