A classic of phenomenology and existentialism and arguably Jonas's greatest work, The Phenomenon of Life sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy -- ...

A classic of phenomenology and existentialism and arguably Jonas's greatest work, The Phenomenon of Life sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy -- an existential interpretation of biological facts laid out in support of Jonas ...

Contemporary architecture is increasingly grounded in science and mathematics. Architectural discourse has shifted radically from the sometimes disorienting Derridean deconstruction, to engaging scientific terms such as fractals, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and evolving systems. That's where the architectural action is -- at least for cutting-edge architects and thinkers -- and every practicing architect and student needs to become conversant with these terms and know what they mean. Unfortunately, the vast majority of architecture faculty are unprepared to explain them to students, not (...) having had a scientific education themselves. Here is an architecture book by an architect/scientist, just in time to help architects in the new millennium. Alexander discusses many of the scientific terms arising in cutting-edge architecture, and explains them to those who don't have scientific training or advanced mathematical knowledge. We find discussions of the evolution of forms; the importance of process in design; iteration; genetic algorithms; sequences of transformations; different levels of scale (i.e. fractals); etc. They are explained here by an architect who is also a scientist, because he wants to change the way architects think and build. Alexander is not merely popularizing other scientists' results and making them accessible to architects: he is in fact presenting new and original scientific work that ties many of these concepts together in a way that will be useful to architects. (shrink)

In this paper the life phenomenon is analysed from cybernetic point of view. The Korzeniewski’s approach is discussed and complemented. The analysis is based on autonomous systems theory and information metabolism theory. Philosophical aspects of the problem are taken into consideration as well.

Is life a property of the material structure of a living system or an abstract form of organization that can be realized in other media; artificial as well as natural? One version of the Artificial Life research programme presumes, that one can separate the logical form of an organism from its material basis of construction, and that its capacity to live and reproduce is a property of the form, not the matter (Langton 1989). This seems to oppose the (...) notion of a cell within contemporary molecular biology, according to which "form" and "matter" do not represent separate realms. The information in a living cell is intimately bound to the properties of the material substrate. This condition may represent a restriction on the validity of formal theories of life. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to assess the phenomenon of longevity as a particularly important component in the study of increasing life expectancy and reducing mortality. The article reveals the possibilities of increasing life expectancy and reducing mortality through research in the field of the phenomenon of longevity, self-preservation behavior and social information systems. The scientific novelty lies in substantiating the possibilities of changing demographic behavior through the prism of the study of longevity as a (...) kind of model of natural physiological aging of the population, as well as using the system of social "programming" of the population as a special social management tool. As a result of the study, unique opportunities for changing the demographic behavior of the population have been identified, which should be used in the development of practical measures for the implementation of social and demographic policy. (shrink)

Introduction. A man of today inevitably acquires the status of a patient in the context of preventive medicine, even when he is healthy. But at the same time, he or she becomes an object of influence both from medicine itself and from numerous social institutions and commercial structures, in addition to health institutions, which proclaimed their mission to ensure human well-being. The purpose of the study is to comprehend the philosophical and anthropological aspects of the patient’s phenomenon and clarify (...) basic foundations of transforming a patient’s consciousness in the context of progressive life medicalization. Methods. The methodological basis of the research comprises sociocultural, hermeneutic, existentialphilosophical and phenomenological approaches. The research is based on M. Heidegger’s anthropological ontology, E. Giddens’ existential ontology; M. Foucault’s concept of life medicalization; P.D. Tishchenko’s concept of transforming bio-power in modern culture. Scientific novelty of the research. The author has developed a hypothesis for the principles of forming individual and mass patient consciousness, which determines a modern person’s way of being in the context of life medicalization. Results. Suffering from the fear of the existence finiteness becomes the existential foundation of the modern patient’s consciousness, while the existential and rational foundations of the patient consciousness of the modern enlightened individual are mutually mediated. The link in their mutual mediation is believing in the possibility of achieving the ideal health, formed in modern socio-cultural conditions. In the situation of total life medicalization, in which health is understood as a prosperous existence, a special way of human being is formed on the basis of the individual patient’s consciousness. The “effect” of the life medicalization is the emergence of a mass patient consciousness - the fear of losing health forms the ideology of a medicalized society in which every individual becomes a patient. Conclusions. The progress of biomedicine is able to determine the crisis of human identity. In this regard, it is important to clarify the philosophical concepts of health and illness in the context of the modern sociocultural situation, which allows to determine the possible ideal of health within the framework of medical interventions that are safe for the human essence and capable of providing “ontological safety” when healing an individual. (shrink)

When posing the question "is artificial life possible?", our immediate answer is that on the one hand : of course it is - people make it, and indeed very interesting and even breathtaking structures have already been constructed, such as `aminats', self-reproducing patterns and the other things, we have seen already. In this sense we are forced to take artificial life as a fact (at least as a fact about a new branch of research), nearly in the same (...) way that the philosopher Kant took the theoretical physics of his days, Newtonian physics, as a matter of fact, and then asked: What are the conditions of possibility for this kind of theoretical science? On the other hand: The situation differs from Kant's. Artificial Life does not confront us with an analogy of theoretical mechanics within the field of biology. We face a curious situation: It is not obvious to the majority of biologists that Artificial Life is possible at all, at least in the purely computational sense of `software life'. Probably, most biologists would never call these artificial constructs `living'. Why not? Because the intuitive notions of life and living systems within biology implies, among other things, that living beings are a result of a long, ongoing evolutionary process that have created autonomous organisms, single-celled and multi-celled, that are highly organized, open (non-equilibrium), material thermodynamic systems based on metabolism and some kind of genetic information supported by macromolecules, that only metaphorically resemble a computer program. It is not that.. (shrink)

In the article of Natalia Kovalchuk «Sanctity phenomenon of St. Feodosiy Pecherskyi in context of holy persons life» the spiritual way of St. Feodosiy Pecherksyi as a search of time, which bring him closer to the sanctity and search of his personal dimension as a holy place are regarded. Through the analysis of food and cloth, which connect St. Feodosiy with world, his life is researched. Spiritual way of St. Feodosiy Pecherskyi brings him closer to the sanctity.

This volume offers a retrospective of Jonas's life and works by bringing together historians of modern Germany, Judaica scholars, philosophers, bioethicists, ...

Origin of life on earth transpired once and from then on, it emerges as an endless eternal process. Matter and energy are constants of the cosmos and the hypothesis is that the origin of life is a moment when these constants intertwined or interacted. Energy from the cosmos interacted with inorganic matter to support matter with retention of this riveted energy, as energy to be circulated within the primitive channelized structures to conserve energy by the materialization of the (...) proton homeostasis mechanisms developed from the obtainable inorganic matter. The driver for these processes as we now confirm, exists in the quantum world and through quantum phenomenal processes could have combined these constants to create the magic of life. Primitive earth was a chemical reactive system that triggered a macromolecular evolution by means of open thermodynamic systems, driven by cyclic gradients of temperature, electromagnetic radiation and chemical potentials which sustained life and proto-consciousness in the first life forms driven by the quantum processes. The origin of life is always an intriguing topic but the purpose for finding the cause should never be inclined towards obliterating it; for if that is the case, the further we seek, the farther it will go. (shrink)

Hans Jonas est né en Allemagne et il fut l’élève de Bultmann, Husserl et Heidegger. Sa vie est placée sous le signe du voyage. Il émigre d’abord, en 1933, en Palestine, puis au Canada où il enseigne, au début des années 1950, aux Universités de Montréal et d’Ottawa avant de s’installer aux États-Unis où il occupe la chaire de philosophie à la New School for Social Research de New York. C’est durant ces années new-yorkaises qu’il rédige ses deux principaux ouvrages: (...) Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation et The Phenomenon of Life dont la première publication remonte à 1966. On assiste aujourd’hui à la redécouverte de ce livre qui non seulement fait l’objet d’une nouvelle édition aux presses de la Northwestern University, mais vient aussi d’être publié dans une première traduction française chez De Boeck Université. (shrink)

Marjorie Grene's work expresses the conviction that what is called "the new philosophy of science" will not become viable until it is rooted in an understanding of the knower and the known which breaks with the familiar Cartesian dualisms. In order to provide this understanding, she has sought to restore central significance to the phenomenon of life -- to the distinctive ways in which animals, including human beings, perceive and act in their worlds. It is argued that her (...) fundamental premise is that humans, as living beings, bring a shared experience of the world with them into scientific activity. On this basis, she is able to show how scientific objectivity may be seen as a form of pre-scientific exploration and how the scientifically known world may be seen as the pre-scientific life-world interpreted and enriched in scientific terms. (shrink)

Eleven previously published essays presenting a moderately unified argument in favor of the general conception of what Jonas calls the "Philosophy of Life," as well as detailed arguments pointing in the direction of a non-dualistic, realistic, and non-naturalistic philosophy of mind. The "nons" are deliberately placed, as Jonas spends the better part of the book questioning the tenability of dualistic and, especially, materialistic and mechanistically oriented theories of mind. With extraordinary historical sensitivity—at times threatening to dissolve a problem by (...) laying bare the conceptual confusions which surrounded its origins—and with a better than working knowledge of biology and physiology, not to mention anthropology, Jonas argues, on the one hand, that the clues to the dynamism and structure of mind are to be found in such organic features as sentience, motility, and emotion: e.g., the conceptual strands that unite in the notions of causality and truth are rooted in the respective experiences of force and resistance, and vision. On the other hand, Jonas argues for the irreducibility of the subject-object structure of man's relation to nature on the grounds that this is the necessary burden of subjectivity. In all, the book is an impressive performance.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A quarter-life crisis (QLC) is a phenomenon that has gained widespread attention in the media and popular literature as a result of the difficulties associated with early adulthood. This study, "Tumatanda na Ako: The Quarter-life Crisis Phenomenon Among Emerging Adults," explored the emerging adults’ experiences of quarter-life crisis and the meaning they make out of their experiences of this phenomenon. The study utilized the interpretative phenomenological analysis of the qualitative data gathered from twenty (20) (...) respondents from a higher educational institution in Bocaue, Bulacan. The findings have been the bases for the development of the developmental program entitled, “KnowNow, Know-How: Unveiling the Quarter-life Crisis Phenomenon and Finding Ways to Conquer!” and for the development of a proposed psychological assessment tool namely “Help! I Am Lost,” A Quarter-life Crisis Scale. (shrink)

This is the third republication of Jonas’s original, first published in 1966, and previously republished in 1979 and 1982. The prestige of repeated republication generally designates a classic, and this book, while still known by too few, deserves such acclaim. As a general rule, philosophers of science concern themselves either with explaining what scientists do or with prescribing what scientists ought to do. Jonas has a different aim. He examines the fundamental underlying presuppositions of modern science, particularly biology, locates these (...) presuppositions within the history of ideas, and critiques them. The result is a rich feast of fascinating observations and ideas. While these eleven essays were not initially conceived of as a unified whole, they fit together nicely. Even the very brief transition chapter and epilogue serve as far more than filler. Both are illuminating and contribute substantially to the overall coherence of the book. (shrink)

This book is the first attempt to think philosophically about the comic phenomenon in literature, art, and life. Working across a substantial collection of comic works author Agnes Heller makes seminal observations on the comic in the work of both classical and contemporary figures. Whether she's discussing Shakespeare, Kafka, Rabelais, or the paintings of Brueghel and Daumier Heller's Immortal Comedy makes a characteristic contribution to modern thought across the humanities.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin was one of the most distinguished thinkers and scientists of our time. He fits into no familiar category for he was at once a biologist and a paleontologist of world renown, and also a Jesuit priest. He applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, to relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science. (...) The Phenomenon of Man, the first of his writings to appear in America, Pierre Teilhard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought. When published in France it was the best-selling nonfiction book of the year. (shrink)

Upshot: The target article suggested that Ashby’s device, the homeostat, embodies and illustrates a conception of life as a passive-contingent phenomenon. It advocated renewed experiments with updated and extended versions of his device that would allow us to understand better what passive-contingent life “would be like.” In assessing the proposal, we should be particularly careful when dealing with the concept of “passivity,” and we should not mistake the proposed theoretical exploration for a substantial metaphysical thesis about (...) class='Hi'>life in general. (shrink)

The received view on the contributions of the physics community to the birth of molecular biology tends to present the physics community as sharing a basic level consensus on how physics should be brought to bear on biology. I argue, however, that a close examination of the views of three leading physicists involved in the birth of molecular biology, Bohr, Delbrück, and Schrödinger, suggests that there existed fundamental disagreements on how physics should be employed to solve problems in biology even (...) within the physics community. In particular, I focus on how these three figures differed sharply in their assessment of the relevance of complementarity, the potential of chemical methods, and the relative importance of classical physics. In addition, I assess and develop Roll-Hansen’s attempt to conceptualize this history in terms of models of scientific change advanced by Kuhn and Lakatos. Though neither model is fully successful in explaining the divergence of views among these three physicists, I argue that the extent and quality of difference in their views help elucidate and extend some themes that are left opaque in Kuhn’s model. (shrink)

Resumo: Este artigo mostra a abordagem hermenêutica realizada por Martin Heidegger dos conceitos de natureza e vida a partir da ontologia fundamental. Em Ser e Tempo, Heidegger elabora as condições hermenêuticas para que se possa apreender ontologicamente a vida através do que ele chama de interpretação privativa da vida. O desenvolvimento sistemático do sentido de ser da vida é apresentado por Heidegger na preleção Os conceitos fundamentais da metafísica : mundo, finitude, solidão, de 1929/1930. Nela, para apresentar o fenômeno da (...) vida, Heidegger parte da tese central de que todo vivente é organismo, de modo a desenvolver uma investigação ontológica em conjunto com pesquisas biológicas e zoológicas. Por conseguinte, após a explicitação dos modos de encontro com a natureza, será evidenciado como a natureza em sentido originário mostra-se a partir de um retraimento na abertura de mundo do ser-aí em sua relação com os organismos vivos. Palavras-chave: Heidegger; ontologia; hermenêutica da natureza; vida; mundo.: This article shows the hermeneutical approach performed by Martin Heidegger to the concepts of nature and life from the fundamental ontology. In Being and Time, Heidegger elaborates the hermeneutical conditions so that we can apprehend ontologically life through what he calls the private interpretation of life. The systematic development of the sense of being of life is presented by Heidegger in the lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, of 1929/1930. In this lecture, to present the phenomenon of life Heidegger uses the central thesis that every living being is organism in order to develop an ontological investigation in conjunction with biological and zoological research. Therefore, after the explanation of the ways of meeting with nature, will be shown as nature in the original sense shows itself from a withdrawal in the world opening of the being-there in its relationship with living organisms. Keywords: Heidegger; ontology; hermeneutic of nature; life; world. (shrink)

La philosophie peut-elle changer le monde? À en écouter Wittgenstein, la réponse est non. La philosophie laisse le monde tel qu’il est. Sa tâche consiste en la résolution des « pseudo-problèmes » qu’elle s’est elle-même posée. Pour Hans Jonas, au contraire, cette manière de philosopher est vaine. Oui, la philosophie peut et doit changer le monde, elle doit même s’emparer des problèmes du moment. Après être devenu un érudit du gnosticisme, Jonas comprend les limites de sa tour d’ivoire et rép...

This paper summarizes a theory of fairness that replaces the metaphysical foundations of the egalitarian theory of John Rawls and the utilitarian theory of John Harsanyi with evolutionary arguments. As such, it represents an attempt to realize John Mackie’s call for a theory based on the data provided by anthroplogists and the propositions proved by game theorists. The basic claim is that fairness norms evolved as a device for selecting one of the infinity of efficient equilibria of the repeated game (...) of life played by our prehuman ancestors. (shrink)

It is known that modern philosophy understands death as a denial of the reality of life and, on the contrary, the establishment of non-being. Death fixes the existence of specific manifestations of life on Earth. For a long time, the explanation of the phenomenon of human death was dominated by a religious point of view, which presented death not as an end but as a prerequisite for the further transformation of life. In the future, we present (...) the very Christian-theological vision of the problem. (shrink)

The fundamental changes that took place at the beginning of the 21st century in all spheres of public life actualized the personalized trend of the modern personality, namely its social and professional development, which is associated with the concept of “career”. The purpose of the article is to characterize the pool of factors that determine a career as a socio-cultural phenomenon of modern society. Based on macro- and microsociological approaches, the parameters of career transformation are determined. Economic ones (...) consist in the transition from working professions to expert-type professions that require a high level of education and specialization. Technological - in the development of information technologies, which led to changes in the technical and technological component of social production and the growth of a separate social group of intellectual workers. The transformation of interests and value orientations of a person has led to a shift in the emphasis of personal performance from external signs to individualistic factors. The patterns of new realities in the world of work, which led to the transformation of the concept of career and new trends, are characterized. The first model includes the presence of higher education, intellectual work in the specialty and a fairly low level of income. The second model is based on ideas about the American dream and the unlimited possibilities of the individual, where the main component is a high material status and own business as a symbol of success. The third model is a highly paid professional with a high level of prestigious education and a good profession. A new type of career is defined - “polyvariant”. These days, success in career strategies requires constant professional development and gaining experience. Through the individualization and pluralization of lifestyles and consumption, people are more able to choose their own path to success, including various forms of life and career development. The tendencies of the spread of self-employment and the development of professional qualities in the career strategies of a modern person are determined. Through the individualization and pluralization of lifestyles and consumption, people are more able to choose their own path to success, including various forms of life and career development. (shrink)

The explosive spread of mystical ideas and practices in the spiritual culture of modern societies, irrationalism in art and philosophy has long surprised no one. These phenomena have escaped beyond the limits of the local, semi-exotic phenomenon that lies at the periphery of the scientific, artistic and daily practical life of modern man. Figuratively speaking, they are no longer just a separate spot on the mosaic panel of historical ways of human self-comprehension.

This paper reformulates some of the questions raised by extended mind theorists from an enactive, life/mind continuity perspective. Because of its reliance on concepts such as autopoiesis, the enactive approach has been deemed internalist and thus incompatible with the extended mind hypothesis. This paper answers this criticism by showing (1) that the relation between organism and cogniser is not one of co-extension, (2) that cognition is a relational phenomenon and thereby has no location, and (3) that the individuality (...) of a cogniser is inevitably linked with the question of its autonomy, a question ignored by the extended mind hypothesis but for which the enactive approach proposes a precise, operational, albeit non-functionalist answer. The paper raises a pespective of embedded and intersecting forms of autonomous identity generation, some of which correspond to the canonical cases discussed in the extended mind literature, but on the whole of wider generality. In addressing these issues, this paper proposes unbiased, non-species specific definitions of cognition, agency and mediation, thus filling in gaps in the extended mind debates that have led to paradoxical situations and a problematic over-reliance on intutions about what counts as cognitive. (shrink)

After a brief, personal reflection on Aron Gurwitsch’s life and his many influences on my career, I devote this lecture to some of the central themes of a phenomenology of medicine. Its core is the clinical encounter, which displays a certain structure I term the asymmetry of power (physician) and vulnerability (patient, family)—a complex contextual imbalance characterized by multiple points of view, hence points for reflective entrance. These are then interpreted phenomenologically in terms of epoché and reduction (practical distantiation), (...) evidence, reflection, and other related themes. I conclude with a suggestion about “the fundamental method” of phenomenology, free fantasy variation. (shrink)

After a brief, personal reflection on Aron Gurwitsch's life and his many influences on my career, I devote this lecture to some of the central themes of a phenomenology of medicine. Its core is the clinical encounter, which displays a certain structure I term the asymmetry of power and vulnerability —a complex contextual imbalance characterized by multiple points of view, hence points for reflective entrance. These are then interpreted phenomenologically in terms of epoché and reduction, evidence, reflection, and other (...) related themes. I conclude with a suggestion about "the fundamental method" of phenomenology, free fantasy variation. (shrink)

We discuss the difference between formal and natural languages, and argue that should the language metaphor have any foundation, it’s analogy with natural languages that should be taken into account. We discuss how such operation like reading, writing, sign, interpretation, etc., can be applied in the realm of the living and what can be gained, by such an approach, in order to understand the phenomenon of life.