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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dear Professor Weng,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I consider each and every country (big or small) a
culture-soaked <STRONG>society </STRONG><EM>cum</EM>
<STRONG>polity</STRONG> <EM>cum</EM> <STRONG>economy</STRONG><EM> cum
</EM><STRONG>geography</STRONG> <EM>cum
</EM><STRONG>history</STRONG> to be studied not as an aggregate
(<EM>Gesamtheit</EM>) but as a whole (<EM>Ganzheit</EM>), without disregard
for its parts. </FONT><FONT face=Arial>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), '<EM>un roseau pensant</EM>' (Blaise
Pascal). In the same vein, a country is not the sum total of its
inhabitants; it is a <EM>holon</EM>, having its own beat and flavour,
having emergent properties, insuffiently taken into account by
scientists/scholars thus far. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I elaborate on this point in 'Lifting the study of China
onto a higher plane' (pp. 15 [bottom] -20). Please visit <A
href="http://www.academia.edu">www.academia.edu</A>, type my name in the box at
the top of the page, and click on the same name in the blue
field.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>In my view, the organisation of an<STRONG>
international conference on the complexity of countries</STRONG> would be long
overdue.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>With kind regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Hans Kuijper </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=weng@cse.msu.edu href="mailto:weng@cse.msu.edu">Juyang Weng</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=j_kuijper@online.nl
href="mailto:j_kuijper@online.nl">hans kuijper</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, February 15, 2013 12:41
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re:
brain-mind-society-culture</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Dear Hans Kuijper,<BR><BR>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?<BR><BR>"Lifting the study of
China onto a higher plane": Did you post the entire article? I did
not see the article, only a title.<BR><BR><A
href="http://www.brain-mind-magazine.org/read.php?file=BMM-V1-N2-paper5-Obama.pdf#view">The
2nd Open Letter to the US President Obama: Why US Should Be Friendly with
Every Government?</A> <BR>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.<BR><BR>Best
regards,<BR><BR>John<BR><BR>
<DIV class=moz-cite-prefix>On 2/14/13 5:38 PM, hans kuijper wrote:<BR></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dear BMILISTS,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>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 <STRONG>the mind is embodied</STRONG> and consequently biologists,
particularly brain scientists, (will) have a lot to say about this
ill-defined 'thing'. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>However, educated in the humanities (I graduated in
sinology from Leyden University) and becoming increasingly interested in
the science of complexity, I believe that <STRONG>the mind is
also embedded</STRONG>. For, as Lev Vygotsky already argued
in his book <EM>Mind in Society</EM> (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.), <EM>Complex Human Dynamics: From Mind to Society</EM>, Springer,
2013.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>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 (<EM>i.e. </EM>social and human) sciences
should address collaboratively is the identification,
characterisation and understanding of <STRONG>the intimate connection
between</STRONG> <STRONG>mind's embodiedness
and embeddedness</STRONG>.<STRONG> </STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG></STRONG></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>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 <EM>Complex Human Dynamics </EM>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 <A href="http://www.academia.edu"
moz-do-not-send="true">www.academia.edu</A>.
<STRONG><EM> </EM></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Since I am currently working on a book provisionally
entitled <EM>The Complexity of Countries</EM>, 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 <U>brain</U>,
<U>mind</U>, <U>society</U> and <U>culture</U> but also (and perhaps in the
first place) on the relationships between these intricately patterned
entities. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Needless to say, I would be most grateful if you could
help me.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Yours sincerely,</FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Hans Kuijper</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Joliotplaats 5</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>3069 JJ Rotterdam</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The Netherlands</FONT></DIV>
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