The environment impacts human health in profound ways, yet few theories define the form of the relationship between human physiology and the environment. It is conjectured that such complex systems cannot interact directly, but rather their interaction requires the formation of an intermediary “interface.” This position contrasts with current epidemiological constructs of causation, which implicitly assume that two complex systems transfer information directly while remaining separate entities. Further, it is contended that dynamic, process‐based interfaces incorporate components from all the interacting (...) systems but exhibit operational independence. This property has many consequences, the foremost being that characteristics of the interface cannot be fully resolved by only studying the systems involved in the interaction. The interface itself must be the subject of inquiry. Without refocusing the attention on biodynamic interfaces, how the environment impacts health cannot be discerned. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/XeyjeZeyo4o. (shrink)

Different cell lineages growing in microgravity undergo a spontaneous transition leading to the emergence of two distinct phenotypes. By returning these populations in a normal gravitational field, the two phenotypes collapse, recovering their original configuration. In this review, we hypothesize that, once the gravitational constraint is removed, the system freely explores its phenotypic space, while, when in a gravitational field, cells are “constrained” to adopt only one favored configuration. We suggest that the genome allows for a wide range of “possibilities” (...) but it is unable per se to choose among them: the emergence of a specific phenotype is enabled by physical constraints that drive the system toward a preferred solution. These findings may help in understanding how cells and tissues behave in both development and cancer. In microgravity, cells undergo spontaneous and reversible transitions between different phenotypes. In the absence of physical constraints, living systems could yield bi-stable decisions. On the contrary, physical ‘boundaries’ constrain cells to acquire only a specific configuration by selecting and shaping different gene expression patterns provided by the intrinsic genetic stochasticity. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractWe can, for example, understand intimately how the human endocrine systems works, and likewise the chemical nature of compounds present in our environment; but the result of the interaction cannot be deduced from any simple combination of the two knowledge sets: it's not the interacting entities that we should be studying, but the process that creates the phenomena that we witness as a result of this interaction. This is the “biodynamic interface” to which Manish Arora, Alessandro Giuliani and Paul (...) Curtin refer in their article in this issue, and it is a conceptual structure that comes into being upon interaction of entities: a new way to study interactions in complex systems and better understand emergent phenomena. (shrink)

Studies performed in absence of gravitational constraint show that a living system is unable to choose between two different phenotypes, thus leading cells to segregate into different, alternative stable states. This finding demonstrates that the genotype does not determine by itself the phenotype but requires additional, physical constraints to finalize cell differentiation. Constraints belong to two classes: holonomic (independent of the system's dynamical states, as being established by the space‐time geometry of the field) and non‐holonomic (modified during those biological processes (...) to which they contribute in shaping). This latter kind of “constraints”, in which dynamics works on the constraint to recreate them, have emerged as critical determinants of self‐organizing systems, by manifesting a “closure of constraints.” Overall, the constraints act by harnessing the “randomness” represented by the simultaneous presence of equiprobable events restraining the system within one attractor. These results cast doubt on the mainstream scientific concept and call for a better understanding of causation in cell biology. (shrink)

The 1930-60s saw the beginning of a fertile stream of research based on a historical-comparative methodology focused on case-law viewed as the paradigm of the true living law. Today, the new frontier is in the information age and in thinking law as information.

In the XVIIth century the conflict which opposed the jansenists to the jesuits involved the problem of the due process in theological matter. The jesuits heralded the thesis that the infallibility of the Church has to be extended from dogmatics (‘quaestio iuris’) to the historical facts (‘quaestio facti’). On the opposite side Arnauld maintained that such an opinion was ‘monstruous’: also in religious matters the ‘fact’ has to be proved according to the principles of a due process, and not by (...) authority. In this article the thesis pleaded by the jansenists is considered in connection with the model of argumentative procedure offered by the Port-Royal logic.The Logique ou Art de penser (1622) by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole seems to have rediscovered the classical principles of the theory of argumentation: from the burden of proof to the idea of probable truth. But really a new model of adversary-system has been introduced into the modern mind, which is very different in concept from the topical tradition. The basic metaphor of combat, implying that the truth will prevail in the fight, is compatible with the epistemological premises of the modern logic (as the separation between ‘fact’ and ‘value’). Therefore the problem of the fact-finding seems to be attracted into the area of the logic of information, and not of the theory of argumentation. (shrink)

The analogy between science and theater work is so strict as to be normally taken for granted without the need of further specification. This implies that the analogy is completely ignored. Here I try to go in depth into the character of this analogy and to demonstrate how stopping and thinking about this issue could give some useful hints for solving problems that contemporary science is experiencing.

The Western Legal Tradition (WLT) is a child of the Cold War era. Originally conceived by the Harvard legal historian HJ Berman in his 1950 book on Justice in Russia, a work aimed at explaining to the West what laid beyond the Iron Curtain, this idea gives life to an account set out in an opposition in which the West and Soviet Russia are defined with the features missing to each other. In those pages is the blueprint for his two (...) well-known volumes published in 1983 and 2003, and for a third volume left unfinished. -/- The WLT grows from another legacy from the Cold War era: human rights history. While this theme entered public debate fuelled by the concern with human rights in the Eastern European countries during the Cold War era, this paper shows how the WLT absorbed this theme hijacking a core component of continental legal science (subjectives Recht) re-engineered by political theorists into the major identitary element of the WLT in an eternity history rooted in medieval canon law. (shrink)

What is comparative legal history? This essay argues that to understand this new field of legal-historical studies, we need first to clarify how legal historiography has changed over time. To this purpose, this essay begins from two main ideas. -/- First, the writing of legal history is deeply intertwined with an image of law that tells us what law is, how it is created and by whom. This is, in fact, the premise for writing legal history, as it determines the (...) object of investigation. Second, the decades between 1930 and 1960 saw a profound turn in European legal science. Some legal scholars challenged the legacy received from the 19th century and launched an attack on the ‘formalism’ at the heart of its intellectual framework. -/- Those path-breaking insights gave life to a wave of works self-styled as comparative legal history published in the period 1930–60. At their heart were some of the challenging ideas that have continued to fuel original legal-historical research in the last few decades (e.g. to place law in context, to think outside the doctrinal box, the dislike of abstract theorising) and which today are shared as an obvious truth. They are the fruit of the antiformalist turn of between1930 and 1960. (shrink)