Brenner Joseph E
Associate Director, International Center for the Philosophy of Information, Xi'An Jiaotong University, Xi'An, China.
Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2017 Dec;131:15-33. doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2017.08.006. Epub 2017 Aug 15.
The knowledge accumulated in West and East is incomplete in different ways. The mainstream Western approach has contributed the basis for modern science, but indications have appeared in the Western literature that something has been missing in it that Eastern thought could offer. This paper explores the similarities and differences between Eastern and Western approaches to knowledge and whether a trend exists toward their conjunction or convergence. I suggest that a process of conjunction of these different modes of exploration of what the concepts of 'Life and Mind' really entail, at the interface of philosophy and science, is taking place in the areas of information and biomathics. These conjunctions in China and in the West are characterized by scientific and philosophical systems which are holistic rather than reductionist. I argue that a non-standard, non-truth-functional logic of energy, based on the work of Stéphane Lupasco (1900-1988), provides a thread linking these approaches. Grounded in modern physics, it can describe the qualitative changes which are the focus of Chinese thought. In biology, Lupasco showed how the principles of this logic of dynamic relations operate in intra- and inter-cellular processes and at higher levels of organization. This paper supports key, primarily Chinese concepts and critiques the logical and categorial distinctions underlying and restricting the Western world-view. The paper also supports the implicit openness of Integral Biomathics to qualitative Eastern perspectives. Its finality is to find, from the conjunction, "better ideas for better exploration" of the nature of mind and life. This is not an academic exercise but a moral imperative for both Eastern and Western society.
东西方积累的知识在不同方面存在不足。西方主流方法为现代科学奠定了基础,但西方文献中已出现迹象表明其中缺失了一些东方思想能够提供的东西。本文探讨东西方知识获取方法的异同,以及是否存在两者结合或趋同的趋势。我认为,在信息和生物数学领域,在哲学与科学的交叉点上,正在发生一个将“生命与心智”概念实际所蕴含的这些不同探索模式结合起来的过程。中国和西方的这些结合以整体而非还原论的科学和哲学体系为特征。我认为,基于斯特凡纳·卢帕斯科(1900 - 1988)的研究成果,一种非标准、非真值函数的能量逻辑提供了连接这些方法的线索。它以现代物理学为基础,能够描述中国思想所关注的质变。在生物学领域,卢帕斯科展示了这种动态关系逻辑的原理如何在细胞内和细胞间过程以及更高层次的组织中发挥作用。本文支持主要源自中国的关键概念,并批判了构成和限制西方世界观的逻辑及范畴区分。本文还支持整合生物数学对东方质性观点的隐含开放性。其目的是从这种结合中找到“更好的探索更好的想法”,以理解心智和生命的本质。这并非一项学术活动,而是东西方社会的道德使命。