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This open access monograph presents the results of a study aimed at finding an answer to a perennial, yet notably topical, question in the philosophy of science, namely, “What is life?'' The authors contend that existing approaches to studying living systems fall short when it comes to understanding the phenomenon of life itself. The question of life, it is argued, is philosophical in nature, and hence outside the purview of science per se. This book proposes a novel mathematical framework that is carefully developed to meet the requirements of a general study of the phenomenon of life, revealing that the question already has an answer in a relatively recent development in pure mathematics, namely, hyperset theory. The authors leverage the results of the mathematicians' painstaking work over a few decades into their study. Their findings, when translated back to the realm of biology, rejoin, rather surprisingly, the Neoplatonic interpretive account of Plato’s natural philosophy.
This book lies at the intersection of three major branches of knowledge: (i) philosophy, especially philosophy of life and philosophy of mind, (ii) mathematics, especially foundations of mathematics, and (iii) science, especially biology and physics; there is also some relevance to computer science and engineering. It is addressed to the scholars, researchers and graduate students in the area of philosophy of science, especially the field of philosophy of biology, with strong relevance to theoretical biology, mathematical biology, systems biology, philosophy of mind, and Neoplatonic philosophy of nature.
List of contents
Preface.- Prologue.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Modeling in Science.- 3 The Reign of Quantity in Contemporary Physics.- 4 The Predominance of Mechanism in Contemporary Physics.- 5 A Taxonomy of the Objects of the Physical World.- 6 What Is Life?.- 7 Can Living Things Be Described Mechanistically?.- 8 Throwing off the Shackles of Mechanism.- 9 A Modeling Framework for the Study of Systems.- 10 Towards Modeling Living Systems.- 11 The Mathematical Habitat of Living Systems.- 12 The Return of the Soul.- 13 In the Wake of the Soul’s Return.- 14 There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth.- 15 Conclusion.- Appendix A Platonic Causes: A Contemporary Perspective.- Appendix B On Turing Machines as Dynamical Systems.- Appendix C On Nested Membership in Sets.- Appendix D Living Systems Model into Proper Hypersets.- Appendix E An Introduction to Aczel’s Hyperset Theory.- Appendix F Self-motion in Platonic Tradition.- Appendix G The Grades of the Soul: A Brief Overview.- Appendix H A Comparative Summary.- Bibliography.
About the author
Alireza K. Ziarani is a native of Tehran, Iran, and a graduate of the University of Toronto, Canada. In 2002, he took on a faculty position at Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, where he taught engineering and science and led a biomedical engineering research program supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. Dr. Ziarani's academic achievements during his tenure at Clarkson won him the National Science Foundation’s prestigious CAREER Award and multiple teaching awards. In 2009, he left academia for the private sector to pursue a career in biomedical technology development. He is the author and co-author of numerous scholarly articles and is credited with inventing several technologies utilized by leading manufacturers of biomedical devices across the globe. Alongside his professional activities, he maintains an active interest in the philosophy of science and writes from a perennialist perspective. His 2020 book Philosophy of Science in the Light of the Perennial Wisdom, co-authored with Dr. Mahmoud Bina, has been translated into and published in French, Spanish, Persian and Portuguese. He currently resides with his wife in Bloomington, Indiana.
Ali N. Valizadeh is an Assistant Professor at the University of Isfahan, Iran, where he teaches courses and conducts research in mathematics. He has been a visiting fellow at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Iran, the Henri Poincare Institute, Sorbonne University, France, and the Institute for Mathematical Logic and Foundational Research, University of Munster, Germany. Dr. Valizadeh’s expertise and interests span the areas of mathematical logic, model theory, computer science and philosophy.
Summary
This open access monograph presents the results of a study aimed at finding an answer to a perennial, yet notably topical, question in the philosophy of science, namely, “What is life?'' The authors contend that existing approaches to studying living systems fall short when it comes to understanding the phenomenon of life itself. The question of life, it is argued, is philosophical in nature, and hence outside the purview of science per se. This book proposes a novel mathematical framework that is carefully developed to meet the requirements of a general study of the phenomenon of life, revealing that the question already has an answer in a relatively recent development in pure mathematics, namely, hyperset theory. The authors leverage the results of the mathematicians' painstaking work over a few decades into their study. Their findings, when translated back to the realm of biology, rejoin, rather surprisingly, the Neoplatonic interpretive account of Plato’s natural philosophy.
This book lies at the intersection of three major branches of knowledge: (i) philosophy, especially philosophy of life and philosophy of mind, (ii) mathematics, especially foundations of mathematics, and (iii) science, especially biology and physics; there is also some relevance to computer science and engineering. It is addressed to the scholars, researchers and graduate students in the area of philosophy of science, especially the field of philosophy of biology, with strong relevance to theoretical biology, mathematical biology, systems biology, philosophy of mind, and Neoplatonic philosophy of nature.
