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I. Our Planatural Edition: A 21st Century PhiloSophia, Earthropo Ecosmic PediaVersionC. An Earthumanity Era: A 2020s Cerebral Cyberspace Achieves a Worldwise Knowsphere Resource Montgomery, Beronda. Following the Principles of the Universe: Lessons from Plants on Individual and Communal Thriving. Integrative and Comparative Biology. August, 2023. Beronda L. Montgomery is Professor of Biology, and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Grinnell College, Iowa follows up her 2021 book with this title by a further survey of natural wisdom teachings as everything get worse. In regard, we note forester Suzanne Simard who warned of Canadian fires in 2016, and Merlin Sheldrake who writes about fungi webworks (search each). Please also refer to the ubuntu Universe section about an African woman’s wisdom. The means by which planets and exist in and respond to dynamic environments to thrive as individuals and in communities can provide lessons for humans on sustainable and resilient abide. As a follow up to my 2021 book, Lessons from Plants (Harvard UP), I consider how insights gathered from plant physiology, phenotypic plasticity, and plant growth vitalities can help us improve our lives and our society. Plants are even capable of transformative behaviors so aa to boost their chances of survival, while modifying environs in which they abide. These lessons focus on how plants achieve their own purposes by following common lively principles of the natural universe. (Excerpt)
Nonacs, Peter, et al.
Social Evolution and the Major Evolutionary Transition in the History of Life.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
December,
2021.
The editors for this special section are Peter Nonacs UCLA (Center for Behavior, Evolution & Culture,) Karen Kapheim, Utah State University (comparative genomics) and Heikki Helantera, University of Helsinki, (evolutionary ecology) are deeply engaged in field and conceptual studies which could be well served by an endemic structural arrangement and emergent orientation (Brief capsules in their own words below.) As an observation, just as a teleologic course could no longer be ignored (section herein), so this nested scale from 1995 is now similarly gaining a full, revelant acceptance. Its inclusion then describes a revolutionary (EarthWin) appreciation of life’s true developmental gestation. A further merit is a strongest case to date for an ascendant personsphere sapience learning on her/his own. In their classic 1995 book, John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmáry sketched the evident presence of eight major evolutionary transitions (METs) in the long history of life on earth. But 27 years since, optional views, and detail debates about defining features and qualities still persist. Attempts to find deep, constant patterns and processes also go on, but have not yet integrated this entire sweep of evolution and ecology from replicating molecules to loquacious humans. It seemed appropriate to post a topical issue which could gather, assimilate and enjoin these many aspects, air specific issues and consider a common, nested sequence. To wit, METs are seen to occur as fusions of independent individuals into a higher order entity, along with a novel way that information is stored and transmitted. In addition, the ecological context where this ascendant course goes on is rarely considered. Into these 2020s, new findings and novel ideas about life’s developmental stirrings, genetic bases and consequent course to our consummate global retrospective could provide a salutary synthesis. (Nonacs, et al, Introduction excerpt) Ourllette, Nicholas. A Physics Perspective on Collective Animal Behavior. Physical Biology. 19.2, 2022. The Stanford University systems physicist (search) has become a leading authority for the study of dynamic group-wide activities, and the derivation of common features across all manner of species. His subject choice has been midge insects suitable for laboratory tests. (I heard Nicholas speak at UMass Amherst around 2010 when he was at Yale. A view even back then was that it didn’t matter which critter one chose, they all behave the same.) Into 2022, this timely review with 160 references can now cite a robust confirmation of this natural invariance. Premier research has investigated avian flocking, fish pods, wildebeest herds and all the way to invertebrate molds. (That is, except people because individual me yet opposes social We.) Akin to Self-Organization in Stellar Evolution (Georigiev, 2022), our EarthWise endeavors seem to be entering a new convergent stage of universal confirmations. Stars and starlings array and move to the same independent, genotype-like score and script. We may begin to glimpse an actual 2020s discovery that our participatory bioplanet is meant to achieve. The dynamic patterns and coordinated motion displayed by groups of social animals are a beautiful example of self-organization in natural far-from-equilibrium systems. Recent advances in active-matter physics have enticed physicists to consider how their results can be extended from microscale physical systems to groups of real, macroscopic animals. At the same time, better measurement technologies have achieved high-quality empirical data for animal groups both in the laboratory and the wild. In this review, I describe how physicists have approached synthesizing, modeling, and interpreting this information, both at the level of individual animals and the group scale. I focus on the kinds of analogies that physicists have made between animal groups and more traditional areas of physics. (Abstract) Parisi, Giorgio. In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems. New York: Penguin, 2023. . As a way to belatedly recognize so many advances in this new scientific field, the 2022 Nobel physics prize was awarded to Giorgio Parisi, a pioneer Italian theorist since the 1970s as a representative choice.. In response he wrote this slim edition as a broad survey of science itself, its social values, and specific aspects such as phase transitions and collective phenomena, spin glasses and so on. But we remind that this 21st century revolution remains at much odds with the old particle paradigm whereof nothing else exists or is going on by itself. In a Flight of Starlings, celebrated physicist Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work, starting with investigating the principles of physics by observing the flight of flocks of birds. Studying the movements of these communities, he has realized, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kind from atoms to other animals, such as ourselves, and onto planets. Along the way, he reflects on the lessons he has taken from a life in pursuit of scientific truth: the importance of serendipity to the discovery of new ideas, the surprising kinship between physics and other disciplines, and the value of science to a thriving society. Giorgio Parisi is a professor of theoretical physics at the Sapienza University of Rome. Plotnitsky, Arkady and Emmanuel Haven, eds. The Quantum-Like Revolution: A Festschrift for Andrei Khrennikov. Online: Springer, 2023. A Purdue University physicist and a Memorial University, Canada economist gather a steady flow of frontier, innovative papers by the Russian polyscientist presently at the International Center for Mathematical Modeling in Physics and Cognitive Sciences, Linnaeus University, Sweden. Search AK on the arXiv.org eprint site for some 321 results. A main theme of his expansive thought is to explain how quantum phenomena is similarly evident in many seemingly far-removed areas. For a latest paper see Open Systems, Quantum Probability, and Logic for Quantum-like Modeling in Biology, Cognition, and Decision-Making in Entropy (25/6, 2023, also 2306.08599) Over the last ten years, the malleable formalism of quantum-like models are broadly applied in areas such as psychology, cognition, economics, political science, and molecular biology. This Festschrift honors a key figure in this field: Andrei Khrennikov, who made momentous contributions to both quantum foundations and these expansions. But the volume orients its reader more toward the future. Khrennikov’s luminous, frontier advances have well established the great promise of quantum and quantum-like thinking across an interdisciplinary 21st century synthesis of classical phases and the physical foundations that they manifestly arise from and exemplify. (Book)
Ravn, Ib.
Beyond Chaos and Rigidity, Flexstability.
New Ideas in Psychology.
August,
2022.
As peoples and cultures world over become so polarized between such dual archetypal opposites, persuasions or fixations, a senior Aarhus University, Danish School of Education psychologist proposes an evident (once and future) middle way integrative unity. See also similar suggestions such as tradition and innovation by Jagiello, Heyes and Whitehouse, and participants and socialism by Thomas Piketty. In our regard, an active balance of conserve/create, regress/progress, particle/wave, war/peace, me individual/We society on every scale and instance can viably ensue. mitigate and resolve. Chaos and rigidity are often used to describe problematic psychological states. If they are to be avoided, how does one conceive of a normative alternative? This paper proposes that underlying chaos and rigidity are two dimensions of healthy human experience, those of stability (focus, routine, unity) and flexibility (exploration, novelty, diversity). This essay proposes an optimal, unified state of “flexstability” in which individuals experience both flexibility and stability at the same moment. Chaos can be now understood as flexibility without stability, and rigidity as stability without flexibility. We apply this option to seven research areas in psychology: parenting styles, identity formation, development of mind, flow, creativity, emotional regulation and self-determination. (Abstract) Safron, Adam, et al. Making and Breaking Symmetries in Mind and Life. Interface Focus. April, 2023. Johns Hopkins University, SUNY Stony Brook, McGill University, Monash University and Tufts University (Michael Levin) introduce and edit an eclectic collection as a thematic essence that mindful behaviors provide a heretofore undervalued formative force. A broad sample of entries include Reflections on the Asymmetry of Causation by Jenann Ismael; On Bayesian Mechanics: A Physics of and by Beliefs by Maxwell Ramstead, et al; Embodied cognitive morphogenesis as a route to intelligent systems by Bradley Alicea, et al, As Without, So Within: How the Brain’s Temporal-Spatial Alignment Shapes Consciousness by Georg Northoff, et al; Emergence of common concepts, symmetries and conformity in agent groups by Marco Moller and Daniel Polani. Symmetries appear throughout the natural world, making them important in our quest to understand the world around us.. The study of symmetries is so fundamental to mathematics and physics that one might ask where else it proves useful. This theme issue poses the question: what does the study of symmetry, and symmetry breaking, have to offer for the study of life and the mind? (Excerpt) Sagan, Dorion. From Empedocles to Symbiogenesis: Lynn Margulis’s Revolutionary Influence on Evolutionary Biology. Biosystems. June, 2021. We cite this latest essay as a succinct record of her valiant endeavor to break out of old male fixation into a vital sense of an animate procreation graced by a universal principle of positive, reciprocal conciliations between all phases of organic entities. Yet we have a world tearing itself apart due to violent oppositions, which is in desperate need for such a unifying scientific vision. I have heard and met Lynn in Amherst, in my opinion she could merit being the one woman who could rise to the status of a Newton or Darwin. As a primary expositor of the work of Lynn Margulis collaborating with her over thirty years on over thirty books and forty articles, scientific and popular, I attempt here to summarize her unique and lasting influence on evolutionary biology. Describing life on Earth as the multi-billion-year evolution of microbial communities, from prokaryotes maintaining Earth's atmosphere away from thermodynamic equilibrium to all eukaryotes as polygenomic beings, Margulis's interdisciplinary work has deeply influenced multiple fields including systematics, theories of the evolution of metabolism, paleobiology, and biogeochemistry. Overturning the neo-Darwinist narrative that speciation almost always occurs by the gradual accumulation of random mutations, Margulis's work revives a discarded philosophical speculation of the pre-Socratic Empedocles, who suggested that Earth's early beings both merged and differentially reproduced. Margulis's curiosity-driven science, collaborative work ethic, status as a woman, embrace of novelty, philosophical stance, current status of her theories, and the proposal for a new science of symbiogenetics are among the topics examined. (Abstract excerpt)
Sanchez-Puig, Fernanda, et al.
Heterogeneity Extends Criticality.
arXiv.2208.06439.
In August 2022, a five person team with postings at the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México, Microsoft, Redmond, Aalto University, Finland and far afield including Carlos Gershenson achieve a significant advance toward identifying how and why a middle way poise between a relative more or less order seems to be nature’s optimum preference. As the quotes cite, while equilibrium, homogeneous conditions are widespread, many animate, cerebral and environmental situations exist in and benefit from a dynamic, non-equilibrium or heterogeneous mode. In technical terms, these tendencies are dubbed a self-organized criticality, aka chimera states. The paper makes a major point that such a phenomenal distinction, along with other reasons, can well explain this “sweet spot” universality that complex network systems from galactic clusters to communal groupings tend to seek and at best achieve. Criticality states have been proposed as vital for the emergence of complexity, life, and computation, as it exhibits a balance between order and chaos. In classic models of complex systems where structure and dynamics are considered homogeneous, criticality is restricted to phase transitions. Many real-world complex systems, however, are not homogeneous as elements change in time faster than others, with slower main elements providing robustness, and faster ones being adaptive. Connectivity patterns are likely heterogeneous with few elements and many interactions. Our studies well support this distinction and the ubiquitous presence of heterogeneity across physical, biological, social and technological systems. (Abstract)
Sarkanych, Petro, et al.
Network Analysis of the Kyiv Bylyny Cycle – East Slavic Epic Narratives.
arXiv:2203.10399.
This March 19 entry could not be more timely to an extent that our review could illume the historic, 20th to 21st century, homo to Earthropo sapience, complex network science ecosmic revolution. The authors are PS, and Yurij Holovatch (search) Doctoral College for the Statistical Physics of Complex Systems, National Scientific Academy of Ukraine; Nazar Fedorak, Ukrainian Catholic University; Padraig Maccarron, University of Limerick, Ireland; Josef Yose and Ralph Kenna (search) Coventry University, UK. With their veteran erudition, they bring a scholarship which can allow, perceive and verify a thousand heroic versions of gore and glory (little love) which yet hold to and manifest a common, fractal-like storyline with an array of iconic characters. But as March madness carnage engulfs Lviv, an ancient treasure, such an Earthuman learning, thinking faculty whom can witness these integral patterning is still unknown. For such reasons, we remain unable to add the evident presence of an independent, universal mathematic source code in genetic effect. Since the pioneering work of Joseph Campbell in the 1960's, universality emerged as an important qualitative notion in the field of comparative mythology. In recent times, the advent of network science permitted new quantitative approaches to literary studies. Here we bring the Kyiv bylyny cycle into the field -- East Slavic epic narratives originating in modern-day Ukraine. By comparison to other European epics, we can novel commonalities of social networks in bylyny. We analyse community structures and rank important characters. The method can define the solar position of Prince Volodymyr and show how the Kyiv cycle has affinities wih narrative networks from similar national tales. Besides new narratological insights, we hope this study will aid scholars and peoples to better appreciate Ukraine's heroic history. (Abstract excerpt) (We ought to notice that Putin’s brave adversary, the Ukrainian president is named Volodymyr.) Scharf, Caleb and Olaf Witkowski. Rebuilding the Habitable Zone from the Bottom Up with Computational Zones. arXiv:2303.16111. CS is now at NASA Goddard (see below, search) and OW is a University of Tokyo astrobiologist who introduce and exercise an array of novel insights about an essential nature of life and beingness, broadly conceived, so as to better find, perceive and understand. We offer these several quotes. Computation, if treated as a set of physical processes that act on information represented by states of matter, encompasses biological, digital and other phases, and may be a fundamental measure of living systems. The opportunity for biological computation, via the propagation and selection-driven evolution of information-carrying organic molecular structures, has so far been applied to planetary habitable zones with conditions such as temperature and liquid water. Here a general concept is proposed by way of three features: capacity, energy, and substrate. (Excerpt)
Sharma, Abhishek et al..
Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution.
Nature.
October 4,
2023.
After a series of prior drafts (search authors), life origin theorists from the University of Glasgow, SFI and ASU including Sara Walker and Leroy Cronin scope out a robust proposal for how the whole temporal process from universe to us might just have occurred. But a serious impediment is that it is seen to begin and proceed, as the abstract cites, without any inherent physical source or purposeful direction. In our public record, we next cite a number of pro and con entries. Scientists have long tried to reconcile biological evolution1 with the immutable laws of the Universe defined by physics. These laws underpin life’s origin, evolution along with human culture, yet do not entail these phenomena. To comprehend how diverse, open-ended forms can arise from physics without a design blueprint, a new approach to understanding selection is necessary. We present an Assembly Theory method with physical basis, but does not view point particles, but entities defined by their formation histories. This approach enables us to add novelty generation into complex objects. By a concept of matter within assembly spaces, AT provides a unique interface between physics and biology. (Abstract)
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