Providing a new conceptual scaffold for further research in biology and cognition, this book introduces the new field of cognitive biology, a systems biology approach showing that further progress in this field will depend on a deep recognition of developmental processes, as well as on the consideration of the developed organism as an agent able to modify and control its surrounding environment. The role of cognition, the means through which the organism is able to cope with its environment, cannot be (...) underestimated. In particular, it is shown that this activity is grounded on a theory of information based on Bayesian probabilities. The organism is considered as a cybernetic system able to integrate a processor as a source of variety (the genetic system), a regulator of its own homeostasis (the metabolic system), and a selecting system separating the self from the non-self (the membrane in unicellular organisms). Any organism is a complex system that can survive only if it is able to maintain its internal order against the spontaneous tendency towards disruption. Therefore, it is forced to monitor and control its environment and so to establish feedback circuits resulting in co-adaptation. Cognitive and biological processes are shown to be inseparable. (shrink)

Peirce is the father of semiotics. However, his theory was developed long before the developments in information theory. The codification procedures studied by the latter turn out to be crucial also for biology. At the root of both information and semiosis there are equivalence classes. In the case of biological systems, we speak of functional equivalence classes. Equivalence classes represent the grid that organism impose on biochemical processes and signals of the external or internal environment. The whole feedback circuit that (...) is built in this way allows information control. Symbolic systems represent another kind of dealing-with-information as far as they deal with the matching of our concepts with the world. (shrink)

Quantum–mechanical systems may be understood in terms of information. When they interact, they modify the information they carry or represent in two, and only two, ways: by selecting a part of the initial amount of (potential) information and by sharing information with other systems. As a consequence, quantum systems are informationally shielded. These features are shown to be general features of nature. In particular, it is shown that matter arises from quantum–mechanical processes through the constitution of larger ensembles that share (...) some information while living organisms make use of a special form of information selection. (shrink)

This comprehensive volume gives a balanced and systematic treatment of both the interpretation and the mathematical-conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. It is written in a pedagogical style and addresses many thorny problems of fundamental physics. The first aspect concerns Interpretation. The author raises the central problems: formalism, measurement, non-locality, and causality. The main positions on these subjects are presented and critically analysed. The aim is to show that the main schools can converge on a core interpretation. The second aspect concerns (...) Foundations. Here it is shown that the whole theory can be grounded on information theory. The distinction between information and signal leads us to integrating quantum mechanics and relativity. Category theory is presented and its significance for quantum information shown; the logic and epistemological bases of the theory are assessed. Of relevance to all physicists and philosophers with an interest in quantum theory and its foundations, this book is destined to become a classic work. (shrink)

Cell communication plays a key role in multicellular organisms. In developing embryos as in adult organisms, cells communicate by coordinating their differentiation through the establishment and/or renewal of a variety of cell communication channels. Under both these conditions, cells interact by either receptor signalling, surface recognition of specific cell adhesion molecules or transfer of cytoplasmic components through junctional coupling. In recent years, it has become apparent that cells may also communicate through the extracellular release of microvesicles. They may originate as (...) either exosomes from the endosomal compartment upon fusion of multivesicular bodies with the plasma membrane or be shed directly from the plasma membrane via extensions of the cell surface. Microvesicles may disperse over long distances through body fluids and deliver their molecular cargo onto a variety of target cells. As a general rule, the metabolic fate of these cells is determined by the molecular nature of the vesicular cargo, while targeting itself depends on the affinity of the molecules expressed on the enclosing membrane. In this paper, we will be arguing that intercellular vesicular transfer is substantially different from other types of cell communication, allowing cells and molecules to interact on varying levels. Cells interacting via ligand signalling owe their specificity to the steric coupling with cognate receptor molecules. As such, it is a pure molecular process that affects target cells only upon integration into their responding repertoire. In this relationship, coupled cells are reciprocally adapted to each other through the selection of their respective signalling capacities, following exploration of their receptor specificity. Interaction by intercellular vesicles realizes a substantially different type of cell communication. Vesicular traffic allows donor cells to carry out a horizontal type of gene transfer and target this information over long distances via independently controlled mechanisms. Because of this independence, cells interacting via vesicular traffic are not expected to adapt their signalling correspondences, but to control instead the efficiency of their cargo delivery irrespective of the receptor repertoire expressed by the target tissue. In this paper, the multifaceted functions of the intercellular vesicular traffic will be discussed in a multilevel biosemiotic perspective with the aim of unravelling the cellular mechanisms devised by nature to accomplish communication. (shrink)

We treat emergence via reference to four ideas: (1) the different levels of emergence are characterised by distinct conservation laws, (2) the emergence process starts from some instability, (3) the driving force of emergence is given by selection processes allowing canalisation of specific (emerging) paths, and (4) new forms of stability are determined by new kinds of operations. At a quantum-mechanical level entropy is conserved in an isolated system or at global level and the only allowed operations are local shifts (...) in order and disorder – that implies weakening and strengthening correlations. The stable state is here represented by a highly symmetric state. Emergence of the classical physical world arises when energy is conserved and allowable operations include building and breaking of physical-chemical connections. The stable state is here the energy minimum. Emergence of the biotic world implies that the conserved quantity is energy efficiency. Energy is no longer locally conserved. The allowed operations are those that are consistent with the survival (persistence) of the organism. The emergence of the mind is grounded in selecting those operations that are rational (in the sense of maintaining biological self-organisation). Here, the rational value of behaviour is the quantity of interest. Mounting the ladder of (both cosmic and biological) evolution means to have more and more selection of the possible outcomes (and therefore of the relative operations) but in a growing space of possibilities: if selection would reduce more and more the space of possibilities, the final result would be a rigid order; at the other extreme, if we had only expansion of the possibilities without selection, the final result would be disorder. So growing complexity can be understood as a path in the evolutionary landscape of the systems in which a balance of order and disorder is maintained although each level emerges as a result of the selection. (shrink)

Nella sua straordinaria opera scientifica, Franco Selleri si è sempre opposto alla rinuncia alla comprensione della struttura della realtà e della natura degli oggetti fisici, che egli considera come l’elemento caratterizzante delle principali teorie della fisica del Novecento e che è stata stigmatizzata da Karl Popper come tesi della “fine della strada in fisica”. Sin dalla fine degli anni ’60, egli ha sviluppato quella riflessione critica nei confronti delle teorie fondamentali della fisica moderna, in particolar modo della teoria delle particelle (...) elementari e della meccanica quantistica, e in un secondo tempo delle teorie relativistiche, che contraddistingue il suo programma di ricerca. Nel corso della sua intensa e infaticabile attività scientifica, Selleri è entrato in proficuo contatto con molti grandi fisici e filosofi della scienza, instaurando un intenso dialogo critico con Louis de Broglie, John Bell e Karl Popper. Le sue originali e non convenzionali ricerche lo hanno portato a risultati significativi non solo nell’ambito dei fondamenti della fisica, ma anche della storia e della filosofia della fisica. Per questo abbiamo voluto dedicare un numero speciale di Isonomia al nostro impareggiabile amico e collega, sia per la sua passione instancabile e la sua profonda conoscenza dei fondamenti formali, concettuali e filosofici delle teorie della fisica contemporanea, sia e forse ancor più come maestro di una prospettiva perennemente critica che egli ha sempre seguito e proposto con particolare rigore ed estrema determinazione. (shrink)

Information may be extracted from a quantum–mechanical system only by means of inference. For this reason, the observer, although not required as such for obtaining an eigenstate of the measured observable on a given system, is necessary for obtaining information.

Starting with the example of irreducible quantum events, it is shown that other kinds of events also have an element of randomness. The hallmark of “genuine” events is their irreducibility to some previous conditions. A connection between this concept and the traditional notion of contingency is explored. This concept is further brought in connection with Peirce’s Firstness. Such a notion raises the problem of how to understand causation. It seems that causes deal with individual happenings. In fact, laws are only (...) general, while causal explanations necessarily involve localization in space and time and therefore indexical connection with events. When we deal with causes, we necessarily deal with their effects, which are shifted in space and delayed in time and so do not reveal the singularity of the event that is at the origin of the process. Our descriptions of events are really about the effects of the events, not the events themselves. This helps us to define what events are in all generality: an event is what cannot be fully described by our means although we have reason to assume that it is real. (shrink)

The main interpretations of the quantum-mechanical wave function are presented emphasizing how they can be divided into two ensembles: The ones that deny and the other ones that attribute a form of reality to quantum waves. It is also shown why these waves cannot be classical and must be submitted to the restriction of the complementarity principle. Applying the concept of smooth complementarity, it is shown that there can be no reason to attribute reality only to the events and not (...) to the wave or to the initial state of a given system. Thereafter, an experiment proposed by the authors is presented, where it is shown that the wave-like behaviour allows predictions that are not allowed on the grounds of a particle-like behaviour. In conclusion, we upheld that quantum waves must be real even if they do not belong to the same ontological level of events, which connected with particle detections. (shrink)

Peirce’s theory of categorization is reconstructed and shown that the canonical form of the categories proposed by him are Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness. The related categories of Tychism, Synechism and Agapism are also discussed and shown several problems. In particular, I discuss about the sense in which we can speak of ultimate and basic categories, the different forms of relations, the different kinds of causes, the principle of habit-forming, the possible evolution of laws, the role of representation in our dealing with (...) reality. (shrink)

When dealing with the issue of the relations among science, philosophy and theology, one finds several misunderstandings. One is that natural sciences essentially offend the value of the human person. Many think that the central place of empirical data in natural sciences is in disharmony with the universal tenets of both philosophy and theology. The idea that science and philosophy are necessarily in conflict is based on a misunderstanding of both science and philosophy. The actual current paradigm shifts in natural (...) sciences opens a new field for fruitful interaction with philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Three fundamental forms of semiotic process (reference, addressing, and intentionality) are presented and their relations to language explained. After that, the fundamental inference forms (formal deduction, induction, and abduction) are presented and their connections with semiosis shown. Finally, we show some important differences between semiosis and inference, and propose to see information processing as a dynamical attractor of inference.