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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
Table of Contents
Introduction
Genesis Vision
Learning Planet
Organic Universe
Earth Life Emerge
Genesis Future
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I. Our Planatural Edition: A 21st Century PhiloSophia, Earthropo Ecosmic PediaVersion

A. Historic Prescience: Individual Homo Sapiens

Kimball, Jean. Odyssey of the Psyche. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. An exegesis of James Joyce’s mythic Ulysses through individuation psychology.

In this view, as in the Christian hypostatic union, the protagonists are not simply opposites, who may in some way instruct or redeem each other, but complementarities, who are absolutely necessary to each other and who together form one person with two conflicting natures which never lose their separate identities. (14) Jung’s theory of the nature and development of the psyche may thus be viewed as a twentieth century psychoanalytic reformulation of the coincidence of contraries that Christian doctrine posits in Christ and, by extension, in the human personality as well. (15)

Knyazeva, Helena. Russian Cosmism and the Modern Theory of Complexity. Tymieniecka, Anna and Atilla Grandpierre, eds.. Astronomy and Civilization in the New Enlightenment. Analecta Husserliana, 2011. The Russian Academy of Sciences philosopher proposes that a century or so after the holistic visionaries named in the quote, complex system science can be found to have a deep resemblance with this expansive vista of Russian thought, more akin to Eastern anthropocosmos than Western mechanism. As a consequence, once and future appreciations and affirmations are possible of life’s integral florescent genesis.

From the standpoint of the modern theory of complexity, one can discover new, nontrivial senses in the notions of main representatives of the Russian cosmism (Nicolay A. Berdyayev, Sergey N. Bulgakov, Vladimir I. Vernadsky, Alexander K. Gorsky, Valerian N. Muravyov, Vladimir S. Solovyov, Nicolay A. Umov, Nicolay A. Fyodorov, Pavel A. Florensky, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, etc.). The most influential their notions are the following: the constructive role of chaos in evolution, the active creative activities of a man in achieving final objects, the animated nature of any thing in cosmos and seeds of life scattered in the universe, the integrity of biosphere and noosphere, the mastering of time and the purposeful opening up new media of habitation. The problems of evolutionary aims and integrity, of the active role of man in choosing of a preferable path of evolution are central in the modern theory of complexity (the theory of self-organization of complex systems, or synergetics) as well. (Abstract 229)

The Russian cosmists were convinced that the hierarchical scale of evolutionary forms of nature is persistent. They believed in the animated nature of cosmic entities. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) wrote: “The whole Universe is alive but the force of sensibility becomes apparent in all its magnificence only for the highest animals.” “Atom is always living and always happy in spite of enormous spaces of nonexistence or stages inorganic matter.” These thought could be found naïve ones but the modern theory of complexity reveals a profound rational sense in them. (232)

The theory builds bridges between the lifeless and living nature, between quasi-purposeful behavior of natural systems and rationality of a man, between the birth of something new in nature and the human creative activity. The theory discovers universal patterns of self-organization. Structures in plasma or molecules in convection currents in liquids or gases behave like living creatures, because they are able to self-organize and to self-completing of an integral structure. (232)

Kochen,, Manfred, ed. Information for Action: From Knowledge to Wisdom. New York: Academic Press, 1975. A significant precursor noted Google and the Culture of Search, (Hillis, 2012) of extrapolations about the evident promise of and need for a salutary global repository of human learning. Contributors include Gerald Feinberg, John Platt, Karl Deutsch, Derek de Solla Price, along with The World Brain by Eugene Garfield, and Evolution of Brainlike Social Organs by Kochen.

In his 1938 World Brain, H. G. Wells argued for a sweeping reform in the way in which we bring our accumulated wealth of knowledge into effective reaction upon our day-to-day economic, social, and political affairs. He urged, as a minimum, that the scholarly community discuss the desirability and feasibility of ideas such as his “World Encyclopedia” or alternatives. One such alternative, of main interest here, is a movement, a social organ, a set of principles, called WISE (World Information synthesis Encyclopedia). This book is the result of efforts, since 1960, to bring together some of the most creative, critical, and insightful thinkers, potential builders and supporters, to discuss this theme.

Koestler, Arthur. Janus. Oxford: Pergamon, 1978. A valiant attempt by the renowned author to move beyond scientific reductionism by constructing a systems theory of “holoarchy” which reflects the innovative, modular rise of life.

The point first to be emphasized is that each member of this hierarchy, on whatever level, is a sub-whole or ‘holon’ in its own right - a stable, integrated structure, equipped with self-regulatory devices and enjoying a considerable degree of autonomy or self-government. Cells, muscles, nerves, organs, all have their intrinsic rhythms and patterns of activity…they are subordinated as parts to the higher centres in the hierarchy, but at the same time function as quasi-autonomous wholes. They are Janus-faced. The face turned upward, toward the higher levels, is that of a dependent part; the face turned downward, towards its own constituents, is that of a whole of remarkable self- sufficiency. (27) Ontogeny and phylogeny, the development of the individual and the evolution of species, are the two grand hierarchies of becoming. (43)

Kreps, David. Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. The University of Salford, Manchester scholar combines a life experience as a community theatre director with a later doctorate in computer science and projects of website design, information systems, and social networks, so as to foster a sustainable planet. A unique volume on the life, work, and new relevance of the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) is the result. The work opens with his views upon a natural organic vitality, best told in Creative Evolution (1907), for which he won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature. As a French precursor to Pierre Teilhard (1881-1955) who continued this vision, phenomenal human beings are to be seen as evolving life’s highest form, over and against entropy. (second quote).

A century later, Kreps goes on to show how the sciences of complex, self-organizing, dynamic systems align quite well with Bergson’s version, which then achieve its actual confirmation. By this novel theoretical articulation and veracity, what he sought to express with an essential life force can be understood. By so doing, another window upon a 21st century cosmic revolution from a sterile mechanical paradigm to an innately vibrant, quickening genesis is opened. As a note, Alwyn Scott’s The Nonlinear Universe (2007, search) closes by saying that Henri Bergson vitalism seems to be true after all.

Bergson’s universe is thus infused with consciousness – to varying degrees – because it endures. This consciousness, moreover, beyond the simple inert matter of existence, acts upon that inert matter to generate life. For Bergson, life is understood as the gathering, ordering principle that sets itself in opposition to the entropy of the inert. Life, bursting forth explosively wherever it can, always seeks ever greater and more diverse forms. For Bergson life is driven by another of his famous intuitions, the elan vital: a principle of ordering and a direction of flow, not some magic substance or divine essence that somehow distinguishes the living from the inert. Consciousness, acting upon inert matter through life, ultimately seeks out its mirror, and includes, at its pinnacle, self-aware and social consciousness in the form of humankind. (12)

Strikingly, as I shall lay out in Chapter 5, this new evolutionism, informed by complexity theory, turns out to be much in keeping with Bergson’s own evolutionism: The principle of self-organization in living systems as the very elan vital of which he wrote a century ago. (14) It is thus in the sense that we are the best yet, down one line of development, under the circumstances – not the best nor planned for – that Bergson can be described as a human exceptionalist; the best expression of the original impulse of life that it has been able yet to conjure in its upward, self-organizing emergence against the downward tide of entropy – at least on this planet. (224)

Kuhn, Hans. Origin of Life and Physics. IBM Journal of Research and Development. 32/1, 1988. In an issue on Basic Concepts in Quantum and Stochastic Transport in honor of Rolf Landauer, the MPI Biological Chemistry theorist (1919-2012) contends, ahead of its present time, that life, evolution, thought ought to and can be seen as integral with abiding physical nature. By this view, the universe is imbued with progressive “information carrying and knowledge accumulating systems.” A companion article in the same number, World as System Self-synthesized by Quantum Networking by John Archibald Wheeler (one of his premier essays), is referred to as a good working example.

The quantum, strangest feature of this strange universe, cracks the armor that conceals the secret of existence. In contrast to the view that the universe is a machine governed by some magic equation, we explore here the view that the world is a self-synthesizing system of existences, built on observer-participancy via a network of elementary quantum phenomena. The elementary quantum phenomenon in the sense of Bohr, the elementary act of observer-participancy, develops definiteness out of indeterminism, secures a communicable reply in response to a well-defined question. The rate of carrying out such yes-no determinations, and their accumulated number, are both minuscule today when compared to the rate and number to be anticipated in the billions of years yet to come. The coming explosion of life opens the door, however, to an all-encompassing role for observer-participancy: to build, in time to come, no minor part of what we call its past—our past, present, and future—but this whole vast world. (Wheeler Abstract)

Liljeros, Fredrik, et al. Universal Mechanisms in the Growth of Voluntary Organizations. arXiv:nlin/0310001. We cite this 2003 posting (the eprint site was just getting going) by FL, Stockholm University, Luis Amaral, Northwestern University, and Eugene Stanley, Boston University as an early 21st century example (network theory was just dawning) whence the presence of a common complexity in kind everywhere, even in this case of economic labor unions.

We analyze the growth statistics of Swedish trade unions and find a universal functional form for the probability distribution of growth rates of union size, and a power law dependence of the standard deviation of this distribution on the number of members of the union. We also find that the typical size and the typical number of local chapters scales as a power law of the union size. Intriguingly, our results are similar to results reported for other human organizations of a quite different nature. Our findings are consistent with the possibility that universal mechanisms may exist governing the growth patterns of human organizations. (Abstract)

Mack, Gerhard. Universal Dynamics, a Unified Theory of Complex systems, Emergence, Life and Death. Communications in Mathematical Physics. 219/141, 2001. We cite this paper in 2015 by a University of Hamburg physicist as an example just a while ago of this grail goal over the centuries of a common repetition in kind across universe and human. But it was sketchy and elusive even at the turn of the century. Although “relational” consistencies and regularities between things and/or agents is evoked, a thorough proof remained years away. But as our new 2015 Universality section and elsewhere documents, wherein papers cite a specific instance as an exemplary manifestation, a grand confirmation is at last being achieved.

Mallove, Eugene. The Quickening Universe. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. Here is an example of how what is observed depends so much on one’s inclination. The whole sweep of cosmic evolution reveals to this astrophysicist not sterile mechanism but a universe becoming progressively alive, a genesis.

Marmodoro, Anna. Everything in Everything: Anaxagoras’ Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. The Corpus Christi College, Oxford University philosopher provides a third millennium exposition of the pre-Socratic Greek sage to epitomize original imaginations about this august worldly realm we human beings came to find ourselves in and of. From our late vantage, a sense of a numinous nature due to and vitalized by a “cosmic, cognitive Nous” which expresses in similar kind everywhere was already apparent. From the very outset this “extreme mixture” is distinguished by “every phenomenal thing” as a mutual “combination of opposites.” In many words and images since, this perennial translation has proceeded from Taoist sages, Nahua shamans, Kemetic MAAT, onto St. Bonaventure, Gregor Hegel, a host of voices and visions, but now languishes in denials by academe. See also Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (2007) by David Sedley for another take.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (Vth century BCE) is best known in the history of philosophy for his stance that there is a share of everything in everything. He puts forward this theory of extreme mixture as a solution to the problem of change he and his contemporaries inherited from Parmenides - that what is cannot come from what is not (and vice versa). Yet, for ancient and modern scholars alike, the metaphysical significance of Anaxagoras's position has proven challenging to understanding. In Everything in Everything, Anna Marmodoro offers a fresh interpretation of Anaxagoras's theory of mixture, arguing for its soundness and also relevance to contemporary debates in metaphysics. For Anaxagoras the fundamental elements of reality are the opposites (hot, cold, wet, dry, etc.), which Marmodoro argues are instances of physical causal powers. The unchanging opposites compose mereologically, forming (phenomenologically) emergent wholes. Everything in the universe (except nous) derives from the opposites. The opposite exist as endlessly partitioned; they can be scattered everywhere and be in everything. Mardomoro further shows that their extreme mixture is made possible by the omni-presence and hence com-presence in the universe, which is in turn facilitated by the limitless divisibility of the opposites.

May, J. and M. Groder. Jungian Thought and Dynamical Systems. Psychological Perspectives. 20/1, 1989. Early inklings that nascent complexity sciences will open new windows on soul and psyche. The whole issue is devoted to this subject.

The notion that the universe represents the operation of a single iterative process is becoming a common theme in quantum and information theory.

Meulders, Michel. Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. A Catholic University of Louvain emeritus professor of neuroscience provides an appreciative, well written biography of Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), who as physicist and physician could be seen as an icon of 19th century scientific thought and progress. With university posts at Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin, his works ranged from particle field theory to the invention of the ophthalmoscope. But in Meulders scholarly acumen, the work proceeds to survey the Naturphilosophie of the age, which Helmholtz was immersed in. The narrative flows from Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) through Bruno, Spinosa, Kant, Herder, theosophy, Goethe, others, to Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) as a reflection on the abiding Romantic sense of a numinous earth and cosmos. A chapter on Vitalism shows that it was not a mystical essence but, as the second quote, as an implied creative source that moved embryos, organisms and life’s ascendant evolution. The 17th century phrase “active dynamics” is akin to the recent “active matter” from statistical physics (search Marcetti). It is indeed remarked that Johannes Muller’s “vital force” comes “quite close to our modern concept of a genetic program.”

Each monad was different and changed continuously according to an “internal principle.” Thus, the monad appeared as a force and as a hub of energy uniting matter and spirit. These successive transformations affected only a part of the monad; otherwise it kept its individual identity, thus preserving its invariance. According to Leibniz’s vision, all living beings, human or animal, represented an ensemble or community of monads, each corresponding to the above definition. (20) By introducing infinity in the finite and the unconscious in the conscious, by affirming the creativity of a nature inhabited by the divine and the concept of preestablished harmony, making of each monad a whole world like a mirror of God and of the whole universe, Leibniz weigh heavily in the heritage left by philosophers to the German romantics. (21)

The appearance of mechanistic concepts of the living being, so dear to Cartesianism, left the body passively exposed to the aggressions of the environment and to the rigors of physical laws, without the compensation of an active principle. Hence, the interest of numerous physiologists in what Leibniz called “active dynamics,” with living matter finding the source of its activity within itself, a mechanistic explanation of life being possible thanks to a particular “force” intrinsic to matter. (58)

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