Biological self-organization, distributed memory and development of knowledge

Abstract

The essay focuses, through the use of a specific epistemological approach related to complexity theory in its extended version, on issues of border regarding the close relationship that exists between cognition and life, such as the idea of memory as a multisystemic and distributed natural process, the genesis of meaning in the context of the deep processes of self-organization, and the relationship - at the level of higher cognitive activity proper to man - between perception, learning (assimilation of information) and thought (morphogenesis in action). With respect to the possible delineation of new models for what concerns the process of knowledge development, the text shows the recent results of research regarding an unprecedented frontier closely linked with the emergence of a real conceptual revolution at the level of the analysis of that particular entanglement of information, meaningful complexity, memory, causality, teleology and intentionality that characterizes the unfolding of the natural forms of human cognition. In such a context, the mnemonic function is set up as a dynamic and deep process of reconstruction and a connection of internal self-reflection operations, rather than as a mere "storage" of data in a static mental space. Just as the world of the first monadic order, on which stands the classical measure of Shannon information, appears related to the existence of specific forms of invariance and the definition of unique areas of measurement, in terms of higher orders, however, we have the presence of specific dichotomies, of different potentials that are given simultaneously, an evolutionary bricolage which is realized by successive interlocking states and yet tied together in a holistic manner within a process of dialectical synthesis between form, function and meaning.