The practical criteria by which developmental biologists choose their model systems have evolutionary correlates. The result is a sample that is not merely small, but biased in particular ways, for example towards species with rapid, highly canalized development. These biases influence both data collection and interpretation, and our views of how development works and which aspects of it are important.

Stem cell scientists and ethicists have focused intently on questions relevant to the developmental stage and developmental capacities of stem cells. Comparably less attention has been paid to an equally important set of questions about the nature of stem cells, their common characteristics, their non‐negligible differences and their possible developmental species specificity. Answers to these questions are essential to the project of justly inferring anything about human stem cell biology from studies in non‐human model systems—and so to the possibility (...) of eventually developing human therapies based on stem cell biology. After introducing and discussing these questions, I conclude with a brief discussion of the creation of novel model systems in stem cell biology: human‐to‐animal embryonic chimeras. Such novel model systems may help to overcome obstacles to extrapolation, but they are also scientifically and ethically contentious. BioEssays 26:1005‐1012, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper aims to reconfigure the place of memory in epistemology. I start by rethinking the problem that memory systems solve; rather than merely functioning to store information, I argue that the core function of any memory system is to support accurate and relevant retrieval. This way of specifying the function of memory has consequences for which structures and mechanisms make up a memory system. In brief, memory systems are modeling systems. This means that they generate, update (...) and manage a series of overlapping, simplified, relational representations that map out features of the world. Succeeding at building and maintaining models requires the kind of active knowledge generation traditionally associated only with deliberative reasoning. (shrink)

LLMs have been shown to induce representations akin to real-world information structures. According to the standard account, this is because LLMs model the human mind, and minds model the world. Thus, LLMs and minds share properties that ultimately converge upon similar structures. We contribute to this discourse in two ways: a) We argue for an alternative account: LLMs model minds, and minds model worlds, but minds also model LLMs, which in turn extend the capacities of minds. In sum, the world-mind-LLM (...) system constitutes a three-player game, which b) we show does not necessarily converge. We explore the epistemological consequences of non-convergence for world-mind-model systems, introducing the concept of epistemic drift. We offer a new explanatory account of epistemic drift as a social phenomenon, and explore the potential safety concerns of epistemic drift with the introduction of LLMs. Finally, we contribute to existing discourse surrounding LLM agency, arguing that agency is not found in the content of LLM output, but in the way they functionally interact with minds. (shrink)

The potential of the vertebrate limb as a model system to study developmental mechanisms is particularly well illustrated by the analysis of the Hox gene network. These genes are probably involved in the establishment of patterns encoding positional information. Their functional organisation during both limb and trunk development are very similar and seem to involve the progressive activation in time, along the chromosome, of a battery of genes whose products could differentially instruct those cells where they are expressed. This process (...) may be common to all organisms that develop according to an anterior‐posterior morphogenetic progression. The possible linkage of this system to a particular mechanism of segmentation as well as its phylogenetic implications are discussed. (shrink)

Juri Lotman’s well-known distinction of primary modeling system versus secondary modeling system is a lasting legacy of his that has been adhered to, modified, and refuted by semioticians of culture and nature. Adherence aside, modifications and refutations have focused on the issue whether or not language is a primary modeling system, and, if not, what alternatives can be made available to replace it. As Sebeok would concur, for both biosemiosis and anthroposemiosis, language can only be a secondary modeling system on (...) top of the biological experience of Umwelt or human sensory system. This paper proposes to explore the possibility of a “preverbal” modeling system suggested by Lotman’s spatial concept of semiosphere, and discuss its implications in cross-cultural dialogue. (shrink)

The multiplicity of deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) encoded by vertebrate genomes is partly attributable to whole genome duplication events that occurred early in chordate evolution. By surveying the literature for the largest family of DUBs (the ubiquitin-specific proteases), extensive functional redundancy for duplicated genes has been confirmed as opposed to singletons. Dramatically conflicting results have been reported for loss of function studies conducted through RNA interference as opposed to inactivating mutations, but the contradictory findings can be reconciled by a recently proposed (...) compensatory mechanism involving nonsense-mediated RNA degradation. Duplicated genes are often inactivated to become pseudogenes, and it is proposed that such is the fate of the USP15 gene of zebrafish, a commonly used model system. As it is reviewed here, these observations have implications not only for the interpretation of model system phenotypes but also for therapeutic interventions designed to target DUBs. (shrink)

Physicists regularly invoke universal laws, such as those of motion and electromagnetism, to explain events. Biological and medical scientists have no such laws. How then do they acquire a reliable body of knowledge about biological organisms and human disease? One way is by repeatedly returning to, manipulating, observing, interpreting, and reinterpreting certain subjects—such as flies, mice, worms, or microbes—or, as they are known in biology, “model systems.” Across the natural and social sciences, other disciplinary fields have developed canonical examples (...) that have played a role comparable to that of biology’s model systems, serving not only as points of reference and illustrations of general principles or values but also as sites of continued investigation and reinterpretation. The essays in this collection assess the scope and function of model objects in domains as diverse as biology, geology, and history, attending to differences between fields as well as to epistemological commonalities. Contributors examine the role of the fruit fly Drosophila and nematode worms in biology, troops of baboons in primatology, box and digital simulations of the movement of the earth’s crust in geology, and meteorological models in climatology. They analyze the intensive study of the prisoner’s dilemma in game theory, ritual in anthropology, the individual case in psychoanalytic research, and Athenian democracy in political theory. The contributors illuminate the processes through which particular organisms, cases, materials, or narratives become foundational to their fields, and they examine how these foundational exemplars—from the fruit fly to Freud’s Dora—shape the knowledge produced within their disciplines. Contributors Rachel A. Ankeny Angela N. H. Creager Amy Dahan Dalmedico John Forrester Clifford Geertz Carlo Ginzburg E. Jane Albert Hubbard Elizabeth Lunbeck Mary S. Morgan Josiah Ober Naomi Oreskes Susan Sperling Marcel Weber M. Norton Wise. (shrink)

Despite the persistent affirmations of the ill-informed, the great promise of semiotics is the possibility it represents of welding together both language and text analysis and the analysis of pragmatic and ideological context. It is merely a matter of judicious planning if attention has so far been directed primarily to distinctive aspects of techniques and texts rather than to the general character of the frames of reference within which they operate. And yet, as we know, investigations of the total functioning (...) of culture have been carried out with far-reaching results. This has been so particularly when the areas examined have been those, like the mass media, in which the weight of individual contribution is small. For culture in the widest sense of the term., the most highly elaborated hypotheses are those put forward by the Soviet semioticians, Lotman first among them. It is with these that I mean to deal here in an act of criticism which may also prove to be one of integration. Lotman's thought is clearly still in the making, and rather than follow out its likely developments, or, it may be, contradictions, it seems more helpful to get into its seams in an attempt to perceive alternative interlacings. Cesare Segre, director of the Institute of Romance Philology at the University of Pavia and the president of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, is coeditor of the journals Strumenti Critici and Medioevo Romanzo and the series Critica e Filologia. "Culture and Modeling Systems" originally appeared in his Semiotica, storia e cultura ; his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Narrative Structures and Literary History," appeared in Winter 1976. John Meddemmen teaches the history of the English language at the University of Pavia. He has worked on predominantly linguistic aspects of contemporary Italian authors such as Montale and Fenglio. (shrink)

Neurobiology studies mechanisms of cell signalling. A key question is how cells recognise specific signals. In this context, olfaction has become an important experimental system over the past 25 years. The olfactory system responds to an array of structurally diverse stimuli. The discovery of the olfactory receptors (ORs), recognising these stimuli, established the olfactory pathway as part of a greater group of signalling mechanisms mediated by G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs are the largest protein family in the mammalian genome and involved (...) in numerous fundamental physiological processes. The OR family exhibits two characteristics that make them an excellent model system to understand GPCRs: its size and the structural diversity of its members. Research on the OR binding site investigates what amino acid sequences determine the receptor-binding capacity. This promises a better understanding of how the basic genetic makeup of GPCRs relates to their diversification in ligand-binding capacities. (shrink)

The system-parametric method developed by A. Uyemov allows creating a model of the contemporary bifurcational reality. There are many terms adopted from other sciences which are often used in postmodern philosophy. Bifurcation is one of such terms adopted from synergetics. In this article emphasis is placed on the contemporary time which is bifurcational in its essence. Using the key thesis of the systems method which states that any object can be presented as a system, we propose to create a (...) model of social ladenness. The mere fact that ladenness exists, makes the system of crisis nature. The social ladenness is defined using system descriptors. This definition contains the concept, the structure, and the substrate of the object and analysis of their elements. Consistence and hierarchical arrangement of the descriptors is the social ladenness model under discussion. The elements identified in the social ladenness model are the economic, political, technical, ecological, religious, creative and bifurcation impact. We identified some markers of human existence in the community system. The coronavirus pandemic is used as an example to demonstrate the way the bifurcation society system model can be built in order to find solutions to overcome the social and individual crises. (shrink)

This paper argues that the biochemistry of memory consolidation provides valuable model systems for exploring the multiple realization of psychological states.

This article by Juri Lotman from the third volume of Trudy po znakovym sistemam (Sign Systems Studies) in 1967, deals with the problem of artistic modelling. The general working questions are whether art displays any characteristic traits that are common for all modelling systems and which could be the specific traits that can distinguish art from other modelling systems. Art is seen as a secondary modelling system, more precisely, as a play-type model, which (...) is characterised simultaneously by practical and conventional behaviour and constant awareness of the possibility of alternate meanings to the one that is currently being perceived. At the same time art has play-like elements but is not the same as play, since play is inherently rule-bound, whereas art is a more flexible model thepurpose of which is truth. Art is a special type of modelling system, since it is on one hand suitable for storing very large amount of complex information, but onthe other hand it can increase the stored information and transform the consumer. (shrink)

Fictionalists believe that scientific models are about model systems that are imaginary. Michael Weisberg has claimed that fictionalism is indefensible because many scientific models are about model systems that are unimaginable. According to a certain account of imagination, what Weisberg says is plausible. According to another, more defensible account of imagination, it is not. I discuss these issues within the context of an allegedly unimaginable model system in ecology, but the conclusions I draw are more general. I then (...) describe how fictionalism should be recast in order to deal with Weisberg’s critique. (shrink)

The art historian Ernst Gombrich asserted that both artists and viewers are constrained by specific cultural mental sets within which they operate: he used “schemata” to refer to both actual sketches and our mental sets. In mapping the mechanism of culture, Juri Lotman situated both language and the “schematized image” at the centre of semiospheres: they function to introduce unity and eliminate contradictions. Schemata have obviously served as both the cause and the result of human knowledge, some loosely constructed yet (...) highly condensed forms of art in different domains. Theorizing at a time of a hypertrophy of scientific and linguistic models, Lotman and Gombrich appear to have converged on theorizing our means of connecting people across cultures. They each put forward their own perspectives concerning the interplay between culture, art and pictorial representation. This paper serves to: (1) examine how Lotman and Gombrich interpreted Jakobson’s scheme of communication; (2) reveal the paradox of schemata and nonverbal communication latent in their writings; (3) soften the paradox by drawing on Lotman’s conceptulization of play as an emotional structure. It is argued that the kind of emotive potential defined from the perspective of beholders or addressees is crucial to our survival in the global village. (shrink)

The essay examines possible affinities betweenTartu-Moscow school of cultural semiotics andlegal semiotics. The introduction briefly setsout a historical dimension of the ideologicalintegration of Tartu-Moscow semiotics (inbroader context Tartu semiotics) into thegeneral framework of legal semiotics. It arguesthat there was a `real' historical mediationbetween the members of Tartu-Moscow schoolsemiotic circle and legal scholars from Tartu.The acceptance of such a bridging link betweenlegal academic community and semioticians couldgive further impetus to construction of aspecial model of `Tartu legal semiotics'.The development of Tartu-Moscow `legalsemiotics' (...) could be illustrated by theimplementation of a special explanatoryframework, which provide insights into the wayTartu semiotics wedded to a legal positivistphilosophy. Particular importance of such aframework (model of legal semiotics) rest onfact that the academic ideology of Tartu-Moscowschool reflects and conforms to all thehistorical peculiarities of the Soviet epoch(these peculiarities should be always kept inmind). In order to adopt Tartu-Moscow semioticsto legal semiotics, semiotic theory ofTartu-Moscow school must be recast in terms oflegal semiotics The dissemination of semioticstudies in late Soviet epoch enabled them to belinked to various theoretical enquiries intothe domain of legal methodology, ontology andepistemology. This essay puts a specialemphasis on the notion of `secondary modelingsystem' as a natural pattern for `systemacity'within the universe of law. However, in orderto understand the semiotic value of `legalsystem' it is necessary to have recourse toother systems. Therefore, this paper examinesdifferent system dimensions of law: fromgeneral notion of system and theory ofautopoetic system to sign systems.The possible synthesis of logical, sociologicaland semiotic approaches to the system of lawopens a wider multidisciplinary perspective;moreover the need for multidisciplinarysynthesis is pertinent to contemporaryphilosophical concerns. The main analyticaltask of essay is to provide an answer to aquestion of whether core semiotic concept of a`secondary modeling system' (amongst otherconcepts like `boundary', `semiosphere',`culture' and `text') is capable of enrichingand clarifying legal philosophy in a widerperspective and the semiotic account of law inparticular. A positive answer to the questionwill favor the further tight integration ofTartu-Moscow semiotic concepts into the domainof legal semiotics. (shrink)

In the yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the initiation of DNA replication is controlled at a point called START. At this point, the cellular environment is assessed; only if conditions are appropriate do cells traverse START, thus becoming committed to initiate DNA replication and complete the remainder of the cell cycle. The cdc2+ / CDC28+ gene, encoding the protein kinase p34, is a key element in this complex control. The identification of structural and functional homologues of p34 suggests that (...) it has a role in the control of DNA replication in all eukaryotes. The WHI1+, CLN1+ and CLN2+ gene products, identified in S. cerevisiae, are positive regulators that function at START and may interact with p34. Determining how passing the START control point leads to the initiation of DNA replication is a major outstanding challenge in cell cycle studies. (shrink)

Spontaneous mutations that perturb myelination occur in a range of species including man, and together with engineered mutations have been used to study disease, normal myelination and axon/glial inter‐relationships. Only a minority of the currently defined mutations have an apparently simple pathogenesis due to lack of a functional protein. Mutations in the myelin basic protein gene lead to a lack of protein, resulting in changes in the structure of myelin, which can be rescued by transgenic complementation. The pathogenesis of autosomal (...) dominant and X‐linked mutations affecting either oligodendrocytes or Schwann cells is more complex. Point mutations may act in a dominant negative manner and gene dosage is clearly linked to phenotypic change. Mutations in regulatory genes, such as those encoding transcription factors, can also disturb myelination by selected cell types. Other less‐well studied and unexpected consequences of myelin mutations, such as seizures in mutations affecting genes expressed in Schwann cells and axonal changes associated with dysmyelination, are also considered. With the major developments in gene mapping and cloning it is now relevant to study mutations in a variety of species with the real prospect of defining their molecular basis. Examples are given of unusual, but potentially useful, uncharacterised mutations in dog and bovine. (shrink)

Cooption and modularity are informative concepts in evolutionary developmental biology. Genes function within complex networks that act as modules in development. These modules can then be coopted in various functional and evolutionary contexts. Hormonal signaling, the main focus of this review, has a modular character. By regulating the activities of genes, proteins and other cellular molecules, a hormonal signal can have major effects on physiological and ontogenetic processes within and across tissues over a wide spatial and temporal scale. Because of (...) this property, we argue that hormones are frequently involved in the coordination of life history transitions (LHTs) and their evolution (LHE). Finally, we promote the usefulness of a comparative, non-model system approach towards understanding how hormones function and guide development and evolution, highlighting thyroid hormone function in echinoids as an example. BioEssays 27:64–75, 2005. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The brain sciences are providing new means of investigating brain processes involved in decision making. However, understanding decision making at the computational level requires methods unsuitable for use in humans. This chapter argues that monkeys are attractive models of human decision making and that neurophysiological recordings in monkeys can provide insight into human decision processes. The chapter explores a number of objections to the relevance of monkey data to understanding human decision making, including the importance of language and consciousness, and (...) argues that none undermines the applicability of the model, though some may limit it. The relevance of studies of decision in monkeys to questions of free will is discussed. (shrink)

An abundance of information about lung development in animal models exists; however, comparatively little is known about lung development in humans. Recent advances using primary human lung tissue combined with the use of human in vitro model systems, such as human pluripotent stem cell‐derived tissue, have led to a growing understanding of the mechanisms governing human lung development. They have illuminated key differences between animal models and humans, underscoring the need for continued advancements in modeling human lung development and (...) utilizing human tissue. This review discusses the use of human tissue and the use of human in vitro model systems that have been leveraged to better understand key regulators of human lung development and that have identified uniquely human features of development. This review also examines the implementation and challenges of human model systems and discusses how they can be applied to address knowledge gaps. (shrink)

Invention is an important source of technology, and, to understand invention, one needs a model system or prototype. A candidate model system is the hand tool. Using the hand tool as an example, the authors present a systematic approach to invention, dealing with description, classification, and joining or integrating simpler forms. Heuristics for when to integrate are presented. Finally, the authors introduce a new way of thinking about hand tools: simple spatial transformations applied to an abstract element make possible the (...) re-creation of a large number of tools. (shrink)

Aphids display an abundance of adaptations that are not easily studied in existing model systems. Here we review the biology of a new genomic model system, the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. We then discuss several phenomena that are particularly accessible to study in the pea aphid: the developmental genetic basis of polyphenisms, aphid–bacterial symbioses, the genetics of adaptation and mechanisms of virus transmission. The pea aphid can be maintained in the laboratory and natural populations can be studied in the (...) field. These properties allow controlled experiments to be performed on problems of direct relevance to natural aphid populations. Combined with new genomic approaches, the pea aphid is poised to become an important model system for understanding the molecular and developmental basis of many ecologically and evolutionarily relevant problems. BioEssays 28: 747–755, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The demonstration that pluripotent stem cells could be generated by somatic cell reprogramming led to wonder if these so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells would extend our investigation capabilities in the cancer research field. The first iPS cells derived from cancer cells have now revealed the benefits and potential pitfalls of this new model. iPS cells appear to be an innovative approach to decipher the steps of cell transformation as well as to screen the activity and toxicity of anticancer drugs. (...) A better understanding of the impact of reprogramming on cancer cell-specific features as well as improvements in culture conditions to integrate the role of the microenvironment in their behavior may strengthen the epistemic interest of iPS cells as model systems in oncology. (shrink)

The discussion over the roles of genes and environment on the phenotypical specification of organisms has held a central role in science philosophy since the late 19th century and has re‐emerged in today's debate over genetic determinism and developmental plasticity. In fin‐de‐siecle Vienna, this debate coincided with a philosophical debate over empiricism/materialism versus idealism/vitalism. Turn‐of‐the‐century Vienna's highly interdisciplinary environment was also the birthplace for the model system of the un‐opposed molar. The un‐opposed molar system features new tissue formation at the (...) roots of teeth and tooth drift once opposing teeth are lost. The un‐opposed molar model system was revived by a group of Viennese scientists who left Vienna during the Nazi period to address Vienna's questions about evolution and heredity and about genes and environment in Chicago's post‐WWII scientific exile community. Here we are using the colorful history of the un‐opposed molar to investigate the role of culture and method in the scientific evolution of a model system. BioEssays 29:819–830, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Cancer is one of the most frequent fatal human diseases. It is a genetic disease, and molecular analysis of the genes involved revealed that they belong to several distinct classes of molecules, one of which is the receptor tyrosine kinases. Neoplastic transformation is regarded as the result of a multistep process and, in most cases, it is hard to evaluate what the initial events in tumor formation are. What makes it difficult to approach this question is the paucity of animal (...) models for tumorigenesis allowing investigation of the mechanisms leading to uncontrolled cell proliferation. Melanoma formation in Xiphophorus is one of these model systems. Here, overexpression and activation of a receptor tyrosine kinase causes neoplastic transformation of pigment cells. Xiphophorus provides all the advantages of a well‐characterised genetic system. In addition, some crucial components of the transformation pathway have been identified at the molecular level. As a vertebrate, Xiphophorus might serve as a model system to aid understanding, in more general terms, of the mechanisms of tumorigenesis in human diseases. (shrink)

Like other sciences, biosemiotics also has its time-honoured archive, consisting of writings by those who have been invented and revered as ancestors of the discipline. One such example is Jakob von Uexküll. As to the people who ‘invented’ him, they are either, to paraphrase a French cliché, ‘agents du cosmopolitisme sémiotique’ like Thomas Sebeok, or de jure and de facto progenitor like Thure von Uexküll. In the archive is the special issue of Semiotica 42. 1 (1982) edited by the late (...) Sebeok and introduced by Thure von Uexküll. It is in the opening essay that Thure von UexküIl tries to restore Jakob von Uexküll’s role as a precursor of semiotics by negotiating the Elder with Saussure and the linguistics-oriented ‘semiology’ in his wake. However, semiotic mapping, in the strictly ‘disciplinary’ sense, of Jakob von Uexküll is no easy task because he ‘knew neither Peirce nor Saussure and did not use their terminology’ (Thure von Uexküll 1982,2). Because Thure prefers to call the Elder’s science ‘general semiotics’ (Thure von Uexküll 1982), this paper begins by assessing Thure von Uexküll’s semiotic configuration of Jakob, probe into the force and limits of the linguistic analogy, revisit the already time-honoured debate on the primary and secondary modelling systems, which was made famous by the Moscow-Tartu semioticians in the early 1970s, but severely criticized by Sebeok and his followers. The paper engages Sebeok from several fronts, directed first at his relegation of the Saussurian linguistic model, then at his critique of the Primary Modelling System, and finally at his reservation about evolutionism in light of the current debate on gene/meme co-evolution. (shrink)

One striking feature of the contemporary modelling practice is its interdisciplinary nature. The same equation forms, and mathematical and computational methods, are used across different disciplines, as well as within the same discipline. Are there, then, differences between intra- and interdisciplinary transfer, and can the comparison between the two provide more insight on the challenges of interdisciplinary theoretical work? We will study the development and various uses of the Ising model within physics, contrasting them to its applications to socio-economic (...) systems. While the renormalization group methods justify the transfer of the Ising model within physics – by ascribing them to the same universality class – its application to socio-economic phenomena has no such theoretical grounding. As a result, the insights gained by modelling socio-economic phenomena by the Ising model may remain limited. (shrink)

Greedy desire is the core driver of human civilizational crisis, yet no unified dynamic model spanning the neural, social, and thermodynamic levels has been developed. This paper employs System Dynamics as its methodological framework, integrating evolutionary neuroscience, complex systems theory, and thermodynamics to construct a Three-Level Greedy Positive-Feedback Model (3L-GFM). At the neural level, the model captures the dual positive-feedback structure of the dopaminergic reward circuit and the amygdala anxiety system, along with the negative-feedback intervention mechanism mediated by mindfulness (...) cultivation through the prefrontal cortex. At the social level, the model describes the mutual nesting of three key positive-feedback loops: the wealth-power-policy triangle, the information monopoly–cognitive control loop, and the military-industrial complex loop. At the thermodynamic level, the model takes entropy increase rate as its core variable, constructing a physical description of the civilizational cancer process driven by greedy desire. The three levels are coupled through the Desire Amplification Factor (DAF) and the Cosmic Constraint Function (CCF). Simulation analysis reveals three critical bifurcation points — the Neural Tipping Point (NTP), the Social Tipping Point (STP), and the Thermodynamic Tipping Point (TTP) — before which the system retains self-repair capacity and after which positive feedback dominates and the system trends toward irreversible collapse. Simulations of Natural Cybernetics intervention strategies demonstrate that implementing intergenerational constraint institutionalization, ecological red-line anchoring, and entropy responsibility accounting before tipping points can guide the system toward a low-entropy stable state. 贪婪欲望是人类文明危机的核心驱动力，但迄今缺乏一个跨越神经、社会与热力学三个层次的统一动力学模型。本文以系统动力学（System Dynamics）为方法论框架，整合进化神经科学、复杂系统理论与热力学，构建贪婪欲望的三层次正反馈模型（3L-GFM：Three-Level Greedy Positive-Feedback Model）。在神经层次，模型捕捉多巴胺奖励回路与杏仁核焦虑系统的双重正反馈结构，以及正念修炼通过前额叶皮层介导的负反馈干预机制；在社会层次，模型描述财富-权力-政策三角、信息垄断-认知控制与军工复合 体三条关键正反馈回路的相互嵌套；在热力学层次，模型以熵增速率为核心变量，建立贪婪欲望驱动的文明癌症过程的物理描述。三个层次通过「欲望放大系数」（DAF：Desire Amplification Factor）和「宇宙约束函数」（CCF：Cosmic Constraint Function）实现耦合。仿真分析揭示：文明系统存在三个关键分叉点——神经临界点（NTP）、社会临界点（STP）和热力学临界点（TTP）——在此之前系统具有自我修复能力，在此之后正反馈主导，系统趋向 不可逆崩溃。自然控制论干预策略的仿真表明，在临界点之前实施代际约束制度化、生态红线锚定和熵责任核算，可将系统导向低熵稳态。 . (shrink)

Should models of consciousness be detailed _mechanistic_ models of particular types of systems, or should they be _minimal_ models that abstract away from the underlying mechanistic details and provide generalisations? Detailed mechanistic models may afford a complete and precise account of consciousness in human beings and other, physiologically similar mammals. But they do not provide a good model of consciousness in other animals, such as non-vertebrates, let alone artificial systems. Minimal models can be applicable to a wide range (...) of different conscious systems. But do they provide genuine explanations that are autonomous from explanations by detailed mechanistic models? This paper provides a taxonomy of minimal models and measures of consciousness, clarifies their relation to detailed mechanistic models, and highlights benefits of different minimalist approaches to consciousness. (shrink)