Fischer T. (2011) One-behind-the-many metaphysics and the myriad things. In: Herr C. M., Gu N., Roudayski S. & Schnabel M. A. (eds.) Proceedings of the 16th CAADRIA Conference. School of Architecture and Built Environment. The University of Newcastle, Newcastle: 623–632. https://cepa.info/5175
Fischer T.
(
2011)
One-behind-the-many metaphysics and the myriad things.
In: Herr C. M., Gu N., Roudayski S. & Schnabel M. A. (eds.) Proceedings of the 16th CAADRIA Conference. School of Architecture and Built Environment. The University of Newcastle, Newcastle: 623–632.
Fulltext at https://cepa.info/5175
In this paper I identify the metaphysical assumptions underlying much of the science, technology, education and design thinking practiced in contemporary CAAD research in Asia as a Western import. Citing some traditional Asian complements to such assumptions and offering an alternative model, I hope to enable a discussion about assumptions underlying our field as well as an awareness of different standards of thought and responsibility between which CAAD research in Asia may operate.
Luisi P. L. (2016) Autopoiesis: The invariant property. In: Chapter XX (ed.) The emergence of life: From chemical origins to synthetic biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 119–156.
Luisi P. L.
(
2016)
Autopoiesis: The invariant property.
In: Chapter XX (ed.) The emergence of life: From chemical origins to synthetic biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 119–156.
Excerpt: The theory of autopoiesis is based on taking a picture of the actual behavior of a living cell. As such, it is not an abstract theoretical model for life – there are many of these – but a phenomenological analysis of life as it is on Earth. It is, in a way, a picture of the blueprint of cellular life, and it is fascinating to see how many concepts related to the process of life – emergence, homeostasis, biological autonomy, operational closure, open systems, interaction with the environment, cognition, evolutionary drift, etc. – pour forth from this analysis in a coherent way. We will see some of these concepts in the next chapter. In addition, autopoiesis permits the construction of chemical models, as seen in chemical autopoiesis; and it pertains also to the social sciences, with the notion of social autopoiesis. A bridge between biology to the cognitive domain is also made possible. This richness is not present in the chemoton or any other autocatalytic networking. The main ingredient of this unity is the fact that all is seen “from within,” that is, from the logic of the internal organization of the living system. As soon as the autopoietic unit reaches the complexity of biological autonomy, everything that happens within the boundary, as well as the perturbing events from the outside, are interpreted and elaborated in order to maintain the identity of the living. We have also touched on some of the philosophical implications of these views, and added that the developments of autopoietic thinking have in some cases diverged from the original statements of Maturana and Varela. We will see that particularly in the case of the important notion of cognition, discussed in the next chapter. And we will see then that the notion of cognition permits a bridge between the biology of cellular life and the cognitive sciences. I mention this here just to make the point that autopoiesis is the only available simple theory that is capable of providing a unified view of life from the molecular level up to the level of human perception.