ontogeny

v.2. Linked to from: e_Preface.php, e_Expression.php, B-LiteralErrors.php#B5, D-MakingSense.php#D4 (4.3), and E-CulturalColonies.php#E5

ontogeny

— learning and development

..the environment cannot be viewed as merely a permissive or triggering factor in development; rather, it is a critical feature of developmental biology.

In 'higher' animals, such as humans, ONTOGENY can be understood as being made up of three, broad chronological phases: conception to puberty; puberty to maturity; and maturity to death. During the first phase, by developing awareness through practice and relationships, the senses and the elementary skills of their application are acquired. Later developments then build recursively on these early acquisitions.

..what offspring inherit from parents is not simply genes, but a structured developmental system. This developmental system provides sources of both stability and variability, and the structure and interactions among components of an organism's developmental system are as causally informative to the development and transmission of phenotypic traits as are the strands of DNA contained within this system.

The sense we associate our-self with the most is perhaps that of sight — feeling it is we, looking out through our eyes — yet only the functional cellular infrastructure of sight is delivered by nature. Sight itself is constructed by nurture, by the EXPERIENCE of shade and colour generated through the environmental feedback mechanisms of our early ontogenetic learning — a form of learning rooted deep in the early evolution of multicellular BEINGS from the time that land plants first emerged.

Traditionally it has been assumed that fish orientation and migration were to a large extent hard-wired. But .. many fish species possess spatial as well as temporal memory and exert a behavioral flexibility reflecting their ability to learn during ontogeny... ... if we suppose that the cognitive capacities of modern fish species have not changed too much since ray-finned fish appeared, then advanced learning skills have been a part of life on Earth for more than 400 million years.

Ontogeny is a neologism, derived from onto- + -geny to refer to the entirety of the development of an individual BEING, from its inception, over the entirety of it's life. This proceeds through its interactions with its environment and involves, in addition to its genetic unfolding, not only its physiological but also its psychological development.

see for instance: Evolutionary transitions in individuality. [Maynard Smith, Szathmary], Social evolution. [Hamilton], Eusociality. [E.O.Wilson et.al].

Lickliter and Honeycutt, in Developmental Dynamics: Toward a Biologically Plausible Evolutionary Psychology, 2003, p.826, Psychological Bulletin, American Psychological Association, Vol. 129, No. 6, pp.819-835.

Lickliter and Honeycutt, in Developmental Dynamics: Toward a Biologically Plausible Evolutionary Psychology, 2003, p.828, Psychological Bulletin, American Psychological Association, Vol. 129, No. 6, pp.819-835.

Citing:— Griffiths, P. E., & Gray, R. D. (1994). Developmental systems and evolutionary explanation. Journal of Philosophy, 91, 277-304; Johnston, T. D. (1987). The persistence of dichotomies in the study of behavioral development. Developmental Review, 7, 149-182; Oyama, S. (1985). The ontogeny of information. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Oyama, S. (2000). Evolution's eye. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Richardson, K. (1998). The origins of human potential: Evolution, development and psychology. London: Routledge. West, M. J., & King, A. P. (1987). Settling nature and nurture into an ontogenetic niche. Developmental Psychobiology, 20, 549-562..

'The Great Chain of Semiosis. Investigating the Steps in the Evolution of Semiotic Competence.' by Jesper Hoffmeyer and Frederik Stjernfelt (2015), Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht; citing Odling-Smee, L., & Braithwaite, V. (2003) 'The role of learning in fish orientation.' Fish and Fisheries, 4, 235-246.

biophysicality

If we accept as unavoidabe that all descriptions of the ineffable are metaphorical; and if creationist and anthropocentric teleologies and their concepts of the soul are set aside; then, BEINGS can be defined as 'vehicles' of life and LIFE inferred recursively.

Rather than merely 'wet' physical entities, BEINGS are BIOPHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS, organized and animated by the interpretations their BIOSEMIOTIC systems make of their external and internal environments.

Any psychological construct requires a BIOPHYSICAL correlate in order to exist; every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate in order to survive. In actuality then, psychology refers to the METABIOLOGICAL expression of a BEING.

PERCEPTIONS, attributes of BIOSEMIOTIC systems that in humans are considered as awareness, consciousness, EGO and mind, are generated from information that the SENSES of a BEING recognize in the NOUMENA which it encounters — in the same way as PERCEPTIONS of colour are.

wellness

In an individual, the development of wellness and illness is a function of the interaction between their BIOPHYSICAL actuality and their environment. It is this system as a whole that is impacted by any medical or psychological interventions, and any social support and care, that the individual receives or is privated of.

Research into cancer and other diseases has long since identified the existence and primacy of METABIOPHYSICAL systems, and the need to address these as a whole; however, despite the work of the WHO modern societies and their BROADCASTING systems appear obdurate, discounting 'holism' and instead promoting increasingly reductionist models.

MEANING, refers to that which a BEING PERCEIVES from the EXPRESSION of a NOUMENON. This then is inherited, encoded and developed through the FRAME of the individual's ONTOGENY. It is inevitable then that different FRAMES arise.

Those BEINGS that are less able to recognize and reconcile these different FRAMES are then at greater risk in social groups of being misinformed or deceived.

Whether or not there is free-will we must choose; whenever we can.

Ultimately, short term success is an insufficient guide for future action. Locusts are successful but find themselves unable to escape developing from peaceful co-existance, as individuals into cannibalistic war, as a swarm.

virtuality refers to abstractions of actuality that then pre-process EXPERIENCE.

Inherited and learnt by EXPERIENCE, our PERCEPTION is the recognition of what we can see; seeing what we expect to see, we then construct and integrate the data our eyes and other senses are capable of registering.

The term BEING, applies here to all forms of LIFE, whether multicellular (humans, ants, plants, etc.); unicellular (bacteria, archaea, algae, etc.); or the MODULAR societies of slime molds, jellyfish, ants, humans, deer, etc.

BIOSEMIOSIS is a recursive process, enabling BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of their current EXPERIENCE with what they can RECOGNIZE from the EXPERIENCES previously EMBODIED in themselves, or externally, by themselves or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer, respectively, to the RECOGNITION of internal and external NOUMENA..

This definition varies from some used elsewhere, but might be considered inclusive.

A metatransition is a metasystem transition to EITHER a more complex OR a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory OR a permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.

NB. The labels, 'more complex', 'simpler', 'transitory' and 'permanent', here refer to relative positions on subjectively defined axis, not to any objective measure.

Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than to a restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.

functioning, disability and health

First drafted by the WHO in 1980, the International Classification of Functioning (the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health), is an holistic overview of wellness and illness. Despite its publication, and the fact that today biopsychosocial models are taught in medical schools, the significance and impact on social organization and its institutions of these models might appear to citizens to have been relatively minimal — perhaps because of the powerful lobbies that work to promote a fundamentalist belief in scientific reductionism.

After nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ... by WHO to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease. ... Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.

I'd like people to reconceptualize cancer as a biological event that triggers stress responses affecting how the disease progresses... Managing those stress responses by adopting healthy eating and exercise habits, getting a good night's sleep, and finding good emotional and social support, should be regarded as much a part of cancer treatment as chemotherapy or radiation.

David Spiegel, MD, Stanford University Medical Center.Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression, Stanford Medicine News Center, 2003.

The article, from which the quote was taken, although apparently accessible in 2024, has now been taken down by Stanford Medicine. The new article (at Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression) still refers to Spiegal's work, but the expurgated quote there now, intentionally or otherwise, seems to downplay the research and to distance Stanford from Spiegal and the view he expressed.

life

Life is the state of being.

Being is the condition of BEINGS.

A BEING is descended from a BEING.

I am a BEING.

It is as correct or incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones. Love is not definable in the way that hormones are; they are terms in different reference frames.

Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is the word Kant used to identify the thing-in-itself, the underlying reality that is then recognized by an observer as a SIGN.

Kant referred to recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception. Here however, PERCEPTION is used to label one of the four stages in the process of BIOSEMIOSIS that is bootstrapped by RECOGNITION.

Hydrozoa show great diversity of lifestyle; some species maintain the polyp form for their entire life and do not form medusae at all. Polyps of some species propagate vegetatively, forming colonies.. polymorphism occurs in colonies of some species of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the polyps being specialized for functions such as feeding, defense, and sexual reproduction.

Ruppert, Edward E.; Fox, Richard, S.; Barnes, Robert D. (2004). Invertebrate Zoology, 7th edition. Cengage Learning. pp. 148-174; cited in Jellyfish, Taxonomy (list item: Staurozoa), Wikipedia..

Fautin, Daphne G. and Sandra L. Romano. 1997. Cnidaria. Sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, sea pens, hydra. Version 24 April 1997. http://tolweb.org/Cnidaria/2461/1997.04.24 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/.

Anthropic, etc, refer here to anthropocentrism, a narcissistic belief that the human species is the central fact and final aim of a universe that must therefore be understood in terms of human experience, needs, and values.

Human beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.

footnotes of n_Einstein_Translation.php included in entryNote.php, e_Einstein_HumanDelusion.php, and e_personalMeta.php.

Ein Mensch ist ein räumlich und zeitlich beschränktes Stück des Ganzen, was wir „Universum“ nennen. Er erlebt sich und sein Fühlen als abgetrennt gegenüber dem Rest, eine optische Täuschung seines Bewusstseins. Das Streben nach Befreiung von dieser Täuschung ist der einzige Gegenstand wirklicher Religion. Nicht das Nähren der Illusion sondern nur ihre Überwindung gibt uns das erreichbare Maß inneren Friedens. Albert Einstein, 1950.

Einstein wrote the above (bold emphasis added), in ink, in a note now held in the Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. The edit I have made is of the translation, written in another hand, that appears underneath them.

There were several reasons for editing that translation — to reflect the gender neutrality of the German more consistently; to echo Einstein's use of the words, delusion, and, illusion; and to better reflect the certitude of the note's opening argument, carried in the brevity of the German yet somehow absent in the translation on the note itself. In the end, the edit below, supported by translations by Google on 6 March 2024, is only a minor edit of it:

Human beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. The striving to be free of this delusion is the only object of real religion. It is not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming it which gives that measure of inner peace which is attainable. Albert Einstein, 1950.

The translation, in pencil on the original note, became the text of the condolence letter sent from Einstein to Dr. Marcus on 12 February 1950. The first two sentences of it were then used to open the letter of condolence sent on the 4 March 1950 to Norman Salt.

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of pure religion, not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.

delusions and illusions

Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.

The German word Täuschung in the original note, meaning 'delusion' (JPG opens in a new tab).

Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".

Technically, delusion is a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is an impression that, though false, is entertained on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination. Illusion (n.), developed in Church Latin from the late 14c. onwards to mean: a "deceptive appearance".

On delusion, and illusion; from the Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved: 4 October 2022.

Although I believe that translations I have found are faithful to the originals, stripped of their context, quotations can lose much of their quality. Transliteration of punctuation, for instance, can result in an English that makes their authors sound coarse or uneducated; and 'grammatical transliterations' may substitute gender bias for the gender neutrality in an original.

Where I have edited translations it has been only in order to address issues of punctuation, prosody, and inference, that I found detracted from the content of the originals. The edits have been made with due diligence, and although I am not a professional translator or writer, I believe they are faithful, and required to make the fluency, erudition, and sensibility of the originals explicit — original texts are provided so readers may draw their own conclusions.

Footnote {delusion01a} of n_Einstein_Translation.php.

..as free-spirited and anti-bourgeois as Einstein may have appeared to be all his life, his language remained the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum of his time, a language he mastered with virtuosity.

from a 2008 essay by Barbara Wolff, Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Ribeiroia in herons, fungi on beetles, or the staph in our guts, win minds and hearts over to serve other gods. Shut outside our doors of reason, flocking crows and horses, otters, gorillas, chimps and geese, play follow the leader. What makes us special. Or more so than dogs.

science

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. Albert Einstein.

Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust it drove are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction.

from: Physics and Reality, published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 221, Issue 3, March 1936, pp. 349-382.

Hormone, from the Greek, hormon, meaning 'that which sets in motion'.

from the Greek, akrasia, meaning 'loss of free will'.

frames

A FRAME refers here to a reference-frame; the perspective that a context gives to data that it describes or contextualizes. Any kind of LANGUAGE then is a FRAME for the data it refers to.

A CULTURE is a broader, environmental FRAME. It is a meta-LANGUAGE that enables meaning to be inferred from verbal and other languages that evolved with it, and which interprets the languages of other CULTURES that are used within it.

The following, for frames of reference, from the Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, aligns with that used here for FRAMES.

..a structure of concepts, values, customs, or views by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior.

false friends

Chinese consists of a single monosyllable for each word and often does not mark such grammatical features as tense or number.

The accuracy of a translation is central to those who depend upon it, but although it is possible to translate, for instance, the complex procedures described by mathematical calculus into the elementary language of addition and subtraction, additional procedures of division and multiplication are required for accuracy. And the accurate translation of the infinitely more complex communications of human affairs, consistently proves to be an ever receding goal — one that effectively develops and reinforces interpersonal engagement.

While it may be possible to say anything in any LANGUAGE, doing so is not easy. Exact translations are generally only possible for the simplest of statements, and the more dissimilar the CULTURES of the languages involved, the more numerous, significant, and masked, false-friends of chance and semantics will be — as the meanings being referred to are first and foremost assumptions of belief.

CULTURES are at least as varied, as challenging to unravel, and perhaps as intransigent, as individual psychologies are. Their differences reflect the different histories of their peoples, families, and groups. Their languages have evolved to convey the meaning of those histories, of their trauma and privilege; to convey the wisdom, fears, and strategies their individuals have learned by experience; down across generations. Translations, because of this, above all are an an art more than a science.

from the Translators' Preface, of Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu. Translated by Stephen Addis and Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.

False-friends can emerge, or arise by chance. Chance false-friends are words whose appearance is the same or similar in two or more languages but which have different meanings. Semantic false-friends are those whose meaning have diverged over time and distance. Semantic false-friends can be can be either full or partial.

partial [semantic] false friends, .. are those words that have several senses, some of which coincide in both languages while others do not.

Partial semantic false-friends then, are fostered CULTURALLY rather than linguistically. They represent conscious divergences of belief, rather than accidents. These perhaps, carry the greatest risk of miscomprehension; and of this then snowballing.

An example of the miscomprehensions that readily arise from partial semantic false-friends, is provided by The Withdrawal Agreement that governed the procedures to be followed by European Union Member States and the United Kingdom in the implementation of the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

A key provision of this Agreement was the process to be followed for notifying affected residents of the Agreement's impact on them personally and of any steps they needed to follow to confirm the rights it had safeguarded for them in the country of their residence. The most significant element of this provision then, was that it required its signatories to take all reasonable steps to inform affected residents of changes to their status, and of the country specific procedures that these residents would then need to follow. This provision, in Finnish however, allowed the Finnish government to understand they were required simply to announce the changes through commonly used channels; e.g. by posts on the Government's Facebook page and in Finnish newspapers; and that they were not required, for instance, to notify affected residents by post, or to CC them the information it sent to their agencies notifying them of the changes it had made to their status.

...

The impact of this particular partial semantic false-friend may remind some of the Vogons, in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and of their communications with the people of Earth to notify them of the imminent demolition of their planet. .

from False friends: their origin and semantics in some selected languages. Pedro J. Chamizo Dominguez, Brigitte Nerlich, 2002, Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1833-1849.

People of Earth, your attention, please. This is Prostetnic Vogon, Jeltz, of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system. And regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you. ...There's no point in acting surprised about it! All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ... What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light years away. You know, I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.

Meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.

The prefix "meta-" is used here as it is used in the term meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.

Language: a system of arbitrary signals, symbols or signs, used to communicate information.

Meaning: the sense or reference of an expression.

Semantic: of or relating to meaning.

to communicate: to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals.

to recognize: to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.

The definitions above, apart from those for meaning and to recognize, which are after those in the Collins English Dictionary, are after those in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

from the poem The Stare's Nest by My Window, published in Meditations In Time Of Civil War (1922-23), by William Butler Yeats — on the Irish Civil War.

definition

corporatism

the organization of a state on a corporative basis. — Collins English Dictionary.

the principles, doctrine, or system of corporative organization of a political unit, as a city or state. [1885-90] corporatist. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

the control of a state or organization by large interest groups; "individualism is in danger of being swamped by a kind of corporatism" — TFD Thesaurus, Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection.

corporative

of a state organized into and governed by corporations of individuals involved in any given profession, industry, etc. — Collins English Dictionary.

of or relating to a government or political system in which the principal economic functions, such as banking, industry, labor, and government, are organized as corporate entities. — American Heritage Dictionary.

of or pertaining to a political system under which the principal economic functions, as banking, industry, and labor, are organized as corporate entities. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.