Autopoietic Machines with Structural Information Processing

The General Theory of Information (GTI) tells us that information is represented, processed and communicated using physical structures. The physical universe is made up of structures combining matter and energy. According to GTI, “Information is related to knowledge as energy is related to matter.” GTI also provides tools to deal with transformation of information and knowledge. We present here, the application of these tools for the design of digital autopoietic machines with higher efficiency, resiliency and scalability than the information processing systems based on the Turing machines. We discuss the utilization of these machines for building autopoietic and cognitive applications in a multi-cloud infrastructure.

An introduction to the superunified theory of quantum fields & fundamental interactions (Discoveries in pure mathematics)

This is intended to describe the physical Universe as self-excited and self-organized mathematical continuum. There does exist the universal pure (not applied) mathematical machine perceived by the intelligent observers in a capacity of certain material world. In this short article we are able to indicate only some key points of the theory which suggests practically infinite amount of combinatorics.

Developing A Conceptual Framework for Science Teaching at Colleges of Education in Ghana

This paper looks at Science taught in Ghana generally. It defines Science and science education fundamentally, as the methodical observation, conception, analysis, and exhibition of patterns to understand what exist in the physical universe which is evidence-based and their interactions with each other. The understanding of these processes keeps changing as new relationships and explanations emerge. The motion and interactivity with materials employed by the pedagogies become key elements for creating exciting, dynamic and captivating experiences that motivate students to learn and pursue a science course with a greater sense of purpose. Science education is the teaching and learning of science to non-scientists, such as school children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process, some social science, and some teaching pedagogy. However, the employ of inappropriate teaching methodologies is one of the factors that contribute to the low participation and performance of students in science. Little effort is made to relate the concepts learnt and the examples/illustrations used to real life, especially within the context of the students' own lives and environment. This article attempts to proffer a concise definition to merge the ideas from some scholars for a better understanding of science; meaning of Science Education; relevance of the study of science (or science education); problems of science teaching in Ghana and the effects and propounds a challenging model for implementation for effective science teaching in Colleges of Education in Ghana.

Peirce’s legacy for contemporary consciousness studies, the emergence of consciousness from qualia, and its evanescence in habits

The paper argues that contemporary consciousness studies can profit from Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of consciousness. It confronts mainstream tendencies in contemporary consciousness studies, including those which consider consciousness as an unsolvable mystery, with Peirce’s phenomenological approach to consciousness. Peirce’s answers to the following contemporary issues are presented: phenomenological consciousness and the qualia, consciousness as self-controlled agency of humans, self-control and self-reflection, consciousness and language, self-consciousness and introspection, consciousness and the other, consciousness of nonhuman animals, and the question of a quasi-consciousness of the physical universe. A detailed account of Peirce’s three modes of consciousness is presented: (1) primisense, qualisense or feeling-consciousness, (2) altersense (consciousness of the other), and (3) medisense, the consciousness of cognition, thought, and reasoning. In contrast to consciousness studies that establish a rather sharp dividing line between conscious and unconscious states of mind, Peirce adopts the principle of synechism, the theory of continuity. For him, consciousness is a matter of degree. An important difference between Peirce’s concept of qualia and current theories of qualia in human consciousness is discussed. The paper shows how consciousness, according to Peirce, emerges from unconscious qualia and vanishes into equally unconscious habits. It concludes with a study of the roles of qualia, habit, and self-control in Peirce’s theory of signs, in particular in qualisigns and symbols, and the question of signs as quasi-conscious agents in semiosis.

Cyberbodies

In addition to its metaphorical and practical influences, the internet has informed New Agers’ cosmologies and corresponding bodily practices by requiring a rethinking of the physical universe in the face of virtual ubiquity. It has allowed them to imagine new ways of making space in their ontological realities for metaphysical, energetic substances. We can see, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, that the digital has made the spiritual ever more material and situated in the flesh for New Agers searching for the true nature of existence. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork from 2016 to 2018 and ongoing research with energy healers in the San Francisco Bay Area, this “anthropology of virtual matter”—understanding how the virtual has caused a paradigm shift in how we think about the material world—gives us fresh eyes with which to see the New Age. It even forces us to reconsider spiritualities as material ontologies, the conception of materiality that shapes how believers understand and interact with the world around them through their bodies, sensoria, and metaphysical appendages.

Functional State Spaces and their Formation in Systems from Biological Organisms to the Physical Universe

This paper explores how the emerging science of Human-Centric Functional Modeling or HCFM provides a universal approach to modeling systems that is hypothesized to maximize human capacity to understand and navigate the complexity of systems, and how it facilitates a kind of biomimicry in which the human organism is represented in terms of abstract mathematical spaces that can be used to define simple expressions to represent properties like “complexity” for human systems like cognition, where the same spaces can be used to represent other systems, including the entire physical universe, so that the underlying equivalence of the representations allows the same mathematical expressions to define the same properties where applicable for these very different systems, and therefore allows deep insights to potentially be gained about these systems through looking inward to observe how one’s own cognition functions from one’s first person experience. This paper explores how from this Human-Centric Functional Modeling perspective the properties governing the evolution of life in its functional state space might also govern the formation of the universe in its own functional state space. Human-Centric Functional Modeling also has other significant benefits, one is that in defining behavior in terms of mathematical spaces it enables all the mathematical disciplines that apply to such spaces (e.g. functor theory, category theory, process theory) to be used to understand and navigate the relationships between concepts described in those spaces. Another is that in providing a self-contained representation of the human meaning of any entity, including of any region in the physical universe, Human-Centric Functional Modeling potentially defines the first complete semantic representation of concepts, physical objects, or any other entities represented in a functional state space. When applied to the physical universe this implies that all theoretical or experimental data can be stored in that single model and all theories tested against it to increase capacity to impact a research question. When applied to other systems semantic modeling has equally important implications. Another benefit of Human-Centric Functional Modeling is that it is also a human-centric expression of “constructor theory”, which in the case of physical systems enables accurate predictions to be made about their physical behavior simply from observations of their functions, without needing to understand the specific physics through which the functions are implemented in those systems.

Tachyons, tactility, drawing and withdrawing: cinema at the speed of darkness

Longitudinal, quantitative analyses of cinema have established how Hollywood is getting ‘quicker, faster, darker’. While in some senses the ‘intensified continuity’ of contemporary Hollywood narration is a given, the increased darkness of contemporary mainstream cinema remains unexplored – especially with regard to how its speed and its darkness might be inter-related. If to darken the majority of the screen during a film helps to draw our attention to the salient aspects of the image that are better illuminated, then of course this also allows for a faster cutting rate: in principle, there is ‘less’ information for the viewer to have to take in during each shot, meaning that the film can then cut to subsequent images more rapidly. However, there are other ways in which we can interpret this ‘darkening’ of contemporary film narration. For example, it perhaps ties in with a widespread sense of disorientation with regard to the increasingly globalized and connected world that digitization has helped to bring about, and which is equally reflected in the rise of the contemporary ‘mind-game’ or ‘puzzle’ film that is a staple of contemporary Hollywood. The darkness in such films thus gives expression to uncertainty and disorientation. More than this, though, we might use physics to understand the darkness of contemporary cinema in a more ‘meta-physical’ fashion. While it is accepted that light is the ‘fastest’ phenomenon in the known universe, there nonetheless remain unilluminated aspects of the physical universe that defy light as the limit of speed – and which convey the interconnected nature of matter in the contemporary universe. For example, polarized particles have been proven simultaneously to respond to stimuli – at a speed faster than it would take light to travel from one particle to the other, a phenomenon that baffled Albert Einstein, who referred to this process as ‘spooky action at a distance’. Not only does this process suggest what Karen Barad might refer to as the entangled nature of all matter, but it also suggests speeds beyond, or at least different, to that of light. In this essay, then, I shall theorise a ‘speed of darkness’ that can help us to understand how the darkening of contemporary cinema ties in with the interconnected, invisible (‘spooky’) and ultra-rapid nature of the digital world. Perhaps it is not in the light but in the darkness that we can identify the key to understanding contemporary mainstream cinema and the globalized, digital world that produces it.

Exploring the foundations of the physical universe with space tests of the equivalence principle

We present the scientific motivation for future space tests of the equivalence principle, and in particular the universality of free fall, at the 10− 17 level or better. Two possible mission scenarios, one based on quantum technologies, the other on electrostatic accelerometers, that could reach that goal are briefly discussed. This publication is a White Paper written in the context of the Voyage 2050 ESA Call for White Papers.

World Soul – Anima Mundi: The Origins and Fortunes of a Fundamental Idea edited by Christoph Helmig

The idea of a world soul, first meaningfully explored in Western philosophy in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus, has been drawn on throughout its doctrinal history to explain the relationship between god and the cosmos with its ensouled life forms. It has played a fundamental role in accounts concerning the organization and nature of the physical universe and our human understanding thereof, and has thus featured in a range of cosmological, biological, and epistemological contexts. This collection of essays illustrates many such contexts, demonstrating that the world soul was a more or less continuous staple of ancient philosophical thought, at least until the time of the Neoplatonists. The volume follows its history chronologically, beginning with the world soul’s early stirrings in Heraclitus’ concept of universal λόγος, and ending with a glance at its Nachleben in Renaissance and early modern philosophy. Reviewed by: Christina Hoenig, Published Online (2021-08-31)Copyright © 2021 by Christina HoenigThis open access publication is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND) Article PDF Link: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/view/37728/28730 Corresponding Author: Christina Hoenig,University of PittsburghE-Mail: [email protected]

On the Explicit Function of Life within a Physical Universe

To describe the meaning of functionality in a universe before life evolved, existing etiological and systemic accounts of function are evaluated. Since the theory of function is only applicable in context with living beings and artifacts used by living beings and therefore cannot predict how a prebiotic form of functionality could evolve, a maintenance account for functionality is proposed. This account ascribes functionality to a structurally disposed property that increases the probability of maintenance or recurrence of the property in the surrounding selective environment. With the help of the maintenance account and a concept of physical information comprising kinetic and structural types of information, possible evolutionary processes preceding the evolution of life are explored. As important mechanisms in abiotic and prebiotic evolution, linear and non-linear mixing processes, as well as dynamics of solitary waves, are identified. Before the question of the meaning of life in prebiotic environments is renewed and an educated guess based on the elaborated arguments is made on the progress of evolution under the influencing impression of the living state, the evolution of functionality in different selective contexts is analyzed.