#Nodes

Description

#Nodes is not a book about science, nor about art, literature or the humanities – or maybe it is about all of them at once.

This collection investigates reality from these perspectives and others, demonstrating the possibility of intense interdisciplinary collaboration. It is a book that resists categorization, because reality and thought do not exist in separate compartments. #Nodes proposes an intellectual adventure: an exploration of the boundaries between different fields of knowledge. The book explores topics ranging from elementary matter to consciousness to the complexity of living beings, asking questions along the way: How does life arise? What is consciousness? How can chaos elicit order? These questions require new approaches. To tackle this, #Nodes brings together the contributions of scientists, writers, artists and humanists from various disciplines and countries with the purpose of stimulating new ideas.

Preface

Acknowledgements

Part One: #Complex Networks 

Part Two: #Metaphor

Part Three: #Cosmos

Part Four: #Chaos and Complexity

Part Five: #Emergence

Part Six: #Perception

Part Seven: #Memory

Part Eight: #Emotion

Part Nine: #Consciousness

Part Ten: #Big Data

Authors

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• ART
• Cultural Studies
• General
• Interdisciplinarity
• Metaphysics
• Philosophy of science
• General officer
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781789380743
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2019 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2019 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
© Signed texts, their authors
© Rest of the book, the editors
First published in Spanish by
Next Door Publishers (2017)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy editor: Emma Rhys
Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Production manager: Naomi Curston
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78938-073-6
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78938-075-0
ePub ISBN: 978-1-78938-074-3
Printed and bound by Severn, UK.
To find out about all our publications, please visit www.intellectbooks.com .
There, you can subscribe to our e-newsletter, browse or download our current catalogue, and buy any titles that are in print.
This is a peer-reviewed publication.

Preface
This is not a book about science, nor is it about art, literature or the humanities; or perhaps it is about all of them at the same time. This is an unclassifiable book that resists being categorised because reality and thought cannot be compartmentalised. This book proposes we go an intellectual adventure to explore the boundaries among different spheres of knowledge. It raises the possibility of intensive collaboration between disciplines, and of a different approach to reality that allows us to tackle complex problems like memory, the origins of life and consciousness in appropriate fashion.
Reality is more complex and interconnected than we could have imagined; and this interaction among the various aspects of reality gives rise to surprising and unpredictable forms of behaviour. Nowadays it is impossible to have a thorough understanding of language without turning to complex networks, or to study emotions without taking memory into account or to grasp scientific knowledge without resorting to metaphor. Transdisciplinary knowledge is not a curiosity or a fashion but a need: the need to have the right tools to tackle the basic questions that concern the human condition. The transdisciplinary nature of knowledge represents the cognitive counterpart of a highly interconnected world.
From the most basic matter to consciousness, not forgetting the surprisingly complex nature of living beings, the great questions that we have always faced – How does life emerge? What is consciousness? How can chaos engender order? – require an approach that enables us to devise new ways of dealing with them. As a result of this we aim to encourage an exchange of ideas that brings positions in different disciplines closer together, to find points in common and to establish strategies that allow joint approaches to problems whose complexity leads us to restructure their study in an inter- or transdisciplinary way.
#Nodes provides a dynamic overview of 90 hybrid approaches to ten core themes that are in full swing. Subjects such as complex networks, metaphor, the cosmos, chaos and complexity, emergence, perception, memory, emotion, consciousness and big data cover a significant section of knowledge and represent problems that are complex enough to encourage a transdisciplinary approach to them. To do this we have brought together contributions from scientists, writers, artists and humanists from various disciplines and countries with the aim of stimulating new questions from all the shores of knowledge.
Sometimes disciplines rub off on each other, while on other occasions they repel each other, but contact between them is necessary if not vital. In many cases, the authors of this book adopt somewhat provisional labels. Their ideas or creations cannot find categories that are flexible enough to contain them. There are chemist-poets, artists in laboratories, physicists turned into linguists and neuroscientists producing philosophy. They do not fit into categories. This has meant, first of all, the challenge of achieving a smooth-flowing form of communication to organise all this variety; but opening up new paths also means modifying and expanding the practices carried out in each area. Structuring different, when not opposing, ideas of what a problem is and of how this must be solved has required harmonising different attitudes to knowledge. Aligning different perspectives has also meant learning to listen to people who conceive the world in a different way and to value all kinds of emphases, nuances and sensibilities that bring scientific, artistic, humanistic or literary approaches closer or further apart.
Infectious attitudes, forms of resistance, parallelisms and reformulations result from the contact between disciplines that nourishes all the spheres of knowledge. We believe that there is a kind of richness in the very act of articulating and combining approaches, when knowledge emerges as the sum of resources from different disciplines that interact around a subject being studied. Nevertheless, to ensure that this richness is productive it is vital to understand the nature of the links that run through the spheres of knowledge and reinforce their transdisciplinary potential. Aligning different ideas, concerns and methods around shared problems requires offering solutions to a wide variety of challenges. However, the result cannot be merely the sum of its parts: fruitful contact must entail an unexpected change of direction to a certain extent, something that is impossible without them being brought closer together. This is the sense of this relationship.
In its own way this book consists of many books. Intuitively, the following nodes can be read in linear fashion, or alternately, or one by one, crossing or leaping between their explicit links or not. They can be abandoned whenever the reader wants, taken up again, discarded, thrown away, broken down; they can come together again, and be dismantled. There is a path for each reader to follow that at the same time changes with each reading. Each node aims to stimulate a dynamic and productive exchange between art, science, literature and the humanities in a reciprocal flow that promotes knowledge and boosts human and intellectual growth.
Gustavo Ariel Schwartz | Víctor Bermúdez
San Sebastián, June 2019
Acknowledgements
# Nodes has been written within the framework of the Mestizajes programme, an alternative space where artists, writers and scientists can get together, which aims to encourage new interactions between science, literature and the humanities. This book is the result of a collaboration between a scientist and a humanist, but, above all, it is a collective global project with clear transdisciplinary aims and a unifying spirit that transcends geographical and disciplinary boundaries. This book would not have been possible without the generous, unselfish help of all the people who have contributed to it by not just providing their texts but also by offering their personal vision of each of the subjects that it deals with. The unique nature and value of this book are the result of the wide variety and extraordinary quality of the individuals who have contributed to it.
We would like to thank all the people and institutions who have made this project possible: the Donostia International Physics Center for its financial and institutional support; Ricardo Díez Muiño and Pedro Miguel Echenique for their constant unconditional support for the Mestizajes programme; the Materials Physics Center in San Sebastián; the Spanish National Research Council; and so many others who in one way or another have collaborated on # Nodes . Many thanks to all of you.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
#Complex Networks
Entangling Sciences and Humanities
The Sublime Simplicity of Complex Networks
Gustavo Ariel Schwartz
Weaving Worlds
Josep Perelló
Words as Dynamic Systems
Marta Macho Stadler
Complex Networks: An Opportunity to Reflect on the Mysteries of Language
Bernat Corominas-Murtra
Evolution, Complex Networks and Detectors of Beauty
Albert Flexas Oliver
Culture and Complexity
Juan Luis Suárez
Mapping Networks: Science and Altruism
Kevin W. Boyack & Richard Klavans
Macroscopes for Exploring and Navigating Science and Technology
Lisel Record & Katy Börner
Colophon
References
#Metaphor
The Node Is the Lair of the Unusual
The Need for Metaphor
Amelia Gamoneda
Crossing a Reduced Space: Metaphor’s Status as an Emerging Network
Iván Méndez González
Metaphor and Neuroimaging: How Art and Neuroscience Inspire Each Other
Clara Martin
Complex Realism (or the Year Zero Line of Things)
Agustín Fernández Mallo
An Approach to Metaphor Based on Set Theory
Javier Moreno
Dangers and Riches of Scientific Metaphors in Literature
Vicente Luis Mora
Whimsical Science Metaphors
Dudley Herschbach
Other Kinds of Knowledge
Melissa Pierce Murray
Colophon
References
#Cosmos
From Elementary Particles to the Immensity of the Cosmos
Magic in Every Last Corner
Alberto Güijosa
Levels of Reality and Quantum Vacuum
Basarab Nicolescu
Starry Nights
Juan José Gómez Cadenas
Waves, Particles and Quite the Opposite
Jaume Navarro
Syncretism in Ernesto Cardenal’s Cosmic Canticle
Catalina García García-Herreros
Corona of the Sun
Jairo Rojas Rojas
Beyond a Certain Density
Gilles Cyr
Playing with Equations
Luca Pozzi
Re(con)figuring CERN
Ariane Koek
Investigating Missing Satellites: Narratives in Dark Culture
Poe Johnson & Roger F. Malina
Colophon
References
#Chaos and Complexity
When the Exceptional Becomes the Norm
Simply Chaos and Complexity
Diego A. Wisniacki
Is There a Theory of Complexity?
Jorge Wagensberg
Telling the Time
Bruno Arpaia
Narrative