Forms of explanation in the catastrophe theory of René Thom: topology, morphogenesis, and structuralism

Kapitel in diesem Buch

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction: dynamics all the way up 1
4. part i Mathematics, physics, and engineering Elementary particles?
5. 1 Mirror symmetry: persons, values, and objects 23
6. Nonlinear dynamics and chaos 65
7. 2 Chaos, disorder, and mixing: a new fin-de-siècle image of science? 67
8. Forms of explanation in the catastrophe theory of René Thom: topology, morphogenesis, and structuralism 95
9. Coping with complexity in technology 131
10. 4 From Boeing to Berkeley: civil engineers, the cold war, and the origins of finite element analysis 133
11. 5 Fuzzyfying the world: social practices of showing the properties of fuzzy logic 159
12. part ii The organism, the self, and (artificial) life Self-Organization
13. 6 Marrying the premodern to the postmodern: computers and organisms after World War II 181
14. Immunology 199
15. 7 Immunology and the enigma of selfhood 201
16. 8 Immunology and aids: growing explanations and developing instruments 222
17. Artificial Life 249
18. 9 Artificial life support: some nodes in the Alife ribotype 251
19. The word for world is computer: simulating second natures in artificial life 275
20. 11 Constructing and explaining emergence in artificial life: on paradigms, ontodefinitions, and general knowledge in biology 301
21. Afterword 327
22. Contributors 333
23. Index 337