[Bmi] brain-mind-society-culture

[hans kuijper]

Dear Professor Weng,

I consider each and every country (big or small) a culture-soaked society cum polity cum economy cum geography cum history to be studied not as an aggregate (Gesamtheit) but as a whole (Ganzheit), without disregard for its parts. Acknowledging the awesome explaining power of physics, chemistry and biology, I think a whole, say the human body, has properties that can not be reduced to those of its constituent parts. Man (body + mind) is both a part of and apart from nature, which makes him the originator of culture. He is a 'cosmic orphan' (Loren Eiseley), a 'non-trivial machine' (Heinz von Foerster), a 'strange loop' (Douglas Hofstadter), 'un roseau pensant' (Blaise Pascal). In the same vein, a country is not the sum total of its inhabitants; it is a holon, having its own beat and flavour, having emergent properties, insuffiently taken into account by scientists/scholars thus far. 

I elaborate on this point in 'Lifting the study of China onto a higher plane' (pp. 15 [bottom] -20). Please visit www.academia.edu, type my name in the box at the top of the page, and click on the same name in the blue field.

In my view, the organisation of an international conference on the complexity of countries would be long overdue.

With kind regards,

Hans Kuijper    
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Juyang Weng 
  To: hans kuijper 
  Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 12:41 AM
  Subject: Re: brain-mind-society-culture


  Dear Hans Kuijper,

  I am glad that you wrote to us. Do you think that human societies, countries, and politics, can be viewed effectively from basic principles of natural sciences to more scientifically address many problems facing us?

  "Lifting the study of China onto a higher plane": Did you post the entire article?   I did not see the article, only a title.

  The 2nd Open Letter to the US President Obama: Why US Should Be Friendly with Every Government?  
  In the above letter, I thought about international relations from a viewpoint of basic science.  Interestingly, humans repeat mistakes over and over again in history.  It is hard for them to see complex things through basic sciences.

  Best regards,

  John


  On 2/14/13 5:38 PM, hans kuijper wrote:

    Dear BMILISTS,

    Over the last three months or so, I have been following some of your work with great interest, trying to understand it in the context of fast developing cognitive science(s?). I do believe that the mind is embodied and consequently biologists, particularly brain scientists, (will) have a lot to say about this ill-defined 'thing'. 

    However, educated in the humanities (I graduated in sinology from Leyden University) and becoming increasingly interested in the science of complexity, I believe that the mind is also embedded. For, as Lev Vygotsky already argued in his book Mind in Society (1930): 'The mind cannot be understood in isolation from the surrounding society', an original idea revisited in Andrzej Nowak, Katarzyna Winkowska-Nowak and David Brée (eds.), Complex Human Dynamics: From Mind to Society, Springer, 2013.

    Culture (that other notoriously difficult to describe 'thing', about which many books have been written) seems to be the missing link between mind and society. So the conundrum workers in the natural and cultural (i.e. social and human) sciences should address collaboratively is the identification, characterisation and understanding of the intimate connection between mind's embodiedness and embeddedness. 

    Arguably, there is nothing more complex than a country, or a culture, being a hypercomplex system of complex systems in context (its outside world). If 'a revolution is occurring in the social sciences', as the editors of Complex Human Dynamics claim, that easily overlooked point is to be taken into account. See the article 'Lifting the study of China onto a higher plane' that I recently posted on the website www.academia.edu.     

    Since I am currently working on a book provisionally entitled The Complexity of Countries, I wonder if anyone of you could suggest what I should definitely read to be well-informed about the cutting edge research not only on brain, mind, society and culture but also (and perhaps in the first place) on the relationships between these intricately patterned entities. 

    Needless to say, I would be most grateful if you could help me.

    Yours sincerely, 

    Hans Kuijper
    Joliotplaats 5
    3069 JJ Rotterdam
    The Netherlands
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