Modularity

Werner Callebaut, Diego Rasskin-Gutman

464 pages, parution le 30/06/2005

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Résumé

Modularity -- the attempt to understand systems as integrations of partially independent and interacting units -- is today a dominant theme in the life sciences, cognitive science, and computer science. The concept goes back at least implicitly to the Scientific (or Copernican) Revolution, and can be found behind later theories of phrenology, physiology, and genetics; moreover, art, engineering, and mathematics rely on modular design principles. This collection broadens the scientific discussion of modularity by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, including artificial life, cognitive science, economics, evolutionary computation, developmental and evolutionary biology, linguistics, mathematics, morphology, paleontology, physics, theoretical chemistry, philosophy, and the arts.

The contributors debate and compare the uses of modularity, discussing the different disciplinary contexts of "modular thinking" in general (including hierarchical organization, near-decomposability, quasi-independence, and recursion) or of more specialized concepts (including character complex, gene family, encapsulation, and mosaic evolution); what modules are, why and how they develop and evolve, and the implication for the research agenda in the disciplines involved; and how to bring about useful cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer on the topic. The book includes a foreword by the late Herbert A. Simon addressing the role of near-decomposability in understanding complex systems.

L'auteur - Werner Callebaut

Werner Callebaut is Scientific Manager of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Vienna, and Professor of Philosophy at Limburg University, Belgium

L'auteur - Diego Rasskin-Gutman

Diego Rasskin-Gutman is Research Associate at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Honorary Professor in the Department of Biology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.

Sommaire

The ubiquity of modularity
Natural selection and the origin of modules
Evolutionary modules : conceptual analyses and empirical hypotheses
Evolutionary developmental biology meets levels of selection : modular integration or competition, or both?
Modularity in evolution : some low-level questions
Evolutionary lock-in and the origin of modularity in RNA structure
Amphibian variations : the role of modules in mosaic evolution
The remodularization of the organism
Modularity : jumping forms within morphospace
Morphological modularity and macroevolution : conceptual and empirical aspects
Hierarchical integration of modular structures in the evolution of animal skeletons
Modularity in art
Modularity at the boundary between art and science
Evolutionary connectionism and mind/brain modularity
Modularity and chunking
Modularity of cognitive organization : why it is so appealing and why it is wrong
Decomposability and modularity of economic interactions
The natural logic of communicative possibilities : modularity and presupposition

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	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	The MIT Press
Auteur(s)	Werner Callebaut, Diego Rasskin-Gutman
Parution	30/06/2005
Nb. de pages	464
Format	18 x 23,5
Couverture	Relié
Poids	1040g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780262033268
ISBN13	978-0-262-03326-8