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The cognitive frame in which most neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behavior is conducted contains the assumption that brain mechanisms per se fully suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This…
This paper responds to claims that causal closure of the underlying microphysics determines brain outcomes as a matter of principle, even if we cannot hope to ever carry out the needed calculations in practice. Following two papers of mine…
As far as human perceptions and rational thinking are concerned, contradictions constitute a non negligible part of our reality. We often refer to these phenomena, in a more informal way, as the chicken or the egg causality dilemma.…
We consider a population of particles with unit life length. Dying each particle produces offspring whose size depends on the random environment specifying the reproduction law of all particles of the given generation and on the number of…
Basic problems in complex systems are surveyed in connection with Life. As a key issue for complex systems, complementarity between syntax/rule/parts and semantics/behavior/whole is stressed. To address the issue, a constructive approach…
Diffusion of molecules within biological cells and tissues is strongly influenced by crowding. A key quantity to characterize diffusion is the particle lifetime, which is the time taken for a diffusing particle to exit by hitting an…
The improbability of a spontaneously generated self-assembling molecule has suggested that life began with a set of simpler, collectively replicating elements, such as an enclosed autocatalytic set of polymers (or protocell). Since…
Correlation is not causation. As simple as this widely agreed-upon statement may seem, scientifically defining causality and using it to drive our modern biomedical research is immensely challenging. In this perspective, we attempt to…
This article considers evidence from physical and biological sciences to show machines are deficient compared to biological systems at incorporating intelligence. Machines fall short on two counts: firstly, unlike brains, machines do not…
Many biological processes can be thought of as the result of an underlying dynamics in which the system repeatedly undergoes distinct and abortive trajectories with the dynamical process only ending when some specific process, purpose,…
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and…
The phenomenon of life is discussed within a framework of its origin as defined by four hypotheses. The 1. hypothesis says: Life, as we know, is (H-C-N-O) based and relies on the number of bulk (Na-Mg-P-S-Cl-K-Ca) and trace elements…
The aim of this essay is to analyze the role of quantum mechanics as an inherent characteristic of life. During the last ten years the problem of the origin of life has become an innovative research subject approached by many authors. The…
Droplets are essential for spatially controlling biomolecules in cells. To work properly, cells need to control the emergence and morphology of droplets. On the one hand, driven chemical reactions can affect droplets profoundly. For…
Nature can be seen as informational structure with computational dynamics (info-computationalism), where an (info-computational) agent is needed for the potential information of the world to actualize. Starting from the definition of…
Experience shows that disciplinary science cannot describe life without contradictions. We show that one of the fundamental reasons is the disciplinarity itself: the disciplines deal with a limited set of quantities. This way some 'outlaw'…
Soft materials, such as liquids, polymers, foams, gels, colloids, granular materials, and most soft biological materials, play an important role in our daily lives. From a mechanical viewpoint, soft materials can easily achieve large…
Dynamics, the physical change in time and a pillar of natural sciences, can be regarded as an emergent phenomenon when the system of interest is part of a larger, static one. This "relational approach to time", in which the system's…
In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of…
Theoretical analysis proves that human survivability is dominated by an unusual physical, rather than biological, mechanism, which yields an exact law. The law agrees with all experimental data, but, contrary to existing theories, it is the…