Composer, conductor, educator, jazz critic, and horn virtuoso, Gunther Schuller here brings together his writings on music. There are numerous articles about jazz, dealing with his favourite figures like Duke Ellington and Ornette Coleman, and also Schuller's concept of the 'Third Stream', the area where jazz and concert music intersect. Other sections deal with the composition and performance of contemporary music, musical education, and musical aesthetics.

Globalization processes imply the self-deconstruction of the hierarchy of legal norms. Thus, legal pluralism is no longer only an issue for legal sociology, but becomes a challenge for legal practice itself. Traditionally, rule making by `private regimes' has been subjugated under the hierarchical frame of the national constitution. When this frame breaks, then the new frame of legal institutions can only be heterarchical. The origin of global non-state law as a sequence of recursive legal operations is an `as if', not (...) only a founding myth as a self-observation of law, rather the legal fiction of concrete past operations. This fiction, however, depends on social conditions outside legal institutions, on a historical configuration in which it is sufficiently plausible to assume that in earlier times, too, legal rules were applied. (shrink)

When two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time to produce a joint outcome, they perform a joint action. The perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that enable individuals to coordinate their actions with others have been receiving increasing attention during the last decade, complementing earlier work on shared intentionality and discourse. This chapter reviews current theoretical concepts and empirical findings in order to provide a structured overview of the state of the art in joint action research. We (...) distinguish between planned and emergent coordination. In planned coordination, agents' behavior is driven by representations that specify the desired outcomes of joint action and the agent's own part in achieving these outcomes. In emergent coordination, coordinated behavior occurs due to perception action couplings that make multiple individuals act in similar ways, independently of joint plans. We review evidence for the two types of coordination and discuss potential synergies between them. (shrink)

This collection of writings by Gunther Schuller--the first composer to be awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Composer's Chair of the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center--provides a marvelous introduction to the man and his extraordinary range of musical experience, taste, and learning. In Part I, "Jazz and the Third Stream," Schuller offers his reflections on jazz, insightful pieces on such figures as Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, and Sonny Rollins, and several essays on "the third stream," the genre where jazz and (...) classical music intersect. Part II, "Music Performance and Contemporary Music," includes articles on the art of conducting, the future of opera, the question of a new classicism, and Schuller's own thoughts on his controversial opera The Visitation. The final section, "Music Aesthetics and Education," presents Schuller's reflections on such matters as form, structure, and symbol in music; the need for broadening the audience for quality music; and his vision of the ideal conservatory and the total musician. (shrink)

Between 1650 and 1664, a giant globe was created in Gottorf under Duke Friedrich III, which was widely known and marvelled at by many contemporaries as a wonder of the world. The scientific management of the project was the responsibility of the court mathematician and librarian Adam Olearius. The Gottorf Globe and its counterpart (a “Sphaera Copernicana”) presented the astronomical knowledge of the time in a pictorial form. The image of the earth and the cosmos was also intended to show (...) the Creator and his omnipotence. Erhard Weigel, professor of mathematics at the University of Jena from 1653, also constructed monumental globes. These baroque world models, as well as Robert Long’s 18th-century sphere, can be considered the precursors of today’s planetariums. (shrink)

The Serial Endosymbiotic Theory explains the origin of nucleated eukaryotic cells by a merging of archaebacterial and eubacterial cells. The paradigmatic change is that the driving force behind evolution is not ramification but merging. Lynn Margulis describes the symbiogenetic processes in the language of mechanistic biology in such terms as “merging”, “fusion”, and “incorporation”. Biosemiotics argues that all cell-cell interactions are (rule-governed) sign-mediated interactions, i.e., communication processes. As the description of plant communication demonstrates, the biosemiotic approach is not limited to (...) the level of molecular biology, but is also helpful in examining all sign-mediated interactions between organisms on the phenotypic level. If biosemiotics also uses the notions of “language” and “communication” to describe non-human sign-mediated interactions, then the underlying scientific justification of such usage should be critically considered. Therefore, I summarize the history of this discussion held between 1920 and 1980 and present its result, the pragmatic turn. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly evident that the driving forces of evolutionary novelty are not randomly derived chance mutations of the genetic text, but a precise genome editing by omnipresent viral agents. These competences integrate the whole toolbox of natural genetic engineering, replication, transcription, translation, genomic imprinting, genomic creativity, enzymatic inventions and all types of genetic repair patterns. Even the non-coding, repetitive DNA sequences which were interpreted as being ancient remnants of former evolutionary stages are now recognized as being of viral (...) descent and crucial for higher-order regulatory and constitutional functions of protein structural vocabulary. In this article I argue that non-randomly derived natural genome editing can be envisioned as (a) combinatorial (syntactic), (b) context-specific (pragmatic) and (c) content-sensitive (semantic) competences of viral agents. These three-leveled biosemiotic competences could explain the emergence of complex new phenotypes in single evolutionary events. After short descriptions of the non-coding regulatory networks, major viral life strategies and pre-cellular viral life three of the major steps in evolution serve as examples: There is growing evidence that natural genome-editing competences of viruses are essential (1) for the evolution of the eukaryotic nucleus, (2) the adaptive immune system and (3) the placental mammals. (shrink)

The present debate in legal theory is dominated by an unfruitful schism. On the one hand, analytical theories are concerned with the positivity of law, running the risk of missing the law's relation to society. On the other hand, sociological approaches analyze all sorts of social interactions of law, but have developed no conceptual tools to do justice to the autonomy of law. The theory of autopoiesis offers law a chance of getting round the falsely posed alternative between an autonomous (...) rule system or a socially conditioned decision-making process. It is a theory of law that sees the law's autonomy in the self-reproduction of a communication network and understands its relation to society as interference with other autonomous communication networks. Building on the ideas of Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner uses the concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis to develop a concept of law as a hypercyclically closed social system. This book will stand as a landmark in legal theory and become a standard point of departure in the sociology of law. (shrink)

Communication is defined as an interaction between at least two living agents which share a repertoire of signs. These are combined according to syntactic, semantic and context-dependent, pragmatic rules in order to coordinate behavior. This volume deals with the important roles of soil bacteria in parasitic and symbiotic interactions with viruses, plants, animals and fungi. Starting with a general overview of the key levels of communication between bacteria, further reviews examine the various aspects of intracellular as well as intercellular biocommunication (...) between soil microorganisms. This includes the various levels of biocommunication between phages and bacteria, between soil algae and bacteria, and between bacteria, fungi and plants in the rhizosphere, the role of plasmids and transposons, horizontal gene transfer, quorum sensing and quorum quenching, bacterial-host cohabitation, phage-mediated genetic exchange and soil viral ecology. (shrink)

In the twenty-second series of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze references a remarkable essay by Günther (Stern) Anders. Anders’ essay, translated here as ‘The Pathology of Freedom’, addresses the sickness and health of our negotiation with the negative anthropological condition of ‘not being cut out for the world’.

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991. The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. (...) The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

This contribution demonstrates that the development and growth of plants depends on the success of complex communication processes. These communication processes are primarily sign-mediated interactions and are not simply an mechanical exchange of ‘information’, as that term has come to be understood (or misunderstood) in science. Rather, such interactions as I will be describing here involve the active coordination and organisation of a great variety of different behavioural patterns — all of which must be mediated by signs. Thus proposed, a (...) biosemiotics of plant communication investigates communicationprocesses both within and among the cells, tissues, and organs of plants as sign-mediated interactions which follow (1) combinatorial (syntactic), (2) context-sensitive (pragmatic) and (3) content-specific (semantic) levels of rules. As will be seen in the cases under investigation, the context of interactionsin which a plant organism is interwoven determines the content arrangement of its response behaviour. And as exemplified by the multiply semiotic roles playedby the plant hormone auxin that I will discuss below, this means that a molecule type of identical chemical structure may function in the instantiation of differentmeanings (semantics) that are determined by the different contexts (pragmatics) in which this sign is used. (shrink)

This volume will be an invaluable guide for student and professional researchers in visual perception, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

Following decades of neglect, the work of the German Jewish philosopher, literary author, cultural critic, and poet Günther Anders (1902–1992) is gaining increasing recognition in the English-speaking world. This translation of “Résistance heute” (Resistance Today) makes one of Anders’s most programmatic and polemical short texts available. Published at the height of his anti-nuclear activism, “Resistance Today” is the written version of a speech Anders delivered in November 1962 upon acceptance of the northwest Italian city of Omegna’s Resistance Prize (other notable (...) recipients included Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon). It first appeared in print in the West German left-wing journal Das Argument in November 1963. Clearly written for the occasion, the text condenses (and often further radicalizes) key premises about the end of history, the amoral character of work, and the continuity between Nazi totalitarianism, the nuclear age and the world of consumerism that are developed in great nuance across a range of books that Anders had recently published. Key co-ordinates include: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1 (The Obsolescence of Human Beings 1, 1956), his groundbreaking critique of technology; Der Mann auf der Brücke (The Man on the Bridge, 1959), a philosophical travel diary occasioned by Anders’s 1958 visit to Japan and his participation at the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo; Burning Conscience (1961), a correspondence with the American reconnaissance pilot Claude Eatherly, who scouted the target area before the Enola Gay went on to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It seems likely that Burning Conscience, which turned into an international bestseller, occasioned the award of the prize. (shrink)

We show that there is a structure of countably infinite signature with $P = N_{2}P$ and a structure of finite signature with $P = N_{1}P$ and $N_{1}P \neq N_{2}P$ . We give a further example of a structure of finite signature with $P \neq N_{1}P$ and $N_{1}P \neq N_{2}P$ . Together with a result from [10] this implies that for each possibility of P versus NP over structures there is an example of countably infinite signature. Then we show that for (...) some finite ℒ the class of ℒ-structures with $P = N_{1}P$ is not closed under ultraproducts and obtain as corollaries that this class is not $\delta$ -elementary and that the class of ᵍ-structures with $P \neq N_{1}P$ is not elementary. Finally we prove that for all f dominating all polynomials there is a structure of finite signature with the following properties: $P \neq N_{1}P$ . $N_{1}P \neq N_{2}P$ , the levels $N_{2}TIME(n^{i})$ of $N_{2}P$ and the levels $N_{1}TIME(n^{i})$ of $N_{1}P$ are different for different i, indeed $DTIME(n^{i'}) \nsubseteq N_{2}TIME(n^{i})$ if $i' \textgreater i$ ; $DTIME(f) \nsubseteq N_{2}P$ , and $N_{2}P \nsubseteq DEC$ . DEC is the class of recognizable sets with recognizable complements. So this is an example where the internal structure of $N_{2}P$ is analyzed in a more detailed way. In our proofs we use methods in the style of classical computability theory to construct structures except for one use of ultraproducts. (shrink)

La correspondance de Spinoza comprend six lettres remarquables sur le thème des spectres. On se demande s’ils existent et si on peut reconnaître à certains d’entre eux un sexe féminin. Cet échange qui s’est noué à l’instigation de Hugo Boxel est une curiosité dans cette correspondance mais pas dans son contexte historique, et cela même si, aux Pays-Bas, les procès en sorcellerie avaient moins de succès qu’ailleurs. C’est alors dans l’éclairage de la littérature qui s’est développée autour des choses superstitieuses (...) que ces lettres peuvent être placées. À cet égard, l’œuvre maîtresse de Balthasar Bekker De Betoverde Wereld (Le Monde enchanté), est une référence importante. Cet ouvrage qui cherche à purifier la foi en combattant la superstition avec des arguments cartésiens permet d’établir les deux points suivants. Boxel est plus du côté de la superstition que de la raison, malgré les nombreuses autorités qu’il cite. Spinoza, lui, a avec Bekker des positions communes, mais ceci ne peut faire oublier qu’il défend au sujet d’une question d’actualité une position unique qui peut l’en éloigner en raison de son identité de philosophe. (shrink)

La correspondance de Spinoza comprend six lettres remarquables sur le thème des spectres. On se demande s’ils existent et si on peut reconnaître à certains d’entre eux un sexe féminin. Cet échange qui s’est noué à l’instigation de Hugo Boxel est une curiosité dans cette correspondance mais pas dans son contexte historique, et cela même si, aux Pays-Bas, les procès en sorcellerie avaient moins de succès qu’ailleurs. C’est alors dans l’éclairage de la littérature qui s’est développée autour des choses superstitieuses (...) que ces lettres peuvent être placées. À cet égard, l’œuvre maîtresse de Balthasar Bekker De Betoverde Wereld (Le Monde enchanté), est une référence importante. Cet ouvrage qui cherche à purifier la foi en combattant la superstition avec des arguments cartésiens permet d’établir les deux points suivants. Boxel est plus du côté de la superstition que de la raison, malgré les nombreuses autorités qu’il cite. Spinoza, lui, a avec Bekker des positions communes, mais ceci ne peut faire oublier qu’il défend au sujet d’une question d’actualité une position unique qui peut l’en éloigner en raison de son identité de philosophe. (shrink)

Manfred Eigen employs the terms language and communication to explain key recombination processes of DNA as well as to explain the self-organization of human language and communication: Life processes as well as language and communication processes are governed by the logic of a molecular syntax, which is the exact depiction of a principally formalizable reality.

The article investigates one of the key contributions to modern structural mathematics, namely Hilbert’sFoundations of Geometry and its mathematical roots in nineteenth-century projective geometry. A central innovation of Hilbert’s book was to provide semantically minded independence proofs for various fragments of Euclidean geometry, thereby contributing to the development of the model-theoretic point of view in logical theory. Though it is generally acknowledged that the development of model theory is intimately bound up with innovations in 19th century geometry, so far, little (...) has been said about how exactly model-theoretic concepts grew out of methodological investigations within projective geometry. This article is supposed to fill this lacuna and investigates this geometrical prehistory of modern model theory, eventually leading up to Hilbert’sFoundations. (shrink)

Günther Buck legt in dieser Studie eine phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Theorie des Lernens, des Beispiels und der Analogie vor, die für Pädagogik sowie für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften von grundlegender Bedeutung ist. Der Prozess der Erfahrung im Lernen wird in drei Momenten entfaltet: der epagogischen Gangstruktur, der antizipatorischen Horizonthaftigkeit und der dialektischen, „negativen“ Umwendung auf sich selbst. Lernen wird als Lernen aus Erfahrung und als Erfahrung kenntlich. Im zweiten und dritten Teil gelingt Buck eine Neubestimmung des Beispiels in seinen hermeneutischen, bildenden und didaktischen (...) Funktionen. Unterschiedliche Typen der Analogie werden identifiziert und deren Funktionsweisen differenziert. Mit dieser Neuausgabe kann nach 30 Jahren das bekannteste und wirkungsmächtigste Buch von Günther Buck wieder zugänglich gemacht werden. (shrink)

Should decision-making algorithms be held to higher standards of transparency than human beings? The way we answer this question directly impacts what we demand from explainable algorithms, how we govern them via regulatory proposals, and how explainable algorithms may help resolve the social problems associated with decision making supported by artificial intelligence. Some argue that algorithms and humans should be held to the same standards of transparency and that a double standard of transparency is hardly justified. We give two arguments (...) to the contrary and specify two kinds of situations for which higher standards of transparency are required from algorithmic decisions as compared to humans. Our arguments have direct implications on the demands from explainable algorithms in decision-making contexts such as automated transportation. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with Quine's substitutional account of logical truth. The critique of Quine's definition tends to focus on miscellaneous odds and ends, such as problems with identity. However, in an appendix to his influential article On Second Order Logic, George Boolos offered an ingenious argument that seems to diminish Quine's account of logical truth on a deeper level. In the article he shows that Quine's substitutional account of logical truth cannot be generalized properly to the general concept of (...) logical consequence. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to introduce the reader to the metamathematics of Quine's substitutional definition of logical truth; second, to make Boolos' result accessible to a broader audience by giving a detailed and self-contained presentation of his proof; and, finally, to discuss some of the possible implications and how a defender of the Quinean concepts might react to the challenge posed by Boolos' result. (shrink)

Manfred Eigen extended Erwin Schroedinger’s concept of “life is physics and chemistry” through the introduction of information theory and cybernetic systems theory into “life is physics and chemistry and information.” Based on this assumption, Eigen developed the concepts of quasispecies and hypercycles, which have been dominant in molecular biology and virology ever since. He insisted that the genetic code is not just used metaphorically: it represents a real natural language.However, the basics of scientific knowledge changed dramatically within the second half (...) of the 20th century.Unfortunately, Eigen ignored the results of the philosophy of science discourse on essential features of natural languages and codes: a natural language or code emerges from populations of living agents that communicate. This contribution will look at some of the highlights of this historical development and the results relevant for biological theories about life. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that the action system is responsible for creating an immediate sense of self by determining whether certain sensations and perceptions are the result of one's own actions. In addition, it is assumed that declarative, episodic, or autobiographical memories create a temporally extended sense of self or some form of identity. In the present article, we review recent evidence suggesting that action (procedural) knowledge also forms part of a person's identity, an action identity, so to speak. Experiments that (...) addressed self-recognition of past actions, prediction, and coordination provide ample evidence for this assumption. The phenomena observed in these experiments can be explained by the assumption that observing an action results in the activation of action representations, the more so, when the action observed corresponds to the way in which the observer would produce it. (shrink)

In the third and fourth parts of the book, Günther shows--in debate with Hare, Dworkin, and others--how argumentation on the appropriate application of norms and principles in morality and law is possible.

Any satisfactory model of the emotions must at once recognize their place within intentional psychology and acknowledge their uniqueness as mental causes. In the first half of the century, the James-Lange model had considerable influence on reinforcing the idea that emotions are non-intentional (see Lange 1885 and James 1890). The uniqueness of emotions was therefore acknowledged at the price of denying them a place within intentional psychology proper. More recently, cognitive reductionists (including identity theorists) like Robert Solomon and Joel Marks (...) recognize that emotions are intentional but, by reducing them to judgments, beliefs, desires, etc., fail to capture their distinctiveness as mental causes (see Solomon 1976 and Marks 1982). In other words, their place within intentional psychology is acknowledged at the price of denying them their uniqueness. (shrink)