Plant succession is a phenomenon ascribed to vegetation dynamics at the scale of the plant community. The study of plant succession implies the analysis of the species involved and their relationships. Depending on the research done, the characteristics of trees have been studied according to either static, dimensional or partial approaches. We have revised the principal theories of succession, the methods of describing structure and development of tree and relationship established between tree species' attributes and their successional status. During studies (...) of succession, we propose that the profile of plant species be completed by including the organizational attributes of their structure as well as their development dynamics. We suggest an approach to the architecture that gives a general overview of the mode of development, revealing, among other things, that a limited number of architectural models may be found in nature. We hypothesize that community dynamics, in succession, may to a certain degree arise from the dynamic nature of plant development. This line of reasoning is in accordance with the current school of thought on process structuralism. (shrink)

A discussion is going on in cognitive science about the use of representations to explain how intelligent behavior is generated. In the traditional view, an organism is thought to incorporate representations. These provide an internal model that is used by the organism to instruct the motor apparatus so that the adaptive and anticipatory characteristics of behavior come about. So-called interactionists claim that this representational specification of behavior raises more problems than it solves. In their view, the notion of internal representational (...) models is to be dispensed with. Instead, behavior is to be explained as the intricate interaction between an embodied organism and the specific make up of an environment. The problem with a non-representational interactive account is that it has severe difficulties with anticipatory, future oriented behavior. The present paper extends the interactionist conceptual framework by drawing on ideas derived from the study of morphogenesis. This extended interactionist framework is based on an analysis of anticipatory behavior as a process which involves multiple spatio-temporal scales of neural, bodily and environmental dynamics. This extended conceptual framework provides the outlines for an explanation of anticipatory behavior without involving a representational specification of future goal states. (shrink)