Autocatakinetics, Evolution, and the Law of Maximum Entropy Production: A Principled Foundation Towards the Study of Human Ecology

Ecological science addresses the relations between living things and their environments, and the study of human ecology the particular case of humans. However, there is an opposing tradition built into the foundations of modern science which separates living things and particularly humans, from their environments. Beginning in modern times with Descartes' radical separation of psychology and physics (or "mind" from matter), this dualistic tradition was extended into biology with Kant's biology versus physics (or living thing versus environment) dualism, and into evolutionary theory with the rise of Darwinism and its grounding in Boltzmannian thermodynamics. If ecological science is to be about what it purports to be about, about living thing- environment relations, it must provide a principled basis for dissolving Cartesian incommensurability. A deeper understanding of thermodynamic law, and the principles of self-organizing ("autocatakinetic") systems provides the nomological basis for doing just this, for putting evolution back in its universal context, and showing the reciprocal relation between living things and their environments, thereby providing a principled foundation for ecological science in general, and human ecology in particular.

[1]  M. Conrad.  Evolving hierarchical systems: Stanley N. Salthe, Columbia University Press, New York, 1985, 343pp. (US$32.50) , 1987 .

[2]  R. Dawkins.  The Blind Watchmaker , 1986 .

[3]  Peter Munz.  Our knowledge of the growth of knowledge : Popper or Wittgenstein? , 1985 .

[4]  D. Dennett.  Darwin's Dangerous Idea , 1995 .

[5]  John Tyler Bonner,et al.  Evolution and Development , 1998 .

[6]  Bruce H. Weber,et al.  Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection , 1994 .

[7]  Magoroh Maruyama,et al.  THE SECOND CYBERNETICS Deviation-Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes , 1963 .

[8]  L. Margulis.  Symbiosis in cell evolution: Life and its environment on the early earth , 1981 .

[9]  R. Swenson.  SPONTANEOUS ORDER, EVOLUTION, AND AUTOCATAKINETICS: THE NOMOLOGICAL BASIS FOR THE EMERGENCE OF MEANING , 1998 .

[10]  A. Eddington.  The Nature of the Physical World , 1928 .

[11]  Martin Gardner,et al.  Problems of Life. , 1953 .

[12]  E. Reed.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1989 .

[13]  H. Spencer.  The Social Organism. , 1875, Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative.

[14]  Grant D. Jones,et al.  Political Developments in Prehistory: The Transition to Statehood in the New World , 1981 .

[15]  Michael T. Turvey,et al.  Thermodynamic Reasons for Perception--Action Cycles , 1991 .

[16]  Friedrich Albert Lange.  The History of Materialism , 2000 .

[17]  Rod Swenson,et al.  Order, Evolution, and Natural Law: Fundamental Relations in Complex System Theory , 2018, Cybernetics and Applied Systems.

[18]  R. Carneiro,et al.  A Theory of the Origin of the State , 1970, Science.

[19]  Ludwig Boltzmann,et al.  Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems , 1974 .

[20]  C. Darwin.  On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life , 2019 .

[21]  D. Massaro,et al.  The science of the mind : 2001 and beyond , 1996 .

[22]  N. Eldredge,et al.  What Is Life , 1995 .

[23]  K. Popper.  Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography , 1976 .

[24]  R. Lewontin.  ‘The Selfish Gene’ , 1977, Nature.

[25]  P. Cloud.  Oasis in Space: Earth History from the Beginning , 1988 .

[26]  David H. Helman,et al.  Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge , 1989 .

[27]  M. Grene.  Is evolution at a crossroads , 1989 .

[28]  N. Rescher.  Contingence in the Philosophy of Leibniz , 1952 .

[29]  Richard McKeon,et al.  Introduction to Aristotle , 1947 .

[30]  M T Turvey,et al.  Optical information about the severity of upcoming contacts. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[31]  Frank R. Lillie,et al.  The Problems of Life , 1904, Botanical Gazette.

[32]  Constantin Virgil Negoita.  Cybernetics and Applied Systems , 1992 .

[33]  V. Csányi.  Evolutionary Systems and Society: A General Theory , 1989 .

[34]  R. A. Fisher,et al.  The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection , 1931 .

[35]  Herbert Spencer,et al.  Progress: Its Law and Cause. , 1875, Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative.

[36]  R. M. Alexander.  Size and shape , 1971 .

[37]  W. Calvin.  The River That Flows Uphill: A Journey from the Big Bang to the Big Brain , 1986 .

[38]  P. Munz,et al.  Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty , 1984 .

[39]  Richard C Lewontin,et al.  Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA , 1991 .

[40]  R. Swenson.  AUTOCATAKINETICS, YES—AUTOPOIESIS, NO: STEPS TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF EVOLUTIONARY ORDERING , 1992 .

[41]  René Descartes,et al.  Discourse on Method and Meditations , 1960 .

[42]  Elliott Sober.  The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus , 1986 .

[43]  Robert Bruce Lindsay.  Energy: Historical Development of the Concept , 1976 .

[44]  R. Swenson.  Evolutionary Theory Developing: The Problem(s) With Darwin's Dangerous Idea , 1997 .

[45]  K. Popper.  Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind , 1978 .

[46]  R. Swenson.  Engineering Initial Conditions In A Self-producing Environment , 1989, Delicate Balance: Technics, Culture and Consequences.

[47]  R. Lewontin,et al.  The Dialectical Biologist , 1987 .

[48]  R. Dawkins.  The Extended Phenotype , 1982 .

[49]  W. Callebaut,et al.  Evolutionary Epistemology: A Multiparadigm Program , 1987 .

[50]  A. Bramwell.  Ecology in the 20th Century: A History , 1989 .

[51]  L. Demetrius.  Thermodynamics and evolution. , 2000, Journal of theoretical biology.

[52]  David Kohn,et al.  The Darwinian Heritage , 1988 .

[53]  I. Prigogine.  Time, Structure, and Fluctuations , 1978, Science.

[54]  Ernst Mayr,et al.  Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary Synthesis , 1980 .

[55]  Michael Fisher,et al.  Evolutionary synthesis of analog networks , 2005 .

[56]  James E. Lovelock,et al.  The biota as ancient and modern modulator of the Earth's atmosphere , 1978 .

[57]  K. Lorenz.  Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge , 1973 .

[58]  David N. Lee,et al.  A Theory of Visual Control of Braking Based on Information about Time-to-Collision , 1976, Perception.

[59]  S. Gould.  Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History , 1989 .

[60]  L. Boltzmann.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics , 1974 .

[61]  Rod Swenson,et al.  Emergent attractors and the law of maximum entropy production: Foundations to a theory of general evolution , 1989 .

[62]  G. Carpenter.  Natural Selection , 1936, Nature.