The Atlas of Social Complexity. Chapter 7: Bacteria and the Brain

As I stated in my previous post, the first major content theme in The Atlas of Social Complexity is Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness. Chapter 6 addresses Autopoiesis. Chapter 7 (Bacteria and the Brain) turns to the role of bacteria in human consciousness.

 

Our rationale for surveying this topic:

The arguments in favour of autopoiesis and cellular cognition are heavily theoretical and in need for evidence. Chapter 7 provides the empirical support. We review the literature on bacteria and our brains, specifically brain-gut-microbiota communication and bacterial intelligence within the human body. Research on bacterial cognition and social behaviours demonstrates cellular cognition to be empirically viable.

 

The outcome is remarkable.

 

Not only does this research provide direct evidence for cellular cognition, but it also leads to new ways of thinking about what constitutes a brain, as well as how lower levels of cognition self-organise, from an evolutionary perspective, to form lager and more complex cognitive systems. The mind is in every cell of the body!

 

Such insights into embodied cognition at levels previously thought non-existent is transforming not only our science but also our medicine, leading to new ways of thinking about therapeutically communicating with our body’s microbiota: from probiotic therapies and the gut-mental health link to our human microbiota and the study of bacterial quorum sensing.

 

FOR MORE SEE THESE IDEAS, SEE THESE LINKS OR JUST TYPE THE BELOW KEY WORDS INTO YOUR SEARCH ENGINE:

 

Social behaviour of bacteria

 

Bacterial intelligence

 

Bacterial quorum sensing -- Brilliant Ted Talk by Bonnie Bassler

 

Gut microbiome

 

Brain-gut-microbiota communication

 

READ ABOUT the pioneering work of Eshel Ben-Jacob and team in this area

 

 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE BOOK

 

 

KEY WORDS: bacterial intelligence, bacterial social behaviours, gut microbiome, Brain-gut-microbiota communication, bacterial quorum sensing, swarm behaviour.

Controversies, Pitfalls and Promises of AI in Health Care in South Africa -- Public Lecture Nelson Mandela University

I want to thank Andrea Hurst and Harsheila Riga for hosting me at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa to run a series of workshops, seminars and public lecture.

This post is in regard to the Public Lecture I did on The Controversies, Pitfalls and Promises of AI in Health Care and Public Health in South Africa.

HERE IS A QUICK OVERVIEW OF MY PRESENTATION

TITLE:

The Digital Transformation of Public Health, including Artificial Intelligence – Controversies, Pitfalls and Promises

 

ABSTRACT:

Everywhere we see today the promise of AI and digital infrastructures to improve the quality, engagement and efficiency of healthcare and public health. But, we also see warnings and calls for pause by various stakeholders, including some of those creating this technology. What is the reality of this promise? Should we embrace it, or should we be worried and resist it? Drawing on a series of case studies and current research, this lecture will explore some of the key controversies, pitfalls and promises of these new technologies in our healthcare and public health.

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CLICK HERE for a link to my PowerPoint.

CLICK HERE for a link to DigitalHealth Africa 2024.

CLICK HERE for a link to the work of Tshilidzi Marwala, AI expert and Rector of the United Nations University; Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations

Why is it so hard to think about the impact of climate change and environmental exposure on brain health?

I want to thank Andrea Hurst and Harsheila Riga for hosting me at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa to run a series of workshops, seminars and public lecture.

This post is in regard to the Seminar I ran for their series, What Were We Thinking?

CLICK HERE for a link to watch YouTube videos of the seminars in the series.

 

HERE IS A DESCRIPTION OF THE SEMINAR SERIES

“What were we THINKING???” asks a subtly different question depending on the emphasis; but it is always accompanied by bemusement, perplexity, self-ridicule or a host of similar responses over our past naivete, stupidity or madness. To ask the question is already to have made the shift in perspective needed to reflect on past perspectives with new eyes. 

In this seminar series we invite you to help us consider the planetary crisis we face right now, with its sheaf of human-created environmental calamities and its existential threat to humanity itself, in light of the question: What were we THINKING???

We invite you to consider: “What has been so problematic in our thinking that we now face environmental and social catastrophe? Is such thinking really a thing of the past? Despite the clear evidence of global decline, the very real possibility of an existential threat to humanity itself, and increasing global efforts to mitigate and adapt to the change through agreements such as the Paris Accord and the Sustainable Development Goals, the world largely continues unabated on its current path. Some change is taking place, but nothing close to what is needed to undo the damage. Is there THINKING going on at all? We are assuming that human activity is an outcome of human thought. It follows that if we change the way we think, we can change our actions and thereby the world. But what is it that makes us seemingly unable to take the necessary action to avert the clearly impending environmental and social catastrophe? If thinking can change our path, does our inability to change our path suggest that we are not yet thinking?

And so what now? We also invite you to help us consider how to begin thinking or how to change our thinking in face of the threat to the world posed by humankind.

HERE IS A DESCRIPTION OF MY PRESENTATION

Why is it so hard to think about the impact of climate change and environmental
exposure on mental health and brain health? 

Research shows that climate change and environmental exposures such as air pollution impact our brain health, from early-life cognitive development to mid-life mental wellbeing to later-life dementia and cognitive frailty. Extreme weather events, like hurricanes and floods, can cause psychological distress and trauma. Rising temperatures can lead to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. Air pollution can lead to long-term neurodegenerative impacts. Despite some degree of public policy changes, most countries (from governments to citizens) around the world continue to ignore this massive impact. In terms of how we think about the environment and climate change - both individually and collectively - how can we change thinking in this area?

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CLICK HERE for a link to my PowerPoint.

CLICK HERE to read the policy agenda we outlined for addressing the impact of air pollution on brain health, including dementia. 

CLICK HERE for a link to InSPIRE, a policy and research consortium for mitigating the impact of air pollution and the exposome on brain health and mental health, of which I am the director, along with colleagues across the UK and Europe. Our website has articles, policy briefs, lesson plans and links to help people learn more about the impact of air pollution on brain health. 

CLICK HERE to learn more about the Exposome.

COMPLEX-IT workshop, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa

I want to thank Andrea Hurst and Harsheila Riga for hosting me at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa to run a series of workshops, seminars and public lecture.

This post is in regard to the Workshop I ran on our computational software platform, COMPLEX-IT. It was a six hour intensive, so thanks to all of those who attended for your brilliant questions and also for staying engaged over such a long period of time. I must say I got back to my hotel totally exhausted! LOL!

A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP

COMPLEX-IT: A computational, multi-methods platform for non-experts to explore complex social science and health data

ABSTRACT

While the complexity sciences offer a new approach to thinking about social and health data, making use of their computational methods can be considerably challenging for non-experts – particularly postgraduate students, applied researchers, policy evaluators and civil servants. There is a solution! This workshop will introduce COMPLEX-IT, a free online R-platform designed for non-experts to employ the latest developments in machine learning, data visualisation, participatory systems mapping, network analysis, simulation, data forecasting, and cluster analysis. For our workshop, we will explore a real-world data set to walk through the steps of using COMPLEX-IT and the concepts of complexity science to show how these tools can help attendees gain new insights into social and health data. The goal is for participants to leave with a new methods platform they can use in their own work.

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For those who attended or simply might be interested, here are some links to the material from the day.

CLICK HERE for a link to the PowerPoint from the Workshop.

CLICK HERE for a link to COMPLEX-IT.

CLICK HERE for a link to the dataset we explored. NOTE: The dataset is a CSV (comma separated) file, created in EXCEL. It is just a sample to function as an example. It contains several public health indicators (e.g., access to health services, fuel poverty, crime, teen pregnancies, etc) for 100 authority districts in England, UK.

 

 

 

The Atlas of Social Complexity. Chapter 6: Autopoiesis and cellular cognition

As I stated in my previous post, the first major content theme in The Atlas of Social Complexity is Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness. Given this theme, there is no better place to start with two of the most fundamental questions of existence:

 

1.        What is Life?

2.        What is cognition?

 

For Maturana and Varela, the scholars who hold our focus in Chapter 6, the answer to each comes from the other: life is being aware, and being aware is to be alive. When first introduced in the 1970s, autopoiesis was dismissed as theoretical biology. Some might wonder, then, why our tour of the present future would look back so far?

 

The answer is simple enough. Over fifty years later, as a minimal definition, it has become a hallmark of disruptive complexity science, and one that has led to important insights into how life, including human life works, radically upending eons of philosophy that restricted cognition to the brain. The idea that cognition is not synonymous with the brain or brain dependent remains a radical idea that has yet to be fully embraced.

 

Still, there have been some key advances in Maturana and Varela’s initial definition, which Luisa Damiano and Pier Luisi offered in their article, Toward an autopoietic redefinition of life – notice the slightly different spelling of autopoiesis. They state:

 

“An autopoietic system is organized as a network of production processes which produces the components which, through their interactions and transformations, permanently regenerate the network of processes constituting the system itself as a concrete topological unit, separated from its medium by a boundary and related to it through cognitive or adaptive coupling. Or, in the simpler version: A living system is a system capable of self-production and self-maintenance through a regenerative network of processes which takes place within a boundary of its own making and regenerates itself through cognitive or adaptive interactions with the medium”.[1]

 

Chapters 6 – 11 use this definition to then explore how, from bacteria and simple cells to insects and humans, cognition is everywhere in every cell of life on planet earth, extending, even further, potentially, to machine intelligence, as we will see.

 

 

KEY WORDS: autopoiesis, cellular cognition, minimal definition of life, Maturana and Varela, theoretical biology, biological complexity.

 

CLICK HERE TO ORDER BOOK OR READ MORE

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[1] Luisa Damiano and Pier Luigi Luisi, ‘Towards an Autopoietic Redefinition of Life’, Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 40, no. 2 (2010). p. 149.

A new book on Brian Castellani's Art Retrospective 1988 - 2018 published by Blurb

I am happy to report that, in addition to publishing the Atlas of Social Complexity this year, I also published a retrospective of my art from 1988 to 2018, care of my company, the

Art & Science Factory, LLC.

I published it with Blurb, which is a brilliant self-publishing company for artists. My wife, Maggie, who is a librarian and was Head of Cataloging at the Cleveland Art Museum recommended it to me, as many artists and galleries use it for publishing exhibition atalogues.  

If you are not familiar with it, I recommend checking it out. 

HERE IS THE Blurb LINK

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BRIAN CASTELLANI Art Retrospective 1988-2018.

My retrospective covers the years from when i formally started doing art in 1988 until 2018 when I moved to the UK and, with the move, decided to explore new areas of art.

This retrospective revolves around five artistic themes: assemblage, portraits, drawing, abstract painting and my OneBigMob comic universe. 

I created three version of the retrospective, at different price points. 

1. The large landscape book (£91) is on premium archival paper, meant to last 200 years. It is for posterity and for those who really want the best version of my art. (13×11 in, 33×28 cm.)

2. The standard landscape book (£58) is also landscape on premium archival paper but slightly smaller and cheaper. (Standard Landscape, 10×8 in, 25×20 cm.)

3. The third small book (£29) is for those who are interested in my work but do not want to spend a lot of money to do so.  (7×7 in, 18×18 cm.)

4. A PDF copy of the large landscape book (£3.39) for those who might be interested in the work and want to see it in a bit more detail.

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CLICK HERE to see the retrospective in my online gallery.

CLICK HERE to explore more of my art.

CLICK HERE if you want to see some of the new stuff I am doing. 

 

 

The Atlas of Social Complexity: Theme 1: Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness

Chapter 5 introduces the first major theme on our tour, Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness.

 

 CLICK HERE TO ORDER BOOK OR READ MORE

 

The key chapters include:

• Autopoiesis and Cellular Cognition (Ch 6)
• Bacteria and the brain (Ch 7)
• Immune system cognition (Ch 8)
• Brain-based cognition (Ch 9)
• The Self (Ch 10)
• Human-machine (Ch 11)

 

The chapter also addresses the issue of consciousness and unconsciousness, as well as what we mean by the embodied mind and the literature surrounding it. Our goal, as travel guides in this Atlas, is to be provocateurs. We want to excite and challenge researchers to transform these various areas of research into transdisciplinary topics of study in social complexity. Each chapter provides what we see as the most promising avenues of research. Combined, they make for a range of new research themes.

 

KEY WORDS: cognition, embodied mind, emotion, cellular cognition, bacterial social behaviours, consciousness.

 

 

Here is a preview of some of the general argument made in this chapter:

 

Earth, cellular life, - 3.7 billion years:

“The mind is in every cell of the body”^[1] as the American sociologist, S. Lee Spray said when reflecting on the radical nature of our embodied existence. The social behaviours of bacteria and cellular cognition,^[2] gut microbiota and the embodied mind,^[3] cognitive assemblages formed from human and nonconscious machine intelligence,^[4] the nonlinear dynamics of therapy, including synergy and self-organisation,^[5] network approaches to diagnosis and psychopathology,^[6] dynamical and computational social psychology,^[7] and the role of collective psychologies in complex social systems – these are some of the pressings topics that sit at the intersection of complexity, biology, cognitive science and psychology, which hold our focus in this theme.

 

Of the various complexity topics in the human sciences, the numerous studies revolving around the topics of cognition, emotions, and consciousness are some of the most radical and the least organised. No summary of or even title exists for this collective work. Its various theories, concepts and empirical insights are spread out across so many different fields of study, from neuroscience, cognitive psychology and embodied mind studies to anthropology, biology, and infectious disease research to philosophy, social psychology, and the digital humanities. We will therefore simply use the gathering phrase we just outlined and simply call it cognition, emotions, and consciousness. If anything, it cuts straight cross disciplines, making it a truly transdisciplinary topic. Notice we did not use the term ‘human’ to demarcate this research topic. While human cognition is a focus, many of the ideas that researchers have been working on apply to cognition, emotions, and consciousness across the entire phylogenetic tree of life, even extending to bacteria and plant life. The research we will review also comes from across the sciences. One of the key challenges for the study of social complexity is to engage the wider social sciences. While our review highlights work grounded in a complex systems perspective, we will explore other research that helps to advance this perspective, including work that is critical of it. Finally, our goal, as travel agents, is to be provocateurs, to challenge researchers to transform these various areas of research into transdisciplinary topics of study in social complexity.

 

CLICK HERE TO ORDER BOOKOR READ MORE

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[1] S. Lee Spray was Brian Castellani’s dissertation advisor. He came up with this statement in 1997 during a conversation. It epitomized Spray’s visionary views on cognition and consciousness, realised through the research taking place today.

[2] Jacob, Eshel Ben, Israela Becker, Yoash Shapira, and Herbert Levine. "Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence." TRENDS in Microbiology 12, no. 8 (2004): 366-372.

[3] Cryan, John F., and Timothy G. Dinan. "Mind-altering microorganisms: the impact of the gut microbiota on brain and behaviour." Nature reviews neuroscience 13, no. 10 (2012): 701-712.

[4] Hayles, N. Katherine. Unthought: The power of the cognitive nonconscious. University of Chicago Press, 2017.

[5] Adele M. Hayes and Jennifer L. Strauss, ‘Dynamic Systems Theory as a Paradigm for the Study of Change in Psychotherapy: An Application to Cognitive Therapy for Depression.’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66, no. 6 (1998): 939.

[6] Denny Borsboom and Angélique O.J. Cramer, ‘Network Analysis: An Integrative Approach to the Structure of Psychopathology’, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 9, no. 1 (28 March 2013): 91–121, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050212-185608.

[7] Andrzej Nowak and Robin R. Vallacher, Dynamical Social Psychology (Guilford Press, 1998).

 

 

 

 

 

The Atlas of Social Complexity. Chapter 4: Cartography and constructing the atlas

 

Chapter 4 of the ATLAS OF SOCIAL COMPLEXITY is really our methods chapter; that is, how did we go about doing our research for the book.

 

Our approach is a critical cartography. More than just stating the facts, this Atlas is about the ways in which we can reimagine the global landscape of social complexity such that we discover new borders of knowledge. Our map is one of the present future, as we could best identify it, looking for common trends and trajectories. The adjacent possible to the current situation.

 

In compiling the Atlas, we relied on several sources.

·      This includes 41 interviews with a wide variety of people, from scientists to artists and practitioners. As interviewers, we focused on how these people enact the transdisciplinary nature of the complexity sciences by addressing some combination of the thirteen situations.

·      We also review the source materials we used for each of the chapters; and end by highlighting the role that art plays in the themes and chapters.

 

KEY WORDS: complexity map, cartography, mapping science, history of science, complexity sciences, Foucault and genealogy.

 

CLICK HERE TO ORDER BOOK OR READ MORE

 

 

 

The Atlas of Social Complexity. Chapter 3: The Thirteen Situations

 

As we mentioned in our previous blog post on Chapter 2 of the Atlas, the study of social complexity is up against thirteen situations that are holding it back from evolving into the truly disruptive transdisciplinary science it has sought over the last three decades to become.

 

The 24+ areas of research we review in the rest of the book are, in one way or another, using the social science turn and a social complexity imagination to get past these situations. Some more so than others, but nonetheless, that is the goal. The purpose of is to outline these thirteen situations.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER BOOK OR READ MORE

 

ABSTRACT:  

This chapter is key for all readers as it outlines the thirteen challenges that the study of social complexity must address to advance as a transdisciplinary disruptive science -- see Table below for the list. 

 

These situations range from ignoring the social sciences and qualitative methods, to treating computational models and simulation as the holy grail to all things socially complex, to failing to address issues of power and inequality in systems, to being tone-deaf about the real world. 

 

By understanding these situations, readers will gain a strong sense of the innovations and advances numerous fields we survey in the Atlas make to overcome those thirteen situations. This chapter works in conjunction with the critical history of Chapter 2.

 

KEY WORDS: philosophy of complexity, history of complexity science, sociology of science, map of complexity, policy and complexity, coming crisis of empirical social science. 

 

Situation	Characteristics
1. No philosophy of complexity	=Few attempts to define an epistemology and ontology for social complexity
2. A failure to engage the wider social sciences	=Assumption that the social sciences can be ignored because the complexity sciences would offer superior insights
3. Reinventing the wheel	=Reinventing existing insights from the social sciences that are then presented as new insights
4. Old words, new words	=Rebranding existing insights using terms from the complexity sciences
5. Obscurantism and mystification	=Scientific overreach and complicated jargon combine to suggest that life’s biggest questions are uncovered
6. Forgetting multilevel thinking and modelling	=Despite the transdisciplinary approach of social complexity, almost all research focuses on a single level of analysis.
7. Technique in the absence of theory	=Focus on computational methods and big data pushes social theory out of sight
8. Learning tools vs. predictive machines	=The ability to learn from simulations is replaced by a desire to predict and control social complexity
9. Minor role of qualitative research	=Dominance of quantitative research and quantification of data established a blind spot for qualitative data and methods
10. Methodological closing of social scientific mind	=Shying away from advances in computational methods sees many social scientists becoming illiterate with such methods
11. The dire sound of technicalities	=Going into a spiral of ever-smaller technical refinement while losing the bigger picture out of sight.
12. Being tone-deaf about the real world	=Advanced analyses are coupled to crude recommendations that fail to appreciate the complexity in the target domain
13. Practice does not make perfect	=Pragmatic and rushed adoption of the complexity sciences by practitioners constitutes verbal detritus