Ontogenesis Beyond Complexity

Angelaki 25 (3):1-2 (2020)
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Abstract

This article develops a media philosophical framework for addressing the intersection of epigenetics and complex dynamical systems in theoretical biology. In particular, it argues that the theoretical humanities need to think critically about the computability of epigenomic regulation, as well as speculatively about the possibility of an epigenomics beyond complexity. The fact that such a conceptual framework does not exist suggests not only a failure to engage with the mathematics of complexity, but also a failure to engage with its history. Both epigenetics and the application of complex dynamical systems to biology originate in the mid-twentieth-century work of Conrad Hal Waddington. The article demonstrates how this genealogy of epigenetic complexity reveals the need for a speculative conception of epigenomic mediation beyond mathematical complexity. Using Whitehead’s philosophy as a conceptual anchor, the “epimedial landscape” serves as a first pass at a media philosophical revision of the complex dynamical systems view of the epigenetic landscape.

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Author Profiles

C. T. Wolfe
Università Di Venezia “Ca’ Foscari”
Adam Nocek
Center for Philosophical Technologies At Arizona State University

Citations of this work

Noisiness, the Stuff of Thought.Sha Xin Wei - 2023 - Angelaki 28 (3):66-77.

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References found in this work

Technics and time.Bernard Stiegler - 1998 - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Making Sense of Life.Evelyn Fox Keller - 2002 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Science and the Modern World.Alfred North Whitehead - 1925 - Humana Mente 1 (3):380-385.
On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects.Gilbert Simondon - 2011 - Deleuze and Guatarri Studies 5 (3):407-424.

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