Some Aspects of Theoretical Biology

1948 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph S. Lillie
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Biology

scholarly journals Between Teleophilia and Teleophobia

Biosemiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schaetzle ◽  
Yogi Hendlin
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Evolutionary Processes ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Multi Level

AbstractDenis Noble convincingly describes the artifacts of theory building in the Modern Synthesis as having been surpassed by the available evidence, indicating more active and less gene-centric evolutionary processes than previously thought. We diagnosis the failure of theory holders to dutifully update their beliefs according to new findings as a microcosm of the prevailing larger social inability to deal with competing paradigms. For understanding life, Noble suggests that there is no privileged level of semiotic interpretation. Understanding multi-level semiosis along with organism and environment contrapunctally, according to Jakob von Uexküll’s theoretical biology, can contribute to the emerging extended evolutionary synthesis.

scholarly journals The Natural Medium as Carrier of Meanings and Their Decoding by Living Beings: Biosemiotics in Action

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-218
Author(s):  
Helena Knyazeva
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Living Organism ◽  
Cognitive Agent ◽  
Life Activity ◽  
Autopoietic System ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Von Uexküll

The synthetic, integrative significance of biosemiotics as a modern interdisciplinary research program is under discussion in the article. Aimed at studying the cognitive and life activity of living beings, which are capable of recognizing signals and extracting the meanings, biosemiotics serves as a conceptual node that combines some important notions of theoretical biology, evolutionary epistemology, cognitive science, phenomenology, neuroscience and neurophilosophy as well as the theory of complex adaptive systems and network science. Worlds of perception and actions of living beings are built in the process of co-evolution, in structural coupling and in enactive interaction with the surrounding natural environment (Umwelt). Thereby the biosemiotic theories developed by the founders of biosemiotics (J. von Uexküll, Th. Sebeok, G. Prodi, H. Pattie) are conceptually closed to the system-structural evolutionary approach developed in synergetics by H. Haken and S.P. Kurdyumov, the conception of autopoiesis (H. Maturana and F. Varela), second-order cybernetics (H. von Foerster), the conception of enactivism in cognitive science (F. Varela, E. Thompson, A. Noë). The key to comprehending the processes of extracting and generating meanings is that every living organism lives in the subjectively built world (Umwelt), so that its Umwelt and its internal psychic organization become parts of a single autopoietic system. According to the well-known expression of G. Bateson, information is a not indifferent difference or a difference that makes a difference. Differences become information when a cognitive agent as an interpreter, acting as part of an autopoietic system, sees signs in these differences that make meanings.

scholarly journals On the Subject of Objects: Four Views on Object Perception and Tool Use

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarja Susi ◽  
Tom Ziemke
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Object Perception ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Von Uexküll ◽  
Functional Tone

This paper addresses the relation between an agent and its environment, and more specifically, how subjects perceive object/artefacts/tools and their (possible) use. Four different conceptions of the relation between subject and object are compared here: functional tone (von Uexküll), equipment (Heidegger), affordance (Gibson), and entry point (Kirsh). even as these concepts have developed within different disciplines (theoretical biology, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science) and in very different historical contexts, they are used more or less interchangeably in much of the literature, and typically conflated under the label of ‘affordance’. However, at closer inspection, they turn out to have not only similarities, but also substantial differences, which are identified and discussed here. Given that the relation between subjects and their objects is crucial to understanding human cognition and interaction with tools and technology, as well as robots’ interaction with their environment, we argue that these differences deserve some more attention than they have received so far.

scholarly journals What we can learn from semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology to understand religious communication

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 192-223
Author(s):  
Volkhard Krech
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Religious Communication ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Meaning System ◽  
Religious Evolution ◽  
Societal Evolution

If religion is a socio-cultural meaning system as part of the socio-cultural sphere, then how does it relate to mental, organic, and physical processes that belong to the environment of religion? The article contributes to answering this question by referring to semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology. The starting point is understanding religious evolution as a co-evolution to societal evolution, namely, as one of the latter’s internal differentiations. In turn, societal evolution is a co-evolution to mental, organic, and physical evolution. These evolutionary spheres mutually constitute one another’s environments. The eigenstate of the socio-cultural sphere consists of language activated via communication. Language is the replicator of socio-cultural processes corresponding to the function of the genome in organic processes. The differentiation of spheres in general evolution concerns respective organic, mental, and socio-cultural substrates, while the substrate-neutral structure of the two evolutionary dimensions of organic and societal processes, including religion, is revealed as semiotic patterns that organic and societal processes have in common. Organic and religious processes of generating information are isomorphic. Thus, semiosis mediates between religious communication and its environment.

scholarly journals Active Inferants: An Active Inference Framework for Ant Colony Behavior

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ari Friedman ◽  
Alec Tschantz ◽  
Maxwell J. D. Ramstead ◽  
Karl Friston ◽  
Axel Constant
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Behavioral Model ◽  
Ant Colony ◽  
Behavioral Modeling ◽  
Multiscale Approach ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Behavioral Experiments ◽  
Case System ◽  
Markov Decision ◽  
Trail Formation

In this paper, we introduce an active inference model of ant colony foraging behavior, and implement the model in a series of in silico experiments. Active inference is a multiscale approach to behavioral modeling that is being applied across settings in theoretical biology and ethology. The ant colony is a classic case system in the function of distributed systems in terms of stigmergic decision-making and information sharing. Here we specify and simulate a Markov decision process (MDP) model for ant colony foraging. We investigate a well-known paradigm from laboratory ant colony behavioral experiments, the alternating T-maze paradigm, to illustrate the ability of the model to recover basic colony phenomena such as trail formation after food location discovery. We conclude by outlining how the active inference ant colony foraging behavioral model can be extended and situated within a nested multiscale framework and systems approaches to biology more generally.

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