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

1. Systems Physiology and Psychology: Somatic and Behavioral Development

Smith, Linda and Michael Gasser. The Development of Embodied Cognition. Artificial Life. 11/1-2, 2005. Infants learn by a multimodal, incremental interaction with and exploration of their physical and social environment, which leads to language-based, symbolic communication. This study is a good example of what Suzanne Kirschner (noted in A Symbiotic Self) advocates as a new relational and context-sensitive method for psychology.

The central idea behind the embodiment hypothesis is that intelligence emerges in the interaction of an agent with an environment and as a result of sensorimotor activity. (13)

Soanwane, Abjijeet, et al. Network Medicine in the Age of Biomedical Big Data. arXiv:1903.05449. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston systems physicians provide a good example of a novel holistic, systemic approach which takes in not only parts and a whole but internal, vital interconnections as a major factor for diagnosis and treatment

Speelman, Craig and Kim Kirsner. Beyond the Learning Curve: The Construction of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Psychologists at the University of Western Australia seek innate principles of knowledge and skill acquisition within a broad evolutionary and dynamic frame. The brain/mind ensemble is conceived as a complex adaptive system because as such it expresses the universality by which nature evolves and develops everywhere else.

Spencer, John and Esther Thelen, eds. Connectionist and Dynamic Systems Approaches to Development. Developmental Science. 6/4, 2003. A special issue looks toward a synthesis of these two methods in the field of child psychology. Connectionism involves a neural basis while the dynamic view deals with a more somatic basis, but are similar in kind and contribute to “a unified emergentist theory of 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)

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