scholarly journals How a life-like system emerges from a simplistic particle motion law

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Schmickl ◽  
Martin Stefanec ◽  
Karl Crailsheim
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Parameter Space ◽  
Particle Motion ◽  
The Self ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Living Matter ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Size Scales

Abstract Self-structuring patterns can be observed all over the universe, from galaxies to molecules to living matter, yet their emergence is waiting for full understanding. We discovered a simple motion law for moving and interacting self-propelled particles leading to a self-structuring, self-reproducing and self-sustaining life-like system. The patterns emerging within this system resemble patterns found in living organisms. The emergent cells we found show a distinct life cycle and even create their own ecosystem from scratch. These structures grow and reproduce on their own, show self-driven behavior and interact with each other. Here we analyze the macroscopic properties of the emerging ecology, as well as the microscopic properties of the mechanism that leads to it. Basic properties of the emerging structures (size distributions, longevity) are analyzed as well as their resilience against sensor or actuation noise. Finally, we explore parameter space for potential other candidates of life. The generality and simplicity of the motion law provokes the thought that one fundamental rule, described by one simple equation yields various structures in nature: it may work on different time- and size scales, ranging from the self-structuring universe, to emergence of living beings, down to the emergent subatomic formation of matter.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

From many to one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Laukkonen ◽  
Heleen A Slagter
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Enhancement ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Current State ◽  
Contemplative Science ◽  
Open Monitoring ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Brain

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of meditation under the predictive processing view of living organisms. We start from relatively simple axioms. First, the brain is an organ that serves to predict based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, meditation serves to bring one closer to the here and now by disengaging from anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces predictive processing, in particular counterfactual cognition—the tendency to construct abstract and temporally deep representations—until all conceptual processing falls away. Our Many- to-One account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual meditation) on a single continuum, where each technique progressively relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the self. This deconstruction can also make the above processes available to introspection, permitting certain insights into one’s mind. Our review suggests that our framework is consistent with the current state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence in contemplative science, and is ultimately illuminating about the plasticity of the predictive mind. It also serves to highlight that contemplative science can fruitfully go beyond cognitive enhancement, attention, and emotion regulation, to its more traditional goal of removing past conditioning and creating conditions for potentially profound insights. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms combined with neuroimaging are needed to further our understanding of how different styles of meditation affect predictive processing and the self, and the plasticity of the predictive mind more generally.

Diversity of organisms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip James
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Native Species ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
The Common ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Micro Organisms ◽  
Diversity Of Life

The focus of this chapter is an examination of the diversity of living organisms found within urban environments, both inside and outside buildings. The discussion commences with prions and viruses before moving on to consider micro-organisms, plants, and animals. Prions and viruses cause disease in plants and animals, including humans. Micro-organisms are ubiquitous and are found in great numbers throughout urban environments. New technologies are providing new insights into their diversity. Plants may be found inside buildings as well as in gardens and other green spaces. The final sections of the chapter offer a discussion of the diversity of animals that live in urban areas for part or all of their life cycle. Examples of the diversity of life in urban environments are presented throughout, including native and non-native species, those that are benign and deadly, and the common and the rare.

scholarly journals Nucleation is more than critical: A case study of the electroweak phase transition in the NMSSM

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Baum ◽  
Marcela Carena ◽  
Nausheen R. Shah ◽  
Carlos E. M. Wagner ◽  
Yikun Wang
Keyword(s):  
Phase Transition ◽  
Parameter Space ◽  
Local Minima ◽  
Critical Temperatures ◽  
Electroweak Phase Transition ◽  
First Order ◽  
Vacuum Structure ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Scalar Sector

Abstract Electroweak baryogenesis is an attractive mechanism to generate the baryon asymmetry of the Universe via a strong first order electroweak phase transition. We compare the phase transition patterns suggested by the vacuum structure at the critical temperatures, at which local minima are degenerate, with those obtained from computing the probability for nucleation via tunneling through the barrier separating local minima. Heuristically, nucleation becomes difficult if the barrier between the local minima is too high, or if the distance (in field space) between the minima is too large. As an example of a model exhibiting such behavior, we study the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, whose scalar sector contains two SU(2) doublets and one gauge singlet. We find that the calculation of the nucleation probabilities prefers different regions of parameter space for a strong first order electroweak phase transition than the calculation based solely on the critical temperatures. Our results demonstrate that analyzing only the vacuum structure via the critical temperatures can provide a misleading picture of the phase transition patterns, and, in turn, of the parameter space suitable for electroweak baryogenesis.

The Fractal Nature of the Development of the Self

1992 ◽  
Vol 71 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1043-1063 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Bütz
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Chaos Theory ◽  
Analytical Psychology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Fractal Nature

This paper provides a discussion of the life cycle using a framework constructed from ideas in chaos theory. Building upon psychodynamic ideas from Freud, Jung, and Erikson, the integration of the Self is discussed from the viewpoint of Analytical Psychology. It is proposed that throughout our lives we encounter crisis points that fractionate the ego and necessitate use of more complex and adaptive psychic structures to contain or handle the seemingly disparate qualities that arise. We may say that eventually one aspires to realize Analytical Psychology's goal of integrating the superior and the inferior functions of the psyche into a cohesive Self. Jung seemed to state that the Self could never be attained, but it is argued in this paper that a form of transitory self may be realized periodically during the course of the life cycle.

scholarly journals On the biological concept of subjective significance: A link between the semiotics of nature and the semiotics of culture

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
Zdzisław Wąsik
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Biological Concept ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
The World ◽  
Biological Concepts ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Subjective Significance

A logical-philosophical approach to the meaning-carriers or meaning-processes is juxtaposed with the anthropological-biological concepts of subjective significance uniting both for the semiotics of culture and the semiotics of nature. It is assumed that certain objects, which are identifiable in the universe of man and in the world surrounding all living organisms as significant from the perspective of meaning-receivers, meaning-creators and meaning-utilizers, can be determined as signs when they represent other objects, perform certain tasks or satisfy certain needs of subjects. Hence, the meaning of signifying objects may be found in the relation between the expression of a signifier and (1) a signified content, or (2) a signified function, or (3) a signified value of the cultural and natural objects subsumed by the interpreting subjects under the semiotic ones.

The Identity Paradigm

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Psychoanalytic Discourse ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
The Universe

This epilogue reflects on the critical importance of the identity paradigm—and especially the identificatory paradigm—in culture. To see the identificatory paradigm at work, in a range of cultural and social contexts—in legal settings and debates, in fictions from low and high culture, in confessional and psychoanalytic discourse—is to bring to attention something characteristic and important about people's lives, singly and collectively. To grasp the predominance and the importance of the identity paradigm is to recognize something ineradicable and significant in culture. The chapter then presents something of a contradiction: the self sees itself from the inside as a place of depth, meaning, and as the center of the universe, whereas the self viewed from the outside is merely the point of intersection of impoverished data.

Maturity in Outsourcing Relationships

2010 ◽  
pp. 98-117
Author(s):  
Hans Solli-Sæther ◽  
Petter Gottschalk
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Product Life Cycle ◽  
Growth Models ◽  
It Outsourcing ◽  
Growth Stages ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
Stages Of Growth ◽  
Systems Planning ◽  
Living Organisms

Stages of growth models have been used widely in both organizational research and information technology management research. According to King and Teo (1997), these models describe a wide variety of phenomena – the organizational life cycle, product life cycle, biological growth, stages of growth in information systems, growth model for integration between business planning and information systems planning, electronic commerce evolution, stages of knowledge management technology, and a number of other interesting developments in time perspectives. These models assume that predictable patterns (conceptualized in terms of stages or levels) exist in the growth of organizations and organizational parts, the sales levels of products, and the growth of living organisms. These stages are (1) sequential in nature, (2) occur as a hierarchical progression that is not easily reversed, and (3) evolve a broad range of organizational activities and structures. This chapter starts with an introduction to stages of growth models. In the following sections we present the three-stage model for the evolution of IT outsourcing relationships (Gottschalk & Solli-Sæther, 2006). The three stages are labelled cost stage, resource stage, and partnership stage respectively. Theory-based benchmark variables for measuring maturity in IT outsourcing relationships are presented, followed by the stage hypothesis and a description of how benchmark variables are used to indicate characteristics at each stage of growth. Finally in this chapter, we present results from an exploratory study testing the stage model. The purpose of this chapter is to develop a framework for improved understanding of the current situation in an IT outsourcing relationship in terms of a specific stage, to develop strategies for moving to a higher stage in the future, and to learn from earlier stage experience.

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