Suggested Topics for the Future -- Contributions of recommended reading welcome!

The Modeling Relation

• The Modeling Relation (Rosen) - Chapter 10 from Essays on Life Itself

What are Organisms?

• "Organism and the Origins of Self" (Preface by Tauber, Introduction by Lewontin)
• "Organisms as Causal Systems Which are not Mechanisms" (Robert Rosen)
• "The Well-Posed Question: Why are Organisms Different from Mechanisms? (Don Mikulecky)
• "Organism: A meshwork of selfless selves" (Francisco Varela)

Functional Complexity

• Structure-Function Relationship: Evolution of the Molecular Biological Interpreter (Wills)
• The Growth of Sturctural and Function Complexity During Evolution (HeyLighen)
• Objective and Epistemic Complexity in Biology (Bailley and Longo)
• The Baldwin Effect: An Archaeology (Depew)
• Readings from unfinished manuscript "Complexity" (Rosen)

Epistemological issues:

• Synthetic vs selective thinking (Einstein)
• Theories vs worldviews (Kuhn, Popper, Suppe, others)
• Early and modern teleology (Mayr, Dennet, and others)
• The “epistemic cut:” What is knowable? (Von Neuman, and others)
• Physics envy and the Newtonian Paradigm (Platt, Rosen, others)
• Complexity, mimesis, and Goedelian incompleteness (Church-Turing, Goedel, Gell-Mann, Pattee, Rosen, others)
• Readings from unfinished manuscript "Limits of the limits of science" (Rosen)

Cultural and Spiritual views of life in relation to Western science.

• Eastern concepts of reality (student-selected readings)
• Science and the Church (student-selected readings)
• Parts and Wholes: Physics and the Dhali Lama (Prigogine, Bohem, etc.)
• Unification of knowledge (de Chardin, Hesse, Bergson, Wilbur, others)

Is life real?

• Three levels of Gaia (Kirchner, Abram, Kineman, Corning)
• Structure and Function: The modeling relation (Rosen)
• The organism: Anticipatory, self-entailed systems (Rosen)
• Baldwinian evolution (Baldwin, Darwin, Gould, Lewin, Odling-Smee)
• Modern concepts of the ecosystem (Ulanowitz, NAS)
• Chaos to consciousness: 2^nd Order Cybernetics (Glick, Bier, others)

The foundations of science and society: Who’s reality is it?

• (further student-selected readings on living systems thinking from any discipline)

This page is hosted by the Nexial Institute, Boulder Colorado
Contact: John J. Kineman