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

C. Our Earthumanity Glimpses an Animate Family Ecosmos Cocreative MultiUniVerse

Manrique, Pedro, et al. Non-equilibrium physics of multi-species assembly: From inhibition of fibrils in biomolecular condensates to growth of online distrust.. arXiv:2312.08609. George Washington University theorists including Neil Johnson (search PM, NJ) post an innovative, wide correspondence between biomolecules and sociopeople as they/we intersect, crosstalk and come together. See also Multi-Species Cohesion: Humans, machinery, AI and beyond by this group at arXiv:2401.17410. Once again a common affinity is evident across these widest reaches which then implies deeper a physical origin.

Self-assembly is a key process in living systems from the microscopic biological level (e.g. proteins into fibrils in a human cell) to the macroscopic societal level (e.g. humans into common-interest social media). The components in such systems) are highly diverse, and so are the self-assembled structures that they form. But there is no theory of how they arise from a multi-species pool. Here we provide a simple model which trades myriad chemical and human details for a transparent analysis, in good agreement. It reveals a new inhibitory role for biomolecular condensates against dangerous amyloid fibrils, as well as a kinetic reason so much distrust has now beset the internet. The nonlinear dependencies that we uncover suggest real-world control strategies to buffer and better these processes. (Excerpt).

Marshall, Stuart, et al. Formalizing the Pathways to Life using Assembly Spaces. Entropy. 24/7, 2022. As emergent personal and planetary sapience continues apace to retrospectively research, quantify and explain how we peoples came to be, University of Glasgow and Arizona State University biochemical theorists including Leroy Cronin and Sara Walker describe a computational assembly index metric by which to discern an innate orientation toward vital complex dexterity, beyond just happenstance. See also False Positives and the Challenge of Testing the Alien Hypothesis by this extended group at arXiv:2207.00634.

Assembly theory has been developed to explore the extrinsic information required to distinguish a given object from a random ensemble. Our prior work came up with key processes to deconstruct an object into parts so as to evaluate the minimum steps needed to rebuild it. Here we scope out the core mathematical concepts and boundaries on the assembly index. We explore ways to meld mathematical and physical objects to propose that a high assembly index must have been produced using directed biological or technological processes rather than purely random processes, thereby defining a new scale of aliveness. We think this approach can help identify novel physical and chemical laws so to understand what life is by quantifying what life does. (Abstract edited excerpt)

Technological processes are bootstrapped to biological ones, and hence, the production of technosignatures could be traced to a biological origin. Examples of include chemical products produced by molecular systems such as networks of enzymes, complex chemicals made in the laboratory, and the works of Shakespeare. Finding the object in some abundance, or a single object with many repeating features, is required in order to distinguish single random occurrences. For example, a system which produces long random strings will generate some that have a high assembly index. Finding the same long string more than once will tell us that there is a bias in the system towards creating that string; thus, searching for signatures of life should involve looking for an abundant high assembly index. (4, excerpt)

McGilchrist, Iain. The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. London: Perspectiva Press, 2023. The Scottish psychologist follows up his luminous, popular 2009 edition, noted below, with this two volume set whose total 1,800 pages provide an erudite survey of historical wisdom. Google his name to reach current interviews and his 2024 Darwin College talk A Revolution in Thought?. A prior referral is made by citing the traditional coincidence of opposites model, along with many more. An example of how aberrant, narrow focus our western mindset is, sans any integral sense, might be a total inability to perceive that the polarized me, right, conserve and We, left, create views are reflections of nature’s universal gender complements. See The Quantum Master and its Classical Emissary by Ruth Kastner at arXiv:2410.10902 for her views and links to a conference.

In this major work since The Master and His Emissary (2009), Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest questions that humanity faces today. Who are we? What is the world? What is consciousness, matter, space and time? In so doing, he argues that we are trapped in an account of objects by the brain's left hemisphere alone that blinds us to an awe-inspiring reality. He suggests that to understand ourselves and the world we need science and intuition, reason and imagination for which the holistic right hemisphere plays the most important aspect. By way of the latest neuroscience, philosophy and physics, he enlightens a vision that returns the world to life, and us to a better way of living in it: one we must embrace if we are to survive.

Menichetti, Giulia and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Nutrient Concentrations in Food Display Universal Behavior. Nature Food. 3/375, 2022. Northeastern University network theorists focus their studies on the wide-ranging aspects our human sustenance from its production, quality to supplies. Once more, an exemplary presence of nature’s independent, generative complexities becomes well evident even for this global speciesphere instance.

Extensive programmes around the world proceed to measure and catalogue the composition of food. Here we analyse the nutrient content of the full US food supply and show that the concentration of each nutrient follows a universal single-parameter scaling law that accurately captures the eight orders of magnitude in nutrient variability. We show that the universality is rooted in the biochemical constraints obeyed by the metabolic pathways for nutrient modulation. This provides a mathematical rationale for food composition databases and aids a quantitative understanding of food processing on nutrient balance and health effects. (Abstract excerpt)

Meshulam, Leenoy and William Bialek. Statistical mechanics for networks of real neurons.. arXiv:2409.00412. University of Washington, Seattle and Princeton University biophysicists post another late 2024 significant, comprehensive cross-integration of complex cerebral systems with newly perceived groundings in physical principles. As the quotes say, several features gain stronger notice such as an invariant similar scale, constant self-organization, and a long sought integral universality. As an eminent polyscholar, Bialek (LMs doctoral advisor at Princeton) notes the historic relevance of finally achieving a robust confluence. See also his collegial arXiv.com preprints this year such as Maximum entropy models for patterns of gene expression (arXiv:2408.08037), Ambitions for theory in the physics of life (WB, arXiv:2401.15538, herein) and Scale invariance in early embryonic development (arXiv:2312.17684).

Perceptions and actions, thoughts and memories result from coordinated activity in thousands of neurons in the brain. It is an old dream of the physics community to provide a statistical mechanics basis for these and other emergent phenomena of biological life. Our proposal here is that these aspirations are just now being fulfilled by an array of new abilities to measure the multiphase electrical activity throughout the brain. We review progress as it brings theory and experiment together by a focus on maximum entropy and renormalization groups. These confluent approaches can then discern quantitatively reproducible collective behaviors in layered networks of real neurons, and provide independent, parameter-free predictions. (Abstract)

In populations of bacteria, swarms of insects, schools of fish, and flocks of birds we see collective movements and decision making. In all these examples - akin to cerebral networks of neurons — what we recognize as the functional behavior of living systems is a macroscopic behavior that emerges from interactions of many components on a smaller scale. In the inanimate world, statistical mechanics provides a powerful and predictive framework within which to understand emergent phenomena. It has long been a goal that we could have a statistical mechanics of emergent phenomena in the living world as well. We encourage the reader to think of what we review here as progress toward this realization. (2)

In natural swarms one sees finite size and dynamical scaling behaviors that provide more direct evidence for criticality, independent of a particular instance. While each example must stand on its own, again we have wondered if tuning to this optimum spot might unify our understanding of disparate living systems. (47)

Not so long ago all we have said herein would have seemed like a remote glimmer. What has changed, dramatically, is that all these ideas — Ising models, correlation functions, scaling behaviors and the RG, and more — are connected to quantitative experiments on networks of multiplex neurons. We can now connect all the way from physical concepts to the details of specific brain regions. Our experimentalist friends will continue to move the frontier to make the brain accessible in this way. The outlook for theory is bright. (56)

Milli, Smitha, et al. A Rational Reinterpretation of Dual-Process Theories. Cognition. Vol. 217, October, 2021. This section has sought to gather many findings since the 1970s that human beings, and all creatures, possess a double neural-cognitive faculty whereof each half contributes a vital attribute. Along with bicameral brain studies, a divide into slower, think about it and fast, just do it options has a currency, but with debate. Into 2021, UC Berkeley, MPI Intelligent Systems and Princeton University scholars propose a clarification by way of the same, typical left and right hemisphere modes of separate details and contextual orientation. By so doing, an integral synthesis is achieved as a bigender complementarity. But its presence sets up a deep quandary. While a scientific, psychological, academic literature posts this historic advance, our vital bioplanet remains in a terminal condition because politics, nations, factions, warlords rage with no sense of any greater natural knowledge and guidance.

Highly influential “dual-process” accounts of human cognition postulate the coexistence of a slow accurate system with a fast error-prone system. But why would there be just two systems rather than, say, one or 93? Here, we argue that a two part faculty might reflect a rational tradeoff between the cognitive flexibility afforded by multiple systems and the time and effort required to choose between them. We find that the optimal number of systems depends on the variability of the environment and the difficulty of deciding when which system should be used. We find a plausible range of conditions under which it is better to have a fast approach without any deliberation (“System 1”) and a slower view that is more accurate through considerations (“System 2”). (Abstract)

Our analyses found two minded choice and risky-choice modes as a most suitable way to deal with a range of environments and cognitive costs: a system that performs no deliberation (“System 1”) and another with a fair amount of forethought (“System 2”). This might be why the human mind contains opposite subsystems within itself – one that is fast but fallible and one that is slow but accurate. Our findings thereby suggests that dual-process architectures could be optimal for the human mind. (12)

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)

The ways in which organisms sense and respond to environments to tune their physiologies, metabolisms, and behaviors to external cues can be observed across the biological spectrum. Lessons focusing on how plants respond and acclimate to light and nutrients, engage in symbiotic relationships to avail nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and benefit from the perspectives of groundskeepers are examples of the supportive principles of the universe. Humans often opt of such ways of sustainability and reciprocity, which leave us bereft to climate change and species extinction. We would do well to look to other organisms, such as plants, for inspiration to promote our individual and communal successes in our generation and beyond. (Conclusion)

Muthukrishna, Michael. A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2025. As the quotes and bio support, this accessible work draws on the Sri Lankan author’s international educational and personal experiences to initially describe an inclusive synthesis of life’s emergent course due more to collaborative qualities than isolate individuals. With this conducive scenario in place, the essay goes on to advocate a systems view of creative policies for energy supply and use, equitable climate mitigation, empathic social ambience and so on.

Playing on the phrase “a theory of everything” from physics, Michael Muthukrishna’s ambitious, original, and deeply hopeful book A Theory of Everyone draws on recent research across the sciences, and humanities, to paint a panoramic picture of who we are and can become. Muthukrishna argues that it is our ability to create a shared culture of knowledge, skills, and experience that distinguishes us. But it is only by understanding and applying these attributes can we solve the practical challenges and divisions that daunt us today.

Energy, innovation, cooperation, and evolution are four laws; four interconnected ways to carve up the world and explain how geography, institutions, culture, and history have played out. For now, let me show you how these laws manifest in each of our lives and then in the history of all life. (30)

Our success as a species is due to an ability to innovate, but not by individual intelligence alone. Instead, innovations are a result of our collective brains as humans come together to learn from one another and share ideas. Indeed, it is these collective processes that have led to every innovation that surrounds us. Even the simplest things in our lives are the product of accumulated knowledge, borrowed and recombined across multiple generations in diverse cultures, spanning the globe. (135)

Michael Muthukrishna is a Professor of Economic Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science and Affiliate in Developmental Economics and Data Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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.

Among the ten entries are an overview survey: Major Evolutionary Transitions and the Roles of Facilitation and Information in Ecosystem Transformations by Amanda Robin, et al, What Do We Mean by Multicellularity? The Evolutionary Transitions Framework Provides Answers by Caroline Rose and Katrin Hammerschmidt, The Evolution of Microbial Facilitation: Sociogenesis, Symbiogenesis, and Transition in Individuality by Istvan Zachar, Gergely Boza The Major Transitions in Evolution: A Philosophy of Science Perspective by Samir Okasha and notably Design for an Individual: Connectionist Approaches to the Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality by Richard, Watson, et al (search)

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)

I view my research program as the intersection of Evolutionary and Behavioral Ecology explores why questions and how issues. My students and I use several approaches from mathematical theories to empirical methods and field work in Panama. Although most of my work is with social insects, we are open to any system or species depending on how well suited they are to learn about vital evolutionary phenomena. (P. Nonacs)

I began my scientific life in Kay Holekamp's lab as at Michigan State University. After a stint as a zookeeper, I went to grad school at UCLA where my PhD was co-advised by Peter Nonacs and Bob Wayne as a shift from carnivores to bees. A post-doc followed in Gene Robinson's lab at UIUC, where I got into genomic aspects. I started my own lab at Utah State University in 2014. (K. Kapheim)

I see sociality, cooperation, conflict and communication everywhere. I work on genomics and transcriptomics, behaviour, chemical ecology and conceptual approaches to evolution. Beyond social insects, another necessary topic I study is the major transitions in evolution. In regard, I carry out theoretical and empirical analyses on similarities and differences between in complex multicellularity and superorganisms. (H. Helantera)

Odling-Smee, John. Niche Construction: How Life Contributes to Its Own Evolution.. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2024. The octogenarian author (82) has had a long dual career in British public service and at Oxford University with advanced degrees in economics and biological anthropology, which he later taught. As a result, the work covers a wider expanse with two main parts: Life on Any Planet and Life on Earth. Ten chapters course from What is Life and Information all the way to Ecosystems and How Humans are Contributing to Evolution. Our review then makes note of a strongest recognition to date of the major transitions scale and especially a latest planetary envelope, as the quotes cite. For a planetarity name we suggest a personal Earthumanity. The entire book text is accessible in a PDF on the MIT Press site.

In Niche Construction, John Odling-Smee extends evolutionary theory from how populations of organisms respond to natural selection to a more general overview about the coevolution of organisms with their environments. The author contends that orthodox evolution does not describe how organisms and groups contribute to their own environment-changing niche constructing activities. It also fails to explain how genetic guidance can give rise to knowledge-gaining processes which include individual and socio-cultural learnings in animals and our human phase. Neo-Darwinism assesses the fitness in populations, but without attributing these capacities to an active, purposeful agency.

Knowledge-gaining systems in biology must be able to sense the causal texture and dynamics of the environments that they experience in both space and time. Over time, they have to accumulate a remembered history of these interactions. The histories accumulated by different knowledge-gaining systems then provide the data that informs organisms. (75) In the context of NCT, our empirical sciences can be seen as a form of sociocultural niche construction. In the first instance, the goals of science are typically those of gaining of more meaningful information about how nature works. (129)

We have now reached the last chapter of part I. In this chapter, I will claim that everything we have discussed so far should also be relevant to life anywhere in the universe. But shouldn’t our understanding of the putative (generally considered) lawfulness of evolutionary biology be restricted to Earth? I think not, because I have described life’s evolution in a manner consistent with the fundamental under lying laws of physics and chemistry, including thermodynamics, which will not vary across the universe. (152)

Perhaps the best evidence for evolving populations of organisms breaking through barriers comes from the major transitions evolution scale which involves the aggregation and cooperation of lower-level members into a higher-level entity. Examples are the integration of genes into chromosomes and single cells into multicellular metazoan organisms. Herein I propose to consider the origin of life, prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, and the transition from social animals to language-based, human sociocultural groups. (286)

There is considerable evidence that the evolution of life on Earth has proceeded through a series of major transitions in evolution, and again niche construction lies at the heart of it. I’ll focus on bioinformatics whereby each succession achieves an increase in the efficiency of a knowledge-gaining process. According to Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry, the last of these major transitions refers to the appearance of human societies, and language. I suggest that this corresponds to the moment when the evolutionary process becomes aware of itself, at least in the conscious, intelligent minds of one of its own creatures - human beings. (345)

From our human point of view, the individual cells in our bodies have a purpose to contribute to something greater than themselves— namely, us. By analogy, I suspect that we may be contributing to something incomparably greater than ourselves by our mortal lives. But unlike the individual cells, we may slowly come to know a great deal more about what we may be contributing to. If we can avoid self-destruction, and if we don’t destroy science, there is every chance that our collective understanding of what we may be contributing to will increase. (346)

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)

Ovchinnikov, Igor. Ubiquitous order known as chaos. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals. 181/114611, 2024.. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals. 181/114611, 2024. We cite this entry by a Russian-American researcher with a physics PhD from UCLA as a notable instance whence Western notions of a random, unwieldy nature can be perceived, if one is so moved, as suffused with an inherent orderliness. The basic source of this alternative view is a referral to a “supersymmetric theory of stochastic dynamics.” See also From Disorder to Design: Entropy-Driven Self-Organization in an Agent Based Swarming Model and Pattern Formation by Vinesh Vijayan, et al at arXiv:2503.18401 for a similar notice from India. In regard, each instance tacitly fassumes a phenomenal existence which is distinguished by an iconic self-similarity.

A close relation has recently emerged between two of the most fundamental concepts in physics and mathematics: chaos and supersymmetry. In contrast to the word 'chaos,' its true physical essence now appears to be a spontaneous order caused by the breakdown of the topological supersymmetry (TS) in all systems from cosmology to nanoscience. This new perspective be called the supersymmetric theory of stochastic dynamics (STS) as theoretical explanations of 1/f noise and self-organized criticality. In this paper, we discuss a field-theoretic embodiment of the butterfly effect which would provide its first consistent physical theory. (I. Ovchinnikov)
From a more general perspective, STS establishes a solid link between dynamical systems and high-energy physics theories. This link may help elevating fields such as hydrodynamics and neurodynamics to a higher level of mathematical precision, rigor, and predictive power. In return, high-energy physics can get access to a broad experimental testing ground for concepts that were previously confined solely to the realm of theoretical abstraction. (9)

This letter seeks to illuminate the profound connection between complexity, self-organization, emergent behaviour, pattern formation, and entropy concepts that are vital to understand our universe. By examining these aspects through the lenses of physics, information theory, and nonlinear dynamics, we uncover a fascinating narrative. Starting with a random cluster of particles possessing distinct internal properties, we activate their interactions and observe the occurrence of intricate patterns. This journey reveals a transition to more probable states. (V. Vijayan)

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