Research
Biophilia and Gaia: Two Hypotheses for an Affective Ecology
ABSTRACTAffective Ecology is a new branch of ecology concerned with emotional relationships between human beings and the rest of the living world. The basic instinct that guides the evolution and maturation of a well-tuned relationship with the living world seems to be biophilia, our innate tendency to focus upon life and life-like forms and, in [...] read more
Giuseppe Barbiero, PhD
The pattern which connects pleroma to creatura: the autocell bridge from physics to life
Abstract By his own standards Gregory Bateson was unsuccessful in his life-long quest to explain how the informational or living realm (creatura) could emerge out of the energetic or physical realm (pleroma). Drawing upon recent insights in self-organization theory, the authors suggest a missing link connecting the realms; a simple spontaneouslyarising, non-living, yet evolvable molecular [...] read more
by Terrence Deacon and Jeremy Sherman
Chaos: A New Mathematical Paradigm
Introduction Mathematics is traditionally done in obscurity and mathematicians go about their business with the realization that hardly any non-specialist is willing to invest the time to grasp the significance of the important ideas and theorems of mathematics. Recently, however, this situation changed when the new mathematical theory referred to as chaos burst on the [...] read more
by Vernon Howe
A Fundamentally New Perspective on the Origin and Evolution of Life
Abstract Darwin’s hypothesis that all extant life forms are descendants of a last common ancestor cell and diversification of life forms results from gradual mutation plus natural selection represents a mainstream view that has influenced biology and even society for over a century. However, this Darwinian view on life is contradicted by many observations and [...] read more
by Shi V. Liu
Education
The Web of Life
Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He is the author of international bestsellers, such as The Tau of Physics, The Turning Point, Uncommon Wisdom, and The Web of Life. Contents Introduction Emergence of systems thinking Characteristics of systems thinking Classical systems theories The [...] read more
by Fritjof Capra
Besim Hakim: Work on Mediterranean Urbanism
My primary motivation in undertaking research on traditional Islamic environments was to derive principles and lessons from the past which can be used today to improve the quality of our contemporary built environment, regardless of location; and to learn how to develop the framework and mechanisms necessary to allow a culture’s identity to be reflected [...] read more
Besim S. Hakim
