We are concerned with two modes of describing the dynamics of natural systems. Global descriptions require simultaneous global coordination of all dynamical operations. Global dynamics, including mechanics, remain invariant in the absence of external perturbation. But, failing impossible global coordination, dynamical operations could actually become coordinated only locally. In local records, as in global ones, the law of the excluded middle would be strictly observed, but without global coordination it could only be fullfilled sequentially by passing causative factors forward onto subsequent contiguous operations. The local dynamics of sequential operations would be indefinite with regard to how commitments will be made which will avoid violating the law of the excluded middle, but any resulting record will be as definite as if there had been global coordination. While maintaining an agential capacity for making contingent choices internally, local dynamics could be cumulated into a global record of seemingly simultaneous operations. Natural selection within a framework of local dynamics would have a capacity for making opportunistic commitments, but its effects in a posterior record can be reduced to the mechanistic neodarwinian version as if there had been a global dynamics. However, the resulting global description falsifies the actual material nature of the dynamics.

Key words: dynamics, duration, evocative logic, laplacean demon, materialism, mechanicism, neo-darwinism, observation, vagueness

Closure has been used in various ways. I propose a classification based on the specification hierarchy formalism, wherein ideas are represented as subclasses, or restrictions, of other ideas, beginning with the most generally applicable concept and working inward to more particular applications. This exercise is part of a revival of nineteenth century natural philosophy. The classification also represents a self-referential developmental system in which the classification itself emerges from the evolutionary process it describes. Since one form of closure builds upon a previously attained form, development traces a loss of evolutionary potential even as each closure gives access into a new, emergent, realm.

Excerpt: I have recently realized that several of the ideas I have been working with since the early 1980s might have been derived in part from Uexküll’s Theoretical Biology (1926). So this work can be viewed in retrospect as a seminal text in evolutionary systems discourse. This text shows early indications of, at least, internalist discourse, scalar and speci®cation hierarchy theories, semiotics, systems science, the information/dynamics dichotomy, developmentalism, as well as the social construction of knowledge. In this article I will be concerned mostly with relating Uexküll’s concerns to internalist discourse (e.g., Matsuno 1989; Kampis and Roessler 1990). In this regard, I will make a Peircean semiotic interpretation of Uexküll’s central theory of function cycles. Then I will try to relate what appears today to be the major sign of Uexküll’s work – the Umwelt – to externalist concepts in ecology. Finally, I will take up the implications of Uexküll’s work for the social construction of knowledge.

This paper focuses in upon a model of abiotic (proto) semiosis, giving some suggestions concerning the origin of life. In doing this, the paper utilizes the Peircean triadic concept of semiosis along with the maximum energy dispersion principle in connection with the concept of dissipative structures. It is suggested that the origin of biosemiosis via the genetic system allowed mediation of physiosemiosis into zoosemiosis. Thus, biosemiosis is taken to not be on the direct line of descent of anthroposemiosis. I argue that the characteristic gesture of natural science was to eliminate final cause from its texts, which amounted to eliminating the contexts of examined phenomena as being critical in understanding their behavior. But, I argue, context is crucial for any semiotic interpretation, and must be brought back into our conception of the abiotic world if semiosis is to be understood as arising naturally during evolution.

Currently there are two movements emerging within systems theory in connection with biology: self-organization and hierarchy theory. They are treated together here because they represent polar oppositional perspectives. Self-organization is concerned with change viewed as from within a changing system; whereas hierarchy theory, in the form familiar to most systems workers, is an externalist descriptive framework for dealing with constraints bearing on a system from multiple scalar levels. Hierarchy theory also deals externally, in another form (the specification hierarchy), with integrative levels as developmental stages within an ontogenetic trajectory. In this article we conclude that, although self-organization and hierarchies are incommensurable discourses, they could be taken to be complementary, each supplying what the other lacks in understanding systems.