DOCSLIB.ORG

Cognitive Semiotics 2017; 10(1): 1–18

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cognitive Semiotics 2017; 10(1): 1–18 Cognitive Semiotics 2017; 10(1): 1–18 Amadeu Viana* Vico, Peirce, and the issue of complexity in human sciences The natura-artificium question DOI 10.1515/cogsem-2017-0001 Abstract: This paper deals with some trends in complexity issues related to the connections between natural and social sciences. More precisely, it explores the possible correspondences between physical and phenomenological accounts by arguing that natura and artificium are not far from one another given that human nature is actually incomplete without signs and signs are essentially embodied and enacted. The paper draws upon the work developed by Giambattista Vico in the eighteenth century and Charles S. Peirce in the twentieth century as well as their respective implications and effects in contemporary cognitive and semiotic research. Accordingly, it also explores the prevailing role of objects and artifacts in cognition, claiming that things shape the mind and that we should thus be wary of their constitutive effects in the course of human history. Keywords: biosemiotics, symbolic origins, embodiment, extensionalism, material engagement Nature and Art are too great to be directed to ends, and neither they need them, because there are returns everywhere and returns are life. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1 Introduction: incomplete nature and extensionalism Complexity issues are usually related to the overcoming of classical, Newtonian approaches in science. They are associated with new paradigms like self-organiza- tion, networking, and the holistic perspective, recalling that the whole is more than the aggregation of its parts (Massip-Bonet and Bastardas-Boada 2013). Some trends in complexity research may also be identified by the surmounting of the Cartesian *Corresponding author: Amadeu Viana, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida, Catalonia, Spain, E-mail: [email protected] 2 Amadeu Viana dualistic stance, namely those concerning the connections between natural and human sciences. In this paper, I will explore some contemporary avenues that strive conjointly towards a better understanding of the inveterate gulf between naturalis- tic, third person approaches to knowledge and mind and, as Jung (2009) put it, human-centered, first person approaches. The explanatory gap (both conceptual and epistemological) between physical and phenomenological accounts (Thompson 2007) will be considered here through the discussion of the double-faced, comple- mentary dimensions of natura and artificium, i. e., the idea that we humans develop asortofincomplete nature, as Deacon (2011) has recently put it, and the comple- mentary issue of extensionalist investigations (Malafouris and Renfrew 2010). My first contention is that history plays a determinant role in any explana- tion that tries to mediate between natural and social human accounts. One of the first critical opponents to Cartesian rationalism was the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). He firmly believed that the human mind was a product of historical conditions; so, he maintained that we would be able to trace back its origins and certificate its stages through the history of signs. Vico was also one of the first contenders of the stance that human languages were a historical outcome of mental and social precursory provisions, arguing against the received idea of their divine origin. In front of the Cartesian position of an autonomous reason, disembodied and independent of historical roots (however interesting this argument may be for science), Vico insisted on the idea that the human mind realizes and manifests itself in human facts and history, and knowledge builds itself in action, challenging the Platonic priority of pure ideas in an abstract realm. Among the contemporary discussions, the work of Charles S. Peirce is some- how recurrent in addressing substantial critiques both to the Platonic priority of abstract knowledge and Cartesian dualistic approaches. Peirce’s proposal to con- sider logic (abstract, context independent knowledge) in terms of semiotics (and thus embodied and enacted signs) was developed after the spread of European positivism and idealized Hegelian historicism and has probably to be taken as a reaction against both. The pragmatist program, to which I should add here the early work of Vico, has been invoked in different contexts in fruitful connection with complexity issues.1 Both authors, Vico and Peirce, have become qualitative starting points in contemporary studies about the development of language (Noble and Davidson 1996; Deacon 1997; Trabant and Ward 2001; Schilhab et al. 2012). In those researches, it is commonly assumed that “the mind recognizes its existence 1 I would mention Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok (1991), Merrell (1991, 1995, 1998), Hoffmeyer (1996), Bax et al. (2004), Doll et al. (2005), and, more recently, Barrena and Nubiola (2013) and Viola (2014). Vico, Peirce, and the issue of complexity 3 through its expression,” being substantially embodied and embedded in action (cf. Viola 2014: 92–95). A comprehensive paradigm wishing to deal both with naturalistic research and social and human issues has to confront our regular endeavor to interpret the world and the sort of actions we usually are engaged in. In this respect, taking into account how society contributes to the mind is a substantial piece in this inquiry (Tomasello 2014). The human mind, through signs and language, has been from the very beginning a collective enterprise. History here plays its precious role as the particular, human way to participate in the world. In the following, I sketch Vico’s position about our incomplete nature and Peirce’s approach to embodied and enacted signs, moving to the complemen- tary natura – artificium distinction. 2 Vico on language and fantasy Combining received knowledge about rhetoric and history, the Italian philoso- pher Giambattista Vico put forward in his Scienza Nuova (Vico 1744/1948) the hypothesis that imaginative thinking paved the way for articulated signs and logical thinking. According to him, and in agreement with the historical emer- gence of signs and myths, creative imagination was the true basis of the human mind and it keeps its import and substance in modern societies. Vico conceives fantasy as a natural process and a rudimentary form of language (in fact, inner language, lingua mentale), and he explains its origin in terms of the projection in nature of human properties as they were readily noticed: emotions, corporeal attributes, power, movements, or actions. Fantasy comes from Greek phanta- zesthai, “to picture to one self,” a cognate of phainesthai, “to appear, have visions,” a word also related with phantasm, having the same ground that German Geist (compare with English ghost) and French esprit – all of them words that explain these original properties of the mind, the conflation of inner and outer experience. Terms like anima (“soul”) and animus (“spirit, vitality”), which were the basis of the Aristotelian reflexion upon the mind, reveal the same trend, grounded on the projection of bodily experience (Onians 1987). In the same vein, it is useful to note that fiction comes from Latin fingere, “imitate,” the original action supposed by Vico to be the primitive way to confront the world. In Vico’s account, humanity emerges from this original, figurative activity through material and corporeal signs (semata, body paints, ornaments, emblems), going down the road to modern, articulated languages, “the vulgar genera, both of words and letters,” through which “the minds of the peoples grew quicker and developed powers of abstraction,” as he said (Vico 1744/1948: § 460). 4 Amadeu Viana The striking fact that there cannot be human languages without the property of creative imagination accompanying them invites us to search for their natural basis. Vico called the imaginative prototypes of the human mind to embody knowledge fantastic universals (as opposed to late, philosophical logical univer- sals). As he saw it, these fantastic universals constituted the patterns upon which modern, articulated languages and associations were formed. Then, the human mind did not emerge itself with its full properties (logical abstraction, adaptive flexibility, and so on) all at once. Articulated languages are an inven- tion of the late Paleolithic period, as Nietzsche has rightly pointed out, and carry with them the remnants of their imperfect origin. Mind started from sheer ignorance, phenomenological indefinition and figurativeness. Let me quote the Vichian formulation at length: It is noteworthy that in all languages the greater part of the expressions relating to inanimate things are formed by metaphor from the human body and its parts and from human senses and passions. Thus, head for top or beginning; the brow and shoulders of a hill; the eyes for the looped heads of screws and for windows letting light into houses; mouth for any opening; lip for the rim of a vase or of anything else; the tooth of a plow, a rake, a saw, a comb […]. All of which is a consequence of our axiom that man in his ignorance makes himself the rule of the universe, for in the examples cited he has made of himself an entire world. So that, as rational metaphysics teaches that man becomes all things by understanding them (homo intelligendo fit omnia), this imaginative metaphysics shows that man becomes all things by not understanding them (homo non intelligendo fit omnia); and perhaps the latter proposition is truer than the former, for when man under- stands he extends his mind and takes in the things, but when he does not understand he makes the things out of himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them. (ibid.: § 405) As contemporary research has showed (Ortony 1979; Danesi 1992; Trim 2007), figurative thinking has been shaping human languages and we know that metaphors keep their cognitive value in ordinary domains as well as in special, more creative experiences. The German anthropological philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century (Jung 2009) paid particular attention to building arguments in order to bridge the explanatory gap between mind and matter, consciousness and nature.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Semiotics As a Cognitive Science
    Elmar Holenstein Semiotics as a Cognitive Science The explanatory turn in the human sciences as well as research in "artifi- cial intelligence" have led to a little discussed revival of the classical Lockean sub-discipline of semiotics dealing with mental representations - aka "ideas" - under the heading of "cognitive science". Intelligent be- haviour is best explained by retuming to such obviously semiotic catego- ries as representation, gmbol, code, program, etc. and by investigations of the format of the mental representations. Pictorial and other "sub-linguisric" representations might be more appropriate than linguistic ones. CORRESPONDENCE: Elmar Holenstein. A-501,3-51-1 Nokendal, Kanazawa-ku Yoko- hama-shl, 236-0057, Japan. EMAIL [email protected] The intfa-semiotic cognitive tum Noam Chomsky's declaration that linguistics is a branch of psychology was understood by traditional linguists as an attack on the autonomous status of their science, a status which older structuralism endorsed by incorporating language (as a special sign system) into semiotics. Semiotics seemed to assure that genuinely linguistic relationships (grammatical and semantic relationships) were not rashly reduced to psychological or biological relationships (such as associations or adaptations). If it is looked at more closely in conjunction with the general development of the sciences in the 20th Century, the difference between Chomsky (1972: 28), who regards linguistics as a subfield of psychol- ogy, and Ferdinand de Saussure (1916: 33), for whom it is primarily a branch of "semiology", comes down to the fact that Saussure assigns linguistics in a descriptive perspective to universal semiotics, whereas Chomsky assigns it in an explanatory perspective to a special semiotics.
    [Show full text]
  • The Teleodynamics of Language, Culture, Technology and Science (LCT&S)
    Information 2013, 4, 94-116; doi:10.3390/info4010094 OPEN ACCESS information ISSN 2078-2489 www.mdpi.com/journal/information Review The Teleodynamics of Language, Culture, Technology and Science (LCT&S) Robert K. Logan 1,2 1 Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 Street George, Toronto, ON M5S 1A7, Canada; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +1-416-361-5928 2 Strategic Innovation Lab OCAD University, Toronto, ON M5T 1W1, Canada Received: 8 November 2012; in revised form: 30 January 2013 / Accepted: 2 February 2013 / Published: 7 February 2013 Abstract: Logan [1] in his book The Extended Mind developed the hypothesis that language, culture, technology and science can be treated as organisms that evolve and reproduce themselves. This idea is extended by making use of the notion of teleodynamics that Deacon [2] introduced and developed in his book Incomplete Nature to explain the nature of life, sentience, mind and a self that acts in its own interest. It is suggested that language, culture, technology and science (LCT&S) like living organisms also act in their own self-interest, are self-correcting and are to a certain degree autonomous even though they are obligate symbionts with their human hosts. Specifically, it will be argued that LCT&S are essentially teleodynamic systems, which Deacon defines as “self-creating, self-maintaining, self-reproducing, individuated systems [2] (p. 325)”. Keywords: language; culture; technology; science; teleodynamics; morphodynamics; thermodynamics; organism; obligate symbiont 1. Introduction Although [teleodynamics] is the distinguishing characteristic of living processes, it is not necessarily limited to the biological—Deacon. Terrence Deacon [2] in his book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter attempts to develop a scientific theory of how properties such as information, value, purpose, meaning, and end-directed behavior emerged from physics and chemistry.
    [Show full text]
  • Redalyc.Intersemiotic Translation from Rural/Biological to Urban
    Razón y Palabra ISSN: 1605-4806 [email protected] Universidad de los Hemisferios Ecuador Sánchez Guevara, Graciela; Cortés Zorrilla, José Intersemiotic Translation from Rural/Biological to Urban/Sociocultural/Artistic; The Case of Maguey and Other Cacti as Public/Urban Decorative Plants.” Razón y Palabra, núm. 86, abril-junio, 2014 Universidad de los Hemisferios Quito, Ecuador Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=199530728032 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative RAZÓN Y PALABRA Primera Revista Electrónica en Iberoamerica Especializada en Comunicación. www.razonypalabra.org.mx Intersemiotic Translation from Rural/Biological to Urban/Sociocultural/Artistic; The Case of Maguey and Other Cacti as Public/Urban Decorative Plants.” Graciela Sánchez Guevara/ José Cortés Zorrilla.1 Abstract. This paper proposes, from a semiotic perspective on cognition and working towards a cognitive perspective on semiosis, an analysis of the inter-semiotic translation processes (Torop, 2002) surrounding the maguey and other cacti, ancestral plants that now decorate public spaces in Mexico City. The analysis involves three semiotics, Peircean semiotics, bio-semiotics, and cultural semiotics, and draws from other disciplines, such as Biology, Anthropology, and Sociology, in order to construct a dialogue on a trans- disciplinary continuum. The maguey and other cactus plants are resources that have a variety of uses in different spaces. In rural spaces, they are used for their fibers (as thread in gunny sacks, floor mats, and such), for their leaves (as roof tiles, as support beams, and in fences), for their spines (as nails and sewing needles), and their juice is drunk fresh (known as aguamiel or neutli), fermented (a ritual beverage known as pulque or octli), or distilled (to produce mescal, tequila, or bacanora).
    [Show full text]
  • The Semiotic Hierarchy: Life, Consciousness, Signs and Language
    10.3726/81608_169 Jordan Zlatev The Semiotic Hierarchy: Life, consciousness, signs and language This article outlines a general theory of meaning, The Semiotic Hierarchy, which distinguishes between four major levels in the organization of meaning: life, consciousness, sign function and language, where each of these, in this order, both rests on the previous level, and makes possible the at- tainment of the next. This is shown to be one possible instantiation of the Cognitive Semiotics program, with influences from phenomenology, Popper’s tripartite ontology, semiotics, linguistics, enactive cognitive sci- ence and evolutionary biology. Key concepts such as “language” and “sign” are defined, as well as the four levels of The Semiotic Hierarchy, on the basis of the type of (a) subject, (b) value-system and (c) world in which the subject is embedded. Finally, it is suggested how the levels can be united in an evolutionary framework, assuming a strong form of emergence giving rise to “ontologically” new properties: consciousness, signs and languages, on the basis of a semiotic, though not standardly biosemiotic, understanding of life. CORRESPONDENCE: Jordan Zlatev. Centre for Cognitive Semiotics, Centre for Lan- guages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden. EMAIL: [email protected] Introduction The goal of this article is to outline a general theory of meaning that I will refer to as The Semiotic Hierarchy. It distinguishes between four (macro) evolutionary levels in the organization of meaning: life, consciousness, sign function and language, where each of these, in this order, both rests on the previous level, and makes possible the attainment of the next.
    [Show full text]
  • Cognitive Semiotics
    COGNITIVE SEMIOTICS Multidisciplinary Journal on Meaning and Mind Issue 5 . Fall 2009 PETER LANG Bern · Berlin ' Bruxelles ' Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien COGNITIVE SEMIOTICS EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Per Aage Brandt and Todd Oakley CO-EOrTORS Ana Margarida Abrantes, Tim Adamson, Une Brandt, Riccardo Fusaroli, and Jes Vang EDITORIAL ASSISTANT (official address and address for unsolicited submissions) Larimee Cortnik Department of Cognitive Science Center for Cognition and Culture Case Western Reserve University College of Arts & Sciences Crawford Hall, 612D Cleveland, Ohio, 44106-7179 USA Phone: (+1) 216 368-6538 · Fax: (+1) 216 368-3821 [email protected] COORDINATING EDITOR (general address for solicited submissions and editorial contact) Jes Vang · [email protected] EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Liliana Albertazzi, Bernard Baars, Enrique Bernárdez, Peer Bundgaard, Roberto Casati, Christopher Collins, Seana Coulson, Ian Cross, Terrence Deacon, Merlin Donald, Shaun Gallagher, Barend van Heusden, Robert Innis, Jana M. Iverson, Mark Johnson, Torben Fledelius Knap, Kalevi Kull, Ronald Langacker, Michael Leyton, Ricardo Maldonado, Juana Isabel Mann-Arrese, Erik Myin, Frederic Nef, Pierre Ouellet, Jean-Luc Petit, Jean Petitot, Martina Plümacher, Roberto Poli, Ernst Pöppel, Andreas Roepstorff, Bent Rosenbaum, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Chris Sinha, Linda B. Smith, Göran Sonesson, Frederik Stjernfelt, Eve Sweetser, Leonard Talmv, Evan Thompson, Colwyn Trevarthen, Reuven Tsur, Mark Turner, Patrizia Violi, Wolfgang Wildgen, Dan Zahavi, Lawrence Zbikowski, Jordan Zlatev, and Svend Ostergaard. MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS For style guide and other directions for authors go to the journal's website: www.cogniavesemiotics.com PUBUSHING DETAILS © by Verlag Peter Lang AG, Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern Tel. +41 31 306 17 17; Fax +41 31 306 17 27; E-Mail: [email protected]; Internet: www.peterlang.com All rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • A DEFENSE of EQUILIBRIUM REASONING in ECONOMICS by Jennifer Soyun Jhun BA in Philosophy and Economics, Northwestern University
    A DEFENSE OF EQUILIBRIUM REASONING IN ECONOMICS by Jennifer Soyun Jhun BA in Philosophy and Economics, Northwestern University, 2008 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jennifer Soyun Jhun It was defended on May 27, 2016 and approved by Robert Batterman, Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Sheldon Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles Dissertation Advisor: Mark Wilson, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Advisor: James Woodward, Distinguished Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh ii A DEFENSE OF EQUILIBRIUM REASONING IN ECONOMICS Jennifer Jhun, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2016 Copyright © by Jennifer Jhun 2016 iii A DEFENSE OF EQUILIBRIUM REASONING IN ECONOMICS Jennifer Soyun Jhun, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2016 Critics both within and outside of philosophy have challenged economics wholesale as unscientific. In particular, economics seems unable to predict future events because it relies on assumptions like equilibrium conditions, which stipulate that the economy tends to stay in its current state absent external forces. The popular background view that gives rise to this criticism is that the job of science is to uncover laws of nature, by appeal to which we can determine (usually deductively) the future behavior of a dynamical system as it evolves. I argue that lawlike statements in economics have a very different role than this: they provide a means of understanding in terms of how efficient a particular system is.
    [Show full text]
  • Macroscopic Time Evolution and Maxent Inference for Closed
    Macroscopic time evolution and MaxEnt inference for closed systems with Hamiltonian dynamics Domagoj Kui´c,∗ Paˇsko Zupanovi´c,ˇ † and Davor Jureti´c‡ University of Split, Faculty of Science, N. Tesle 12, 21000 Split, Croatia Abstract MaxEnt inference algorithm and information theory are relevant for the time evolution of macroscopic systems considered as problem of incomplete information. Two different MaxEnt approaches are introduced in this work, both applied to prediction of time evolution for closed Hamiltonian systems. The first one is based on Liouville equation for the conditional probability distribution, introduced as a strict microscopic constraint on time evolution in phase space. The conditional probability distribution is defined for the set of microstates associated with the set of phase space paths determined by solutions of Hamilton’s equations. The MaxEnt inference algorithm with Shannon’s concept of the conditional information entropy is then applied to prediction, consistently with this strict microscopic constraint on time evolution in phase space. The second approach is based on the same concepts, with a difference that Liouville equation for the conditional probability distribution is introduced as a macroscopic constraint given by a phase space average. We consider the incomplete nature of our information about microscopic dynamics in a rational way that is consistent with Jaynes’ formulation of predictive statistical mechanics, and the concept of macroscopic reproducibility for time dependent processes. Maximization of the conditional information entropy subject to this macroscopic constraint leads to a loss of correlation between the initial phase space paths and final microstates. Information entropy is the theoretic upper bound on the conditional information entropy, with the upper bound attained only in case of the complete loss of correlation.
    [Show full text]
  • Learning and Knowing As Semiosis: Extending the Conceptual Apparatus of Semiotics
    352 Cary Campbell, Alin Olteanu, Kalevi KullSign Systems Studies 47(3/4), 2019, 352–381 Learning and knowing as semiosis: Extending the conceptual apparatus of semiotics Cary Campbell1, Alin Olteanu2, Kalevi Kull3 Abstract. If all knowing comes from semiosis, more concepts should be added to the semiotic toolbox. However, semiotic concepts must be defined via other semiotic concepts. We observe an opportunity to advance the state-of-the-art in semiotics by defining concepts of cognitive processes and phenomena via semiotic terms. In particular, we focus on concepts of relevance for theory of knowledge, such as learning, knowing, affordance, scaffolding, resources, competence, me- mory, and a few others. For these, we provide preliminary definitions from a semiotic perspective, which also explicates their interrelatedness. Redefining these terms this way helps to avoid both physicalism and psychologism, showcasing the epistemological dimensions of environmental situatedness through the semiotic understanding of organisms’ fittedness with their environments. Following our review and presentation of each concept, we briefly discuss the significance of our embedded redefinitions in contributing to a semiotic theory of knowing that has relevance to both the humanities and the life sciences, while not forgetting their relevance to education and psychology, but also social semiotic and multimodality studies. Keywords: affordance; competence; scaffolding; semiotic learning; semiotic resource; theory of knowledge; memory; umwelt Cary Campbell, Alin Olteanu, Kalevi Kull The theoretical strength and useful applicability of semiotics is largely dependent on the adequacy and richness of its conceptual apparatus. The greater part of the semiotic toolbox comes from a few classic authors, with considerable enrichment and diversification occurring between the 1960s and 1980s.
    [Show full text]
  • Cognitive Semiotics Approach for Communication Development of Language Learners
    ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 1, No. 10, pp. 1420-1423, October 2011 © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.1.10.1420-1423 Cognitive Semiotics Approach for Communication Development of Language Learners T. Uvaraj School of Education, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India Email: [email protected] Mumtaz Begum School of Education, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India Gopi @ Pavadai. K Vasavi College of Education, Pondicherry, India Abstract—Communication is a two way mode of expression between the encoder and the decoder. The role of communication in the human society is sharing the affective and cognitive attributes to interact. Many times communicated message failed to understand or process by the receiver. Researches proved that lack of skills in communication results to false understanding. The language has four communication skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) where the representations are in the forms of signs and symbols. The task of the language teacher is making the learner to construct meaningful semantic and syntactic representations by signs and symbols to enhance the communication competencies. The lack of thematic, vocabulary and grammatical structures insists the language learners to struggle in expressing their thinking in written and spoken form. Thinking depends on the cognition activities, i.e., Representation and Computation. Cognitive is an interdisciplinary study of the mental phenomena involving human mind in terms of perception, memory and language. Semiotics is the study of signs or symbols and Cognitive semiotics studies the relations between signs and language. This paper explores the role of cognition and semiotics in developing better and effective communication in spoken and written forms of Language learners by the Language teachers.
    [Show full text]
  • 945 the Transition from Constraint To
    [Frontiers in Bioscience 19, 945-957, June 1, 2014] The transition from constraint to regulation at the origin of life Terrence W. Deacon1, Alok Srivastava1, Joshua Augustus Bacigalupi1 1Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Abstract 2. Introduction 2.1. Living thermodynamics 2.2. Context-limited versus self-limiting dissipation 2.3. The autopoietic dilemma 2.4. The formal versus physical logic of biological regulation 3. Autogenesis 3.1. Constraints on constraint-production 3.2. From synergistic constraint generation to regulation 4. Conditional autogenesis 4.1. The emergence of cybernetic regulation 4.2. Template regulated autogenesis: an imaginative scenario 5. Conclusions 6. References 1. ABSTRACT 2. INTRODUCTION The origin of living dynamics required a local 2.1. Living thermodynamics evasion of thermodynamic degradation by maintaining Living organisms are thermodynamically and critical dynamical and structural constraints. Scenarios for biochemically open physicochemical systems. They life’s origin that fail to distinguish between constrained constantly exchange matter and energy with their chemistry and regulated metabolism do not address the physicochemical environment and yet are constrained question of how living processes first emerge from simpler within physical boundaries and structures that are constraints on molecular interactions. We describe a maintained through dynamic processes. The molecular model system consisting of coupled reciprocal physicochemical processes that constitute living organisms catalysis and self-assembly in which one of the catalytic bi- tend to persist in states maintained far from thermodynamic products tends to spontaneously self-assemble into a and chemical equilibrium, whereas non-living containing shell (analogous to a viral capsule).
    [Show full text]
  • The Public Journal of Semiotics
    The Public Journal of Semiotics Volume IV October 2012 No. 1 CONTENTS Cognitive Semiotics: An emerging field for the transdisciplinary study of meaning Jordan Zlatev................................................................................. 2 – 24 Applying structuralist semiotics to brand image research George Rossolatos......................................................................... 25 - 82 The Efficacy Of The Virtual: From Che As Sign To Che As Agent Carolina Cambre........................................................................... 83 – 107 If We Are Too Small to See or You Have Forgotten: A postcolonial response to modern representations of the San in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series Roie Thomas…………..................................................................... 108 – 122 ISSN 1918-9907 Editorial Staff Paul Bouissac, Editor in Chief Tom Wysocki, Associate Editor International Editorial Board Gary Genosko (Ontario Institute of Technology, Toronto, Canada) David Machin (Cardiff University, UK) Franson Manjali (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India) Paul Manning (Trent University, Canada) Jef Verschueren (Antwerp University, Belgium) Anne Wagner (Universite Cote d' Opale, France) Jordan Zlatev (Lund University, Sweden) Rob Shields (University of Alberta, Canada) 2 Cognitive Semiotics: An emerging field for the transdisciplinary study of meaning Cognitive Semiotics: An emerging field for the transdisciplinary study of meaning Jordan Zlatev1, Centre for Languages and Literature
    [Show full text]
  • Thermodynamics of Surface Phenomena
    THERMODYNAMICS OF SURFACE PHENOMENA J. C. MELROSE Mobil Research and Development Corporation, P.O. Box 900, Dallas, Texas 75221, U.S.A. ABSTRACT The thermodynamic treatment of the interfacial region corresponding to two fluid phases in contact is discussed. The features of this analysis which are reviewed include the classical treatment of Gibbs and the extensions to this treatment which are due to Buff. It is shown that these extensions are essential ifthe logical structure of the analysis is to be regarded as complete. 1. INTRODUCTION The thin, nonhomogeneous region separating two homogeneous bulk phases in contact constitutes an interface. It is generally recognized that an adequate thermodynamic treatment of such a region must be based on 1 the work of Gibbs • N evertheless, the Iiterature contains a number of proposals for modifying various features ofthis treatment. It is, in fact, remarkable that no other important contribution of Gibbs to the understanding of the equilibrium states of heterogeneous substances has given rise to so many reservations and attempts to develop alternative treatments. The proposed modifications are usually concerned with one or more of several concepts which are characteristic of the Gibbsian treatment. The first ofthese concepts involves the notion of a mathematical dividing or reference surface, located within or very near the nonhomogeneous interfacial region. This surface serves to define the geometrical configuration of the interfacial region and also partitions the volume of the system between the two bulk phases. A second feature of the Gibbs treatment which is occasionally challenged is the definition of the chemical potentials which are appropriate to the components present in an interfacial region.
    [Show full text]