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VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality

1. Systems Physiology and Psychology: Somatic and Behavioral Development

Spencer, John, et al. Moving Toward a Grand Theory of Development. Child Development. 77/6, 2006. Former doctoral students of the late University of Indiana psychology professor Esther Thelen offer a considerate retrospective of her pioneering innovations in the use of dynamic systems theory (DST) to understand the self-organization of a child’s kinetic and cognitive experience. Learning to walk and to learn via DST involves four aspects – a temporal mode, multiple nonlinear interactions, embodiment, and one’s unique individuality. Upon reflection, might one observe that human and universe organize themselves in the same manner, each on the way to self-realization.

Spencer, John, et al, eds. Toward a Unified Theory of Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. By way of a copious convergence of Connectionism, aka Parallel Distributed Processing, generally due to David Rumelhart, and here coeditor James McClelland, and the Dynamic Systems Theory of Esther Thelen and Linda Smith. The first school more involves neural net cognitive processes, while the second is concerned with how a child grows and learns. Now an aim of this website is to gather such various methods, e.g., also complex adaptive systems, autopoiesis, et al, from disparate fields and mentors, and by way of translation to a common lexicon convey how they each and all are trying to explain one and the same phenomena everywhere.

The two approaches conceive of this self-organization differently. For dynamic systems theories, developmental change is an emergent product of interactions among multiple components, occurring on many different timescales. Theories adopting this framework emphasize multicausality and self-organization emerging out of the real-time dynamics of the child’s own activity in a structured environment. For connectionist theories of development, reorganization emerges out of nonlinearities in learning and new structures only emerge from the interaction of the existing structure and environmental input. (269) Central to both connectionist and dynamic systems theories of development, therefore, is the explicit idea that new structures and behaviors are emergent products of multiple, interacting components. (269)

Stanger, Ben. From One Cell: A Journey into Life's Origins and the Future of Medicine. New York: Norton, 2023. A professor of medicine and cell and developmental biology at the University of Pennsylvania and a practicing gastroenterologist gifts us with this unique, lifelong timeline we have all traversed.

Each of us began life as a single cell. From this humble origin, we embarked on a risky journey fraught with difficulties, yet reached our destination as complex, exquisite assemblages of trillions of cells. From One Cell offers a vivid glimpse into what scientists are discovering about how life and the body take shape, and how the plethora of different tissues that compose our bodies arises from a single source. As Stanger shows us, the answers may empower us to solve persistent medical challenges from cancer to cognitive decline to degenerative disease.

Stella, Massimo, et al. Multiplex Lexical Networks Reveal Patterns in Early Word Acquisition. Nature Scientific Reports. 7/46730, 2017. We cite this entry by systems neuroscientists M. Stella and Markus Brede, University of Southampton, UK, with Nicole Beckage, University of Kansas, as a frontier example of how the latest understandings of network phenomena, namely dynamic multiplex layering, can find apply and veracity in many disparate domains.

Sturmberg, Joachim, et al. The Trajectory of Life: Decreasing Physiological Network Complexity through Changing Fractal Patterns. Frontiers in Physiology. Vol. 6/Art. 169, 2015. Sturmberg, University of Newcastle, NSW, Jeanette Bennett, University of North Carolina, Martin Picard, University of Pennsylvania, and Andrew Seeley, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute write a summary paper about how the wellbeing or lack thereof across a person’s life span can be due to, and tracked by, the quality of their nonlinear dynamic systems.

In this position paper, we submit a synthesis of theoretical models based on physiology, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and non-linear time-series analysis. Based on an understanding of the human organism as a system of interconnected complex adaptive systems, we seek to examine the relationship between health, complexity, variability, and entropy production, as it might be useful to help understand aging, and improve care for patients. While still controversial and under investigation, it appears conceivable that the integrity of whole body complexity may be, at least partially, reflected in the degree and variability of intrinsic biologic rhythms, which we believe are related to overall system complexity that may be a defining feature of health and it's loss through aging. Harnessing this information for the development of therapeutic and preventative strategies may hold an opportunity to significantly improve the health of our patients across the trajectory of life. (Abstract excerpts)

Suparna, Choudhury, et al.. A Neuroecosocial Perspective on Adolescent Development.. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology. volume 5, 2023. McGill University, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, and Cambridge University, UK provide a latest erudite perspective on these difficult transitional years by an emphasis on important contextual aspects.


Adolescence is a period of life that encompasses biological maturation and profound change in social roles. It is also associated with many mental health problems. The field of developmental cognitive neuroscience has advanced our understanding of the brain within its immediate social and cultural context. In this article, we review the landscape of youth mental health and brain formation during adolescence and consider the research role in learning the effects of current social determinants of adolescent psychologies, including socioeconomic inequality, city living, and eco-anxiety about the climate crisis. (Abstract)

Thelen, Esther and Linda Smith. A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993. The book which set a basic outline and agenda for the field.

Thus, in our approach to fundamental questions of mental life, we invoke principles of great generality. These are the principles of nonlinear dynamic systems, and they concern problems of emergent order and complexity: how structure and patterns arise from the cooperation of many individual parts. (xiii) In the recent past, the biological study of the whole organism has been overshadowed by the remarkable and compelling advances made by reductionist paradigms in genetics and molecular biology. The tide is turning now with the emerging study of complex systems rooted in powerful mathematical and physical principles. (xx)

Thelen, Esther and Linda Smith. Dynamic Systems Theories. Lerner, Richard, vol. ed. Handbook of Child Psychology. 6th Edition. Vol. 1: Theoretical Models of Human Development. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006. The late Esther Thelen, along with Linda Smith, professors of psychology at Indiana University, have been the prime originators since the early 1990s of this prime reconception of how persons self-develop from infancy over both spatial and temporal dimensions. Again refer to copious work herein. In their succinct survey, these two themes recur:

1. Development can only be understood as the multiple, mutual, and continuous interaction of all the levels of the developing system, from the molecular to the cultural. 2. Development can only be understood as nested processes that unfold over many timescales from milliseconds to years. (258)

Torre, Kjerstin, et al. Fractal Properties in Sensorimotor Variability Unveil Internal Adaptations of the Organism before Symptomatic Functional Decline. Nature Scientific Reports. 9/15736, 2019. University of Montpelier, France neurophysiologists provide a robust technical illustration to date of how a person’s course from a viable somatic fractal geometry to its debilitating loss can be availed as a good measure of relative health or illness. So it does seem our fates may lie in the same mathematics and geometries that suffuse the stellar raiment.

If health can be defined as adaptability, then measures of this feature are crucial. Convergent findings across clinical areas have established that fractal properties in bio-behavioural variability can express a person’s healthy condition, and its adaptive capacities in general. However, the literature mainly discriminates between healthy vs. pathological states, rather than a course in between. We show that distinct types of fractal properties in sensorimotor behaviour characterize impaired functional ability, along with internal adaptations for maintaining performance despite the imposed constraints. (Abstract)

Trujillo, Cleber, et al. Complex Oscillatory Waves Emerging from Cortical Organoids Model Early Human Brain Network Development. Cell Stem Cell. Online August 29, 2019. A 16 person team based at the UC San Diego, School of Medicine, Children’s Hospital including Alysson Muotri describe how these rudimentary neuron net formations yet appear to attain a modicum of cerebral sensitivities. Intricate graphic displays illustrate how our nascent humankinder sapiensphere seems able to retrospectfully quantify the myriad individual capacities it well arose from. The breakthrough work merited a science review Organoids are not Brains: How are They Making Brain Waves by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times for August 29, 2019.

Structural and transcriptional changes during early brain maturation follow fixed developmental programs defined by genetics. However, whether this is true for functional network activity remains unknown, primarily due to experimental inaccessibility of the initial stages of the living human brain. Here, we developed human cortical organoids that dynamically change cellular populations during maturation and exhibited consistent increases in electrical activity over the span of several months. These results show that the development of structured network activity in a human neocortex model may follow stable genetic programming. Our approach provides opportunities for investigating and manipulating the role of network activity in the developing human cortex. (Abstract excerpt)

Van Den Heuvel, Martijn, et al. Comparative Connectomics. Trends in Cognitive Science. Online March, 2016. Based on recent neuroimaging studies of a multitude of species, senior neuroscientists Van den Heuvel, University Medical Center Utrecht, Edward Bullmore, Cambridge University, and Olaf Sporns, Indiana University propose that the relative density and intricacy of cerebral networks, known as a connectome, can be a good way to sort and compare animal and human brains. An evolutionary scale begins to be apparent from simpler to more complex neural anatomies by the number of modular communities, scale-free node and link topologies, and so on. And might we then ask, whomever is this emergent worldwise sapient faculty with similar branching, intensifying, scintillating connectomics of her/his own?

We introduce comparative connectomics, the quantitative study of cross-species commonalities and variations in brain network topology that aims to discover general principles of network architecture of nervous systems and the identification of species-specific features of brain connectivity. By comparing connectomes derived from simple to more advanced species, we identify two conserved themes of wiring: the tendency to organize network topology into communities that serve specialized functionality and the general drive to enable high topological integration by means of investment of neural resources in short communication paths, hubs, and rich clubs. Within the space of wiring possibilities that conform to these common principles, we argue that differences in connectome organization between closely related species support adaptations in cognition and behavior. (Abstract)

Van Geert, Paul. Nonlinear Complex Dynamical Systems in Developmental Psychology. Guastello, Stephen, et al, eds. Chaos and Complexity in Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. The University of Groningen researcher surveys the nascent reconception of how we each grow, learn, move, behave, and socialize by way of a ubiquitous self-organization. And one might add, we are invited to realize that child and cosmos might then be one and the same individuation.

Anyone who has witnessed a newborn baby grow up into a toddler and then a schoolchild, an adolescent, and an adult has an intuitive appreciation of the fact that developmental processes are prime examples of nonlinear dynamical systems. (243) The course of human development over the life span is a prime example of a complex, nonlinear dynamical system. The process of development is recursive and self-organizing. It occurs simultaneously at many levels of organization – for example, the individual person and the person in interaction with others, institutions, and cultures to which the person relates. (271)

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