Language processing with dynamic fields

We construct a mapping from complex recursive linguistic data structures to spherical wave functions using Smolensky’s filler/role bindings and tensor product representations. Syntactic language processing is then described by the transient evolution of these spherical patterns whose amplitudes are governed by nonlinear order parameter equations. Implications of the model in terms of brain wave dynamics are indicated. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi: ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Is it a revolution?

Jablonka and Lamb's claim that evolutionary biology is undergoing a ‘revolution’ is queried. But the very concept of revolutionary change has uncertain application to a field organized in the manner of contemporary biology. The explanatory primacy of sequence properties is also discussed.

Adaptationism and the adaptive landscape

Debates over adaptationism can be clarified and partially resolved by careful consideration of the ‘grain’ at which evolutionary processes are described. The framework of ‘adaptive landscapes’ can be used to illustrate and facilitate this investigation. We argue that natural selection may have special status at an intermediate grain of analysis of evolutionary processes. The cases of sickle-cell disease and genomic imprinting are used as case studies.

Seasonality and historic trends in the reef fisheries of Pulau Banggi, Sabah, Malaysia

The reef fisheries of Pulau (meaning “island” in Malay) Banggi, Sabah are not managed, and lack baseline fisheries data despite forming part of a proposed marine park. Thus, a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches was applied to obtain a baseline picture about the past and present state of the fisheries. Fish landings were monitored, and fisher interviews conducted to investigate seasonal effects and historical changes in Banggi’s reef fisheries. Monsoon winds were a major driver of seasonal differences in catch quantities for the hook and line, but not the gillnet fishery. Spatial distribution of fishing effort and target species also differed by season. Fishers consistently indicated that Banggi’s fisheries were declining, with a suggested three to four times decrease in catch rates over the last 20 years. Interestingly, it appeared that substantial decreases began in the year 2000. The responses of fishers to seasonal changes, and the resultant implications for management are discussed. Importantly, the need for immediate management policies to prevent further declines and to maintain sustainable reef fisheries is stressed. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Forty Years of ‘The Strategy’: Levins on Model Building and Idealization

This paper is an interpretation and defense of Richard Levins’ “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology,” which has been extremely influential among biologists since its publication 40 years ago. In this article, Levins confronted some of the deepest philosophical issues surrounding modeling and theory construction. By way of interpretation, I discuss each of Levins’ major philosophical themes: the problem of complexity, the brute-force approach, the existence and consequence of tradeoffs, and robustness analysis. I argue that Levins’ article is concerned, at its core, with justifying the use of multiple, idealized models in population biology.

Seven types of adaptationism

Godfrey-Smith (2001) has distinguished three types of adaptationism. This article builds on his analysis, and revises it in places, by distinguishing seven varieties of adaptationism. This taxonomy allows us to clarify what is at stake in debates over adaptationism, and it also helps to cement the importance of Gould and Lewontin’s ‘Spandrels’ essay. Some adaptationists have suggested that their essay does not offer any coherent alternative to the adaptationist programme: it consists only in an exhortation to test adaptationist hypotheses more thoroughly than was usual in the 1970s. Here it is argued that the ‘Spandrels’ paper points towards a genuinely non-adaptationist methodology implicit in much evolutionary developmental biology. This conclusion helps to expose the links between older debates over adaptationism and more recent questions about the property of evolvability.

The adaptive landscape of science

In 1988, David Hull presented an evolutionary account of science. This was a direct analogy to evolutionary accounts of biological adaptation, and part of a generalized view of Darwinian selection accounts that he based upon the Universal Darwinism of Richard Dawkins. Criticisms of this view were made by, among others, Kim Sterelny, which led to it gaining only limited acceptance. Some of these criticisms are, I will argue, no longer valid in the light of developments in the formal modeling of evolution, in particular that of Sergey Gavrilets’ work on adaptive landscapes. If we can usefully recast the Hullian view of science as being driven by selection in terms of Gavrilets’ and Kaufmann’s view of there being “giant components” of high-fitness networks through any realistic adaptive landscape, we may now find it useful to ask what the adaptive pressures on science are, and to extend the metaphor into a full analogy. This is in effect to reconcile the Fisherianism of the Dawkins–Hull approach to selection and replicators, with a Wrightean drift account of social constructionist views of science, preserving, it is to be hoped, the valuable aspects of both.

Objects limit human comprehension

This paper demonstrates that the human visual system, the primary sensory conduit for primates, processes ambient energy in a way that obligatorily constructs the objects that we ineluctably perceive. And since our perceptual apparatus processes information only in terms of objects (along with the properties and movements of objects), we are limited in our ability to comprehend ‘what is’ when we move beyond our ordinary world of midsize objects—as, for example, when we address the micro microworld of quantum physics.

Does Investment in the Sexes Differ When Fathers Are Absent?

This study examines child survival and growth in a patrilineal Ethiopian community as a function of father absence and sex. In line with evolutionary predictions for sex-biased parental investment, the absence of a father and associated constraints on household resources is more detrimental for sons’ than daughters’ survival in infancy. Father absence doubles a son’s risk of dying in infancy but has a positive influence on the well-being of female members of the household, improving daughter survival, growth, and maternal nutritional status. Lack of paternal investment may be compensated for by other matrilateral kin through increased reciprocity between mother, daughter, and sister.

Basic Semiosis as Code-Based Control

Though the formal coherence and empirical utility of Marcello Barbieri’s concept of organic code have been starting to become established, a general conception of how the semantics of organic codes is related to the pragmatics of their use is still missing. Barbieri took a first step towards such a conception by distinguishing three types of semiosis in living systems: manufacturing, signalling, and interpretive semiosis. This paper integrates Barbieri’s distinction into Roman Jakobson’s systematization of possible functions of messages in order to propose a general conception of possible types of semiosis in living systems. As a result, Barbieri’s thesis that manufacturing and signalling semiosis are basic types of semiosis, can be confirmed and completed communication-theoretically.

Expressed Emotion,Human Agency,and Schizophrenia: Toward a New Model for the EE-Relapse Association

Although there is a clear statistical association between expressed emotion (EE) and schizophrenic relapse, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying this relationship is underdeveloped. This study tested a theoretical model in which caregivers’ perceptions of their ill relative’s agency underlie the EE-relapse association. To evaluate this model, we completed qualitative and quantitative analyses of narratives provided by individuals caring for a relative with schizophrenia. The results indicate that high-EE caregivers perceive the expression of symptoms as stemming from their ill relative’s agency more frequently than low-EE caregivers. This was true for both high-EE-criticism and high-EE-emotional overinvolvement caregivers. High-EE and low-EE caregivers did not differ in their perceptions of the role of their ill relative’s agency with regard to the control of symptoms. The findings suggest that EE may be a proxy risk factor for caregivers’ perceptions of their ill relative’s agency.

Individual variability of behavioural responses by Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) to human disturbance

Sub-Antarctic Marion Island has had a permanent research station for 50 years and the islands Wandering Albatrosses have been intensively studied for 20 years. The reactions of breeding birds to approaches by a human on foot were recorded. Three response variables were calculated: intensity of vocal reaction (IVR), intensity of non-vocal reaction (INR) and overall response index (ORI). At 5 m from the nest, twice as many birds stood and/or vocalised as at 15 m. Nearest neighbour distance, age and gender did not explain individual variability of responses. Study colony birds had higher IVR scores than non-study colony birds; birds at colonies closest to the station had the highest ORI scores. A better breeding record was associated with lower IVR and ORI scores, but a causative relationship remains to be demonstrated. A minimum viewing distance of 25 m is recommended for breeding Wandering Albatrosses.

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Corpus Interruptus: Biotech Drugs, Insurance Providers and the Treatment of Breast Cancer

In researching the biomedically-engineered drug Neulasta (filgrastim), a breast cancer patient becomes aware of the extent to which knowledge about the development and marketing of drugs influences her decisions with regard to treatment. Time spent on understanding the commercial interests of insurers and pharmaceutical companies initially thwarts but ultimately aids the healing process. This first-person narrative calls for physicians to recognize that the alignment of commercial interests transgresses the patient’s humanity.

Rattus exulans and the catastrophic disappearance of Hawai’i’s native lowland forest

Paleoenvironmental and archaeological investigations from the ’Ewa Plain of O’ahu provide insight into the problem of understanding lowland native forest loss in Hawai’i. Data from pollen analysis of a pond core record, avian paleontology, and archeology, document a precipitous decline of the native forest starting before Polynesian settlement on the ’Ewa Plain but after Polynesian colonization of O’ahu. It is hypothesized that rats, introduced by Polynesian colonizers, increased exponentially in the absence of significant predators or competitors, feeding on a largely endemic vegetation that had evolved in the absence of mammalian predators. Rats radiated ahead of human colonizers on O’ahu, eating their way through the vegetation, perhaps before the colonizers had encountered much of the pristine lowland forest into which the rats had radiated. This hypothesis is supported by several observations, including the almost complete absence of extinct or extirpated avian faunal remains in archaeological deposits, the present distribution of endemic vegetation in Hawai’i, rat ecology, population biology, and other evidence.

Towards dynamical system models of language-related brain potentials

Event-related brain potentials (ERP) are important neural correlates of cognitive processes. In the domain of language processing, the N400 and P600 reflect lexical-semantic integration and syntactic processing problems, respectively. We suggest an interpretation of these markers in terms of dynamical system theory and present two nonlinear dynamical models for syntactic computations where different processing strategies correspond to functionally different regions in the system’s phase space.

The Ethics of Birth and Death: Gender Infanticide in India

This paper discusses the persistent devaluation of the girl child in India and the link between the entrenched perception of female valuelessness and the actual practice of infanticide of girl babies or foetuses. It seeks to place female infanticide, or ‘gendercide,’ within the context of Western-derived conceptions of ethics, justice and rights. To date, current ethical theories and internationally purveyed moral frameworks, as well as legal and political declarations, have fallen short of an adequate moral appraisal of infanticide. This paper seeks to rethink the issue.

The strategy of “The strategy of model building in population biology”

In this essay, I argue for four related claims. First, Richard Levins’ classic “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology” was a statement and defense of theoretical population biology growing out of collaborations between Robert MacArthur, Richard Lewontin, E. O. Wilson, and others. Second, I argue that the essay served as a response to the rise of systems ecology especially as pioneered by Kenneth Watt. Third, the arguments offered by Levins against systems ecology and in favor of his own methodological program are best construed as “pragmatic”. Fourth, I consider limitations of Levins’ arguments given contemporary population biology.

Enabling conditions for ‘open-ended evolution’

In this paper we review and argue for the relevance of the concept of open-ended evolution in biological theory. Defining it as a process in which a set of chemical systems bring about an unlimited variety of equivalent systems that are not subject to any pre-determined upper bound of organizational complexity, we explain why only a special type of self-constructing, autonomous systems can actually implement it. We further argue that this capacity derives from the ‘dynamic decoupling’ (in its minimal or most basic sense: the phenotype–genotype decoupling) by means of which a radically new way of material organization (minimal living organization) is achieved, allowing for the long-term sustenance of systems whose individual-metabolic and collective-historical pathways become thereafter deeply intertwined.