Teleodynamics: Specifying the Dynamical Principles of Intrinsically End-Directed Processes | Terrence W. Deacon | IAISAE (2020)

ABSTRACT

Seven parameters are described that distinguish three hierarchically nested system dynamics that are characteristic of partially-bounded open subsystems. These are used to characterize the transition from self-organized inorganic to self-regulated living systems which exhibit self-synthesis, self-reproduction, and self-reconstitution in response to damage. This analysis demonstrates that yoked self-organizing processes that generate each-others’ boundary conditions can produce a form of co-dependent unity that exhibits these end-directed properties. A simple empirically testable molecular model system — an autogenic virus — is described for exploring these dynamical properties.

Keywords: organism, constraint, dissipative processes, self-organization, morphodynamics, autogenesis, MEPP, virus

Measuring regenerative economics: 10 principles and measures undergirding systemic economic health

Abstract

Applying network science concepts and methods to economic systems is not a new idea. In the last few decades, however, advances in non-equilibrium thermodynamics (i.e., self-organizing, open, dissipative, far-from-equilibrium systems), and nonlinear dynamics, network science, information theory, and other mathematical approaches to complex systems have produced a new set of concepts and methods, which are powerful for understanding and predicting behavior in socio-economic systems. In several previous papers, for example, we used research from the new Energy Network Science (ENS) to show how and why systemic ecological and economic health requires a balance of efficiency and resilience be maintained within a particular a “window of vitality”. The current paper outlines the logic behind 10 principles of systemic, socio-economic health and the quantitative measures that go with them. Our particular focus is on “regenerative aspects”, i.e., the self-feeding, self-renewal, and adaptive learning processes that natural systems use to nourish their capacity to thrive for long periods of time. In socio-economic systems, we demonstrate how regenerative economics requires regular investment in human, social, natural, and physical capital. Taken as a whole, we propose these 10 metrics represent a new capacity to understand, and set better policy for solving, the entangled systemic suite of social, environmental, and economic problems now faced in industrial cultures.

Keywords

The Cosmologic Continuum From Physics to Consciousness | John S. Torday, William B.Miller

Reduction of developmental biology to self-referential cell-cell communication offers a portal for understanding fundamental mechanisms of physiology as derived from physics through quantum mechanics. It is argued that self-referential organization is implicit to the Big Bang and its further expression is a recoil reaction to that Singularity. When such a frame is considered, in combination with experimental evidence for the importance of epigenetic inheritance, the unicellular state can be reappraised as the primary object of selection. This framework provides a significant shift in understanding the relationship between physics and biology, providing novel insights to the nature and origin of consciousness.