Contributions

Control and orders After the Second World War, some automatisms used for fire control, especially anti-aircraft, inspired a new “Theory of Control”. Norbert Wiener, one of the inventors of these “servo-mechanisms” then extended their theory, not only to original mathematics, based on differential equations of a physico-mathematical type, but also to a new look at […]

In my book, The Entangled Brain, I proposed that it is productive to view the brain and a complex, entangled system, one in which the parts dynamically assemble into coalitions that support complex cognitive–emotional behaviors (Pessoa, 2022a). An entangled system is a deeply context-dependent one in which the function of parts (such as a brain […]

Dialectical thinking has been pervasive in philosophy of developmental biology. After the paradigm of the “genetic program” (Jacob, 1970) according to which an organism is the expression of an authoritative program engraved in heredity, the late 20th and early 21st centuries have emphasized that biological systems result from a dialectical process taking place between genes […]

This post consists of excerpts from Juarrero’s forthcoming book, Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence (MIT Press 2023). In the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog the scorpion asks the frog to ferry it across the river safely. When the frog hesitates, fearful the scorpion would kill it, the scorpion protests that doing […]

From the Symbolic Species to Incomplete Nature Auguste Nahas  So it’s only in your first book, The Symbolic Species, that you came back to Peirce.  Terrence Deacon Yes. I was thinking about the evolutionary origins of human language. It was very clear to me that you just couldn’t talk about ‘pre-language’. Animals aren’t speaking in […]

Undergraduate & Graduate Days: Peirce, Cybernetics, Neuroscience Terrence Deacon is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches the co-evolution of language and the human brain. His recent work has touched on diverse questions at the intersection of philosophy and biology, such as the nature of complexity and the place […]

     Life’s complexity – even if we just stick to its basic core, the prokaryotic world – is overwhelming. This is not only due to the diversity of biomolecules and their amazing structural properties, or to the multiple and sophisticated transformations they undergo, but also to their dynamic organization and functional integration into cells. Let […]

In an unpublished manuscript datable to 1956-1957, La vision comme modèle de la connaissance[1] (Vision as a model of knowledge), the philosopher of medicine and biology Georges Canguilhem referred to specific biological-adaptive mechanisms compensating for some human vision anomalies, particularly hemianopic anomalies. In individuals in whom it tends to occur, hemianopsia (or hemianopia) involves the loss of one half of a […]

How can the meeting between a philosopher of science and an ecologist contribute to the advancement in an area of ​​Ecology? Do we have anything to gain from this dialogue? And if the answer is “yes”, who wins in this story? It was in the search for a solution to existing problems in a certain […]

An opinionated, partial review of: Köchy, Kristian and Francesca Michelini (eds.) (2019), Jakob von Uexküll and Philosophy: Life, Environments, Anthropology, New York: Routledge. Schnödl, Gottfried, and Florian Sprenger (2021), Uexküll’s Surroundings: Umwelt Theory and Right-Wing Thought, Lüneburg: meson press eG. Reading Uexküll in the 2020s The work of Jakob von Uexküll’s has seen a remarkable […]