List,
It is appropriate that Michael Levin be brought before the list. He is
one of many cutting-edge researchers besides Rovelli who are surfacing
Peircean-like concepts in their findings. Sometimes these researchers
are aware of Peirce; often they are not, but their conceptual framings
are sometimes redolent of Peircean ideas.
Two authors that have co-authored with Levin have independently pursued
questions that have a decided Peircean flavor. One of these co-authors,
Chris Fields, is an extremely thought-provoking researcher in quantum
information [1]. Another co-author, Karl Friston, is intimately
associated with the ideas of Markov blankets (which are like the
information boundaries between concepts as well as material objects or
systems) and the free energy principal [2]. I have appended a few
references that I think have some relevance to Peircean concepts.
There is a percolation of ideas from topological and knot theory to
information and thermodynamic energetics that (IMO) is struggling to
find conceptual coherency whilst challenging conventional
interpretations. The confluence of the reality of absolute chance
(tychism) and continuity (synechism) as interpreted through the
universal categories provides a rich substrate for interpreting these
new theories. Edwina continues to make some of the most profound
observations on this list about how Peircean ideas can apply to these
nascent theories. (These tie to biosemiosis and physicosemiosis but go
beyond them.) While Peirce was not familiar with many of today's
scientific concepts, and often modern researchers have had little
exposure to Peirce, I suggest we are about to see a renaissance of
interest in Peirce as these potential synergies become clearer.
I'd love to see this list embrace these potentials.
Best, Mike
[1] Fields, C., & Levin, M. (2020). Scale‐Free Biology: Integrating
Evolutionary and Developmental Thinking. /BioEssays/, 42(8), 1900228.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201900228
Fields, C., Glazebrook, J. F., & Levin, M. (2021). Minimal Physicalism
as a Scale-Free Substrate for Cognition and Consciousness. Neuroscience
of Consciousness, 2021(2), niab013. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niab013
Fields, C., Glazebrook, J. F., & Marciano, A. (2022). The Physical
Meaning of the Holographic Principle. /arXiv/.org.
https://doi.org/10.12743/quanta.v11i1.206
Fields, C., & Levin, M. (2020a). Does Evolution Have a Target
Morphology? Organisms. /Journal of Biological Sciences/, 4(1), Article
1. https://doi.org/10.13133/2532-5876/16961
Fields, C., & Levin, M. (2020b). How Do Living Systems Create Meaning?
/Philosophies/, 5(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies5040036
[2] Friston, K., Levin, M., Sengupta, B., & Pezzulo, G. (2015). Knowing
One’s Place: A Free-Energy Approach to Pattern Regulation. /Journal of
The Royal Society Interface/, 12(105), 20141383.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.1383
Friston, K., Heins, C., Ueltzhöffer, K., Da Costa, L., & Parr, T.
(2021). Stochastic Chaos and Markov Blankets. /Entropy/, 23(9), Article
9. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23091220
Friston, K. J., Ramstead, M. J., Kiefer, A. B., Tschantz, A., Buckley,
C. L., Albarracin, M., Pitliya, R. J., Heins, C., Klein, B., Millidge,
B., Sakthivadivel, D. A., St Clere Smithe, T., Koudahl, M., Tremblay, S.
E., Petersen, C., Fung, K., Fox, J. G., Swanson, S., Mapes, D., & René,
G. (2024). Designing Ecosystems of Intelligence from First Principles.
/Collective Intelligence/, 3(1), 26339137231222481.
https://doi.org/10.1177/26339137231222481
Friston, K. J., Salvatori, T., Isomura, T., Tschantz, A., Kiefer, A.,
Verbelen, T., Koudahl, M., Paul, A., Parr, T., Razi, A., Kagan, B.,
Buckley, C. L., & Ramstead, M. J. D. (2023). Active Inference and
Intentional Behaviour (arXiv:2312.07547). /arXiv/.
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2312.07547
On 8/16/2025 11:32 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
List -
I’m not going to get into the debate between myself and Gary R/JAS
about the interpretation of Peirce’s cosmology - where they interpret
Peirce’s objective idealism, to mean that Mind is primary and matter
secondary, while I interpret Peirce’s outlines [including the
blackboard] to mean that both are correlates of each other and neither
are primary. I think these are two different interpretations of
Peirce - and at the moment - we, as a very small
community-of-scholars, can’t come to a ‘final interpretant’. [Can
three people decide?]
So- I’ll just instead focus on a different area... the expansion of
the use of Peircean semiotics can easily be seen in other disciplines.
The reference to Michael Levin’s work in biological information
processes - and his analysis of ‘bioelectrical interactions’ can
readily be analyzed within Dicisigns [ see F. Stjfernfellt’s ’/Natural
Propositions,/ and see p 159.
One of the best journals for examining information dynamics in both
physicochemical and biological as well as human systems is
_BioSystems_. And there’s an interesting article [9August 2025] /‘An
Information Framework of Intelligence’/ by Michal Hochberg. Another on
‘/Modularity in biological systems/ [ with ‘modularity understood as
systemic habits]….in April 2025, by Luca Rivelli.
And June 2025../’Quantum Information as the scientific basis for the
explanation of human consciousness and its evolution’./ Thomas
Gornitz. March 2025; ’/Thermodynamics for Biological Development/…
Qinyi Zhao.
And how about April 2025./ Synergism 2.0. Contours of a new theory of
continuity in bioengineering./ A-V. Pietarinen and V. Shumilina. This
article has heavy references to both Peirce AND Michael Levin!! It
attempts to use both in bioelectrical information interactions
in evolution.
I’m not saying that all these research avenues are rooted in
Peircean framework. I’m saying that the Peircean framework can be
observed in many areas of modern research - even without the use of
Peirce or his specific terms.
And I think we should expand our discussions to include these areas.
Just see how, using different terms, the same analytic framework is
functioning in other areas.
Edwina
On Aug 16, 2025, at 11:06 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt
<[email protected]> wrote:
Stephen, List:
You mentioned Michael Levin early last month in the thread on
"Relational Quantum Mechanics, Peirce and Feynman diagrams"
(https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-07/msg00006.html). As
far as I can tell, he has not otherwise come up previously on the List.
My class on modern physics as part of my undergraduate engineering
degree program was way back before Rovelli even introduced RQM, but
after reading up on it a bit, some additional thoughts come to mind.
The basic idea that a measurement event is necessary to /actualize /a
state as the relation between an observer and the system of interest
strikes me as analogous to how I typically describe the nature of a
continuum in accordance with Peirce's late topical conception--the
undivided whole is ontologically prior to the parts, which are
indefinite material parts until they are /deliberately /marked off as
distinct actual parts. I apply this to my hypothesis that the entire
universe is a /semiosic /continuum by saying that we /prescind /any
"discrete" sign with its object and interpretant from the real and
continuous process of semiosis.
Similarly, I suggest that a "state" in RQM roughly corresponds to a
"fact" in accordance with Peirce's definitions of the latter that I
have recently quoted in the "Semiosic Ontology" thread--"something
having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an element
of the very universe itself" (EP 2:304, NEM 4:239, 1901); and "so
highly a prescissively abstract state of things, that it can be
wholly represented in a simple proposition" (CP 5.549, EP 2:378,
1906). In other words, the universe is not an assemblage//of
states/facts as its ontologically basic components, it is a
continuous whole from which observers prescind states/facts by
formulating propositions to signify them--perceptual judgments and
subsequent inferences. When those propositions are true, the
individuals denoted by their subjects become more definite and the
concepts denoted by their predicates become more determinate, i.e.,
information increases.
Nevertheless, it still seems to me that Schrödinger's cat is /really
/either alive or dead--regardless of what anyone thinks about it--at
any arbitrarily designated instant in time after being placed in the
box, unless it happens to fall within the indefinite moment during
which the cat is /dying/ such that excluded middle does not apply.
How could it be otherwise?
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> /
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 5:48 AM Stephen Jarosek
<[email protected]> wrote:
Jon, List,
Have we discussed, in this forum, the work of Michael Levin at
all? I’ve not been participating consistently and might have
missed any reference to him that might have cropped up. Levin
factors in conditioning (association, Pavlov’s dog, etc) and
speaks of cognitive processes at the cellular/neuronal levels,
extending “all the way down” (his terminology). Much great
material on Levin’s work available online, and it’s difficult to
select a “favourite”, as we all have different priorities of
emphasis. But here’s a recent one that relates, at least loosely,
to our current thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyM
Cheers,
sj
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