CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING

Volume 7 No. 1, 2000

Bruce Weber and Søren Brier: Foreword

David Depew: The Baldwin Effect: An Archaeology Abstract

Bruce Weber and Terrence Deacon: Thermodynamic Cycles, Developmental Systems, and Emergence Abstract

Kalevi Kull: Organisms Can Be Proud To Have Been Their Own Designers  Abstract

Søren Brier: Biosemiotics as a Possible Bridge Between Embodiment in Cognitive Semantics and the Motivation Concept of Animal Cognition in Ethology Abstract

Frederik Stjernfelt: The Idea that Changed the World Full Text

Columns
Louis H. Kauffman: Virtual Logic — Infinitesimals and Zero Numbers Full Text

Poetry
Mary Oliver: Summer; Winter Night Full Text

ASC Pages
Ernst von Glasersfeld: Reflections on Cybernetics Full Text
 

The artist of this issue is Pat Adams
 
 

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In early November 1999, a week long, interdisciplinary conference convened at Bennington College in Vermont to discuss the integration of the evolutionary origins of mind and brain with emerging principles of developmental and evolutionary biology. A group of scholars from biochemistry, psychology, philosophy, developmental biology, and cognitive science discussed how the interaction of contingency, natural selection, and self-organization might lead to the open-ended biological order on which development depends. To this discussion, several participants brought their current ideas about the contours of an evolutionary synthesis that robustly integrates developmental biology, psychology, molecular and population genetics. Others brought approaches related to fundamental problems of brain and mind development, from movement to language, including issues of meaning.

The question addressed by the invited participants as well as students and faculty of Bennington College was: can an expanded evolutionary synthesis, informed by complex system dynamics and enriched by developmental systems theoretical and semiotic perspectives, bring within its orbit a study of mind as a biological adaptation? How could ideas of self-organization and autopoiesis, biosemiotics, Uexküllian Umweltlehre and language as a new social selective environment for the development of the brain inform modern search for a "second order new synthesis of evolutionary theory" to deal in a more comprehensive way with the emergence of mind and signification in human evolution?

In organizing the conference, it was decided early on to focus on the issue of the "Baldwin effect," originally suggested early in the twentieth century by psychologist James Mark Baldwin. We did so because it has been proposed as an important mechanism in the evolution of brain/mind by authors as diverse as Daniel Dennett and Terrence Deacon. We felt that it was important to explore the background and history of Baldwin’s suggestion and to evaluate it in light of current experimental and theoretical knowledge as well as philosophical analysis. Since Terrence Deacon had argued that the Baldwin effect might have played a key role in the co-evolution of human brain and language and utilized semiotic notions in developing his ideas, we included several biosemioticists in the program to get their perspective on the Baldwin effect.

This conference was the first in a multi-year series of conferences and special classes planned at Bennington College on the topic of the Embodied Mind. In introducing the conference, Dr. Elizabeth Coleman, President of Bennington College made the following statement.

Not surprisingly, an intellectual frontier generating great excitement among our students and faculty—artists, scholars, and scientists alike—is the convergence of biology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, computer sciences, and interestingly, the arts around the neurosciences, the study of mind and brain. The Bennington consortium on Mind, Brain and Behavior seeks to enter this frontier by pursuing a radical, multi-disciplinary exploration of the implications of our rapidly expanding understanding of how the brain works for our less developed understanding of how the mind works and, ultimately, what it is to be human. We hope to engage artists no less than scientists in this conversation.

In addition to the intrinsic value of such an inquiry, we think it deeply embedded in our understanding of a liberal education. Beyond being a subject of immense value, in effect addressing what it means to be human, we also suspect that in its need to embrace complexity and to remain dynamic and open-ended it is also a way of thinking. It has, in addition, so many points of access, demands so many different skills, capacities and interests and offers an especially promising way of bringing so-called non-science students into serious, authentic scientific learning. …

Our working assumption is that whatever else might be said about mind, it is mediated by the body and its brain. Yet another way to put it: biology matters. That in turn means you had better get the biology right. And that brings us to this gathering of scientists from all over the world, and its coordinator Bruce Weber in the first in what will be an annual event. Its purpose is to lay a groundwork for our inquiry by exploring the biological and evolutionary base necessary for a comprehensive theory of mind-one that robustly integrates developmental biology; psychology, and molecular and population genetics. 

The speakers at the conference, in alphabetical order were: Robert Berwick (MIT), Søren Brier (Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Copenhagen), Terrence Deacon (Boston University), David Depew (University of Iowa), Steven Downes (University of Utah), Scott Gilbert (Swarthmore College), Peter Godfry-Smith (Stanford University), Paul Griffiths (University of Sydney), Jesper Hoffmeyer (University of Copenhagen), Kalevi Kull (University of Tartu), Celia Moore (University of Massachusetts, Boston), Susan Oyama (CUNY), and Bruce Weber (California State University, Fullerton). Most of the presentations will be prepared as book chapters for a volume edited by David Depew and Bruce Weber expected to be published by MIT Press in a year or so. 

It was not possible to publish even shorter versions of the full range of papers here. Therefore, we have instead selected some of the central papers that address issues about the Baldwin effect for inclusion in this special issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing. On the basis of the context of the idea of this special issue authors were asked to develop journal articles documenting and explaining the new developing views on organic evolution and their relation to the original idea of "The Baldwin Effect".

David Depew provides an historical context for the Baldwin effect and how our changed concept of genes, development and evolutionary mechanism has paved the way for a new view of the possible role of mind in evolution. Bruce Weber and Terrence Deacon explore how complex systems dynamics and developmental systems theory provides a theoretical framework for understanding evolutionary emergence of life, language and mind including such phenomena as that purported to occur in the Baldwin effect. Kalevi Kull provides a semiotic interpretation of the Baldwin effect as a post-Darwinian mechanism of evolutionary change based on the interesting alternative approaches to evolution, where selectionism is only a part of a greater concept of evolution. Finally Søren Brier writes about the relation between cognitive motivation in living systems and linguistic motivation in human languages. Drawing on knowledge from ethology and cognitive semantics he shows how the two kinds of motivation can be seen as connected in an evolutionary perspective. To do this he uses biosemiotics based on Pierce and von Uexküll and the embodied metaphor theory of Lakoff and Johnson’s version of cognitive semantics.

Bennington College provided a beautiful and congenial venue for an interdisciplinary conference exploring such a complex topic. In addition to the special show at the Usdan Gallery, a group of Bennington dancers led by Susan Sgorbati made a special presentation instantiating those principles of self-organization taken as paradigmatic by most of the conference participants. In an effort to capture the flavor of the vital interactions of the arts and sciences at Bennington College, we have included two poems by Bennington poet and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Mary Oliver and paintings by former Bennington art faculty member Pat Adams. 

On our request Fredrik Stjernfelt has written a review of Terrence Deacon´s book The Symbolic Species.

Ernst von Glassersfeld this time writes the ASC-column on the concept of feedback. In this volume we will alternate between Louis Kauffman and Ranulph Glanville as columnist to keep the number of columns to two per issue. Louis Kauffman starts with a piece on infinitesimals and Zero Numbers.

We welcome Terrence Deacon as a new member of the editorial board and Kalevi Kull as consultant editor.