The literature on cross-sector partnerships has increasingly focused attention on broader systemic or system-level change. However, research to date has been partial and fragmented, and the very idea of systemic change remains conceptually underdeveloped. In this article, we seek to better understand what is meant by systemic change in the context of cross-sector partnerships and use this as a basis to discuss the contributions to the Thematic Symposium. We present evidence from a broad, multidisciplinary systematized review (...) of the extant literature, develop an original definition of systemic change, and offer a framework for understanding the interactions between actors, partnerships, systemic change, and issues. We conclude with some suggestions for future research that we believe will enhance the literature in its next phase of development. (shrink)

This article examines the rise and decline of the enthusiasm for intelligence testing in early twentieth-century China, focusing on the appeal, the challenges, and the critiques revolving around this psychological instrument. The introduction of intelligence testing reflected not only China’s urgent needs in modernizing its merit system, but also Chinese psychologists’ aspirations for pursuing exactitude and redefining the racial characteristics of their compatriots against foreign interpretations. But despite psychologists’ endeavors, the political and geographical fragmentation of Republican China troubled the (...) epistemic imperative of uniformity demanded by Euro-American psychometrics and therefore undermined the validity of measurement. Subsequently, the legitimacy of intelligence testing began to be questioned by several influential Chinese psychologists in the late 1920s and 30s. The difficulties in standardization and the hostility within the psychology community formed a vicious cycle, impeding the progress of nationwide testing. Through this history, the article demonstrates not only the elevation of measurement to epistemic authority in modern China, but also how its promise was challenged by a diverse and rapidly changing society. (shrink)

Information processing in neural systems can be described and analyzed at multiple spatiotemporal scales. Generally, information at lower levels is more fine-grained but can be coarse-grained at higher levels. However, only information processed at specific scales of coarse-graining appears to be available for conscious awareness. We do not have direct experience of information available at the scale of individual neurons, which is noisy and highly stochastic. Neither do we have experience of more macro-scale interactions, such as interpersonal communications. Neurophysiological evidence (...) suggests that conscious experiences co-vary with information encoded in coarse-grained neural states such as the firing pattern of a population of neurons. In this article, we introduce a new informational theory of consciousness: Information Closure Theory of Consciousness (ICT). We hypothesize that conscious processes are processes which form non-trivial informational closure (NTIC) with respect to the environment at certain coarse-grained scales. This hypothesis implies that conscious experience is confined due to informational closure from conscious processing to other coarse-grained scales. Information Closure Theory of Consciousness (ICT) proposes new quantitative definitions of both conscious content and conscious level. With the parsimonious definitions and a hypothesize, ICT provides explanations and predictions of various phenomena associated with consciousness. The implications of ICT naturally reconcile issues in many existing theories of consciousness and provides explanations for many of our intuitions about consciousness. Most importantly, ICT demonstrates that information can be the common language between consciousness and physical reality. (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)

Within a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) framework, this longitudinal qualitative study explored the complex patterns and identified the degree of variability in three learners’ developmental process. Learners’ listening performance was tracked and examined every 6 weeks, followed by retrospective interviews and self-reflections every 7 weeks over the 43-month span. A series of CDST techniques were adopted for data analysis, including using min–max graphs to trace the minimum and maximum scores on the EFL learners’ listening developmental indices over time. Monte-Carlo (...) and Loess smoothing analyses were applied to gauge for degrees of variability. The results suggest that: (1) Min–max graphs and smoothed Loess curves depict flux developmental processes of learners’ L2 listening; (2) learners differed from each other in the degree of inter-individual variability in their listening developmental trajectory; and (3) occurrence of unanticipated patterns confirm that learners demonstrated personalized intra-individual variability within their unique listening developmental process. Results indicate that variability is a pattern characteristic of CDST both between and within individuals, and inform us about how Chinese EFL listeners’ language develops. We conclude by discussing the implications for researchers and practitioners who are concerned with learners’ developmental trajectories and unexpected changing patterns in the process of foreign language learning. (shrink)

The Hwa Yen school of Mahāyāna Buddhism bloomed in China in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. Today many scholars regard its doctrines of Emptiness, Totality, and Mind-Only as the crown of Buddhist thought and as a useful and unique philosophical system and explanation of man, world, and life as intuitively experienced in Zen practice. For the first time in any Western language Garma Chang explains and exemplifies these doctrines with references to both oriental masters and Western philosophers. The (...) Buddha's mystical experience of infinity and totality provides the framework for this objective revelation of the three pervasive and interlocking concepts upon which any study of Mahāyāna philosophy must depend. Following an introductory section describing the essential differences between Judeo-Christian and Buddhist philosophy, Professor Chang provides an extensive, expertly developed section on the philosophical foundations of Hwa Yen Buddhism dealing with the core concept of True Voidness, the philosophy of Totality, and the doctrine of Mind-Only. A concluding section includes selections of Hwa Yen readings and biographies of the patriarchs, as well as a glossary and list of Chinese terms. (shrink)

Political scientists generally consider that the incentive for legislators to switch parties lies in their desire to be re-elected. While some scholars attribute defection to the legislators’ popularity and strong connections with their constituents which enable them to be re-elected without relying on party labels, others assert that legislators switch if they perceive that staying put might threaten their chances of re-election. In this paper, we find that the two assumptions, to some extent, contradict each other. More surprisingly, the two (...) contradictory hypotheses cohabit under the single non-transferable vote system. From an analysis of the switching in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan, the empirical evidence shows that because of fierce intraparty competition in the multimember districts, not only barely elected but also top-ranked legislators switched party affiliation in order to avoid the loss in votes or even seats to their copartisans and to maximize their chances of re-election. (shrink)

The recent tragic death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has renewed public scrutiny of the US health care system and reignited debate over why Americans face disproportionately high health care costs. This essay examines both the widely recognized drivers of excessive costs and the deeper systemic issues that often remain unaddressed yet continue to sustain the crisis. It highlights two critical challenges: the need to target structural barriers and misaligned economic incentives in order to design sustainable reforms, and the (...) persistent political polarization that impedes long-term, meaningful change. The paper concludes by outlining short-term strategies that can generate immediate improvements while laying the foundation for comprehensive and enduring reform. (shrink)

I propose a reformulation of realism, as the pursuit of ontological plausibility in our systems of knowledge. This is dubbed plausibility realism, for convenience of reference. Plausibility realism is non-empiricist, in the sense that it uses ontological plausibility as an independent criterion from empirical adequacy in evaluating systems of knowledge. Ontological plausibility is conceived as a precondition for intelligibility, nor for Truth; therefore, the function of plausibilty realism is to facilitate the kind of understanding that is not reducible to mere (...) description or prediction. Difficulties in making objective judgements of ontological plausibility can be ameliorated if we adhere to the most basic ontological principles. The workings of plausibility realism are illustrated through a detailed discussion of how one ontological principle, which I call the principle of single value, can be employed with great effect. Throughout the paper the discussion draws on concrete examples from the history of science. (shrink)

Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position, and verb overlap.structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between (...) prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages. (shrink)

Mo Tzu was active in ancient China's academic world during the late Spring and Autumn period and the early Warring States period when the slave system collapsed and the feudal system was gradually established. During this time of radical social change, class antagonism and struggle were acute, and ideological and theoretical struggles were fierce. According to the social classes to which they belonged, thinkers from different social classes and strata gave different answers for the existing social problems. (...) As a result, many schools of thought emerged, and "a hundred schools of thought contended." Among these schools of thought, advocates of Confucianism and followers of Mo Tzu were the most influential. Mutual repudiations developed between the advocates of Confucianism and the followers of Mo Tzu and between the followers of Mo Tzu and the advocates of Yang Tzu. Therefore, criteria for correct opinions became an important question in society. On this question, Mo Tzu voiced his views and conducted a thorough investigation. (shrink)

As the world’s most populous country, China is experiencing unprecedented magnitude and speed of population ageing since it entered the ageing society two decades ago. The rapid population ageing- driven by decreasing fertility rate and prolonged life expectancy- has profound impacts on economic development and poses significant challenges for formal and informal care provision. Although the Chinese government has implemented a series of progressive policy reforms on pension, healthcare, and long-term care systems, the capacity gaps regarding the coverage, adequacy, affordability, (...) and sustainability remain large. At the same time, social and economic changes have eroded the supportive role of family, especially for rural-dwelling, childless, and empty-nest older adults. This chapter documents the statistical and social reality of ageing in China, introduces a series of policy reforms implemented by the Chinese government in response to population ageing, and describes the family dynamics and intergenerational support patterns under the changing socioeconomic background. Besides pressing challenges of ageing for family and society, this chapter also looks at the emerging lifestyle and proactivity for active ageing in China. (shrink)

Integrated information theory (IIT) is celebrated for its formal modelling of consciousness. But drawing on the framework of formal-material ontology, this paper argues that IIT fails to take the qualitative or ‘material’ dimensions of experience into consideration, providing us with a formal skeleton devoid of flesh and blood. Through cases of the natural colour system and the quality space of pain, the research highlights what kinds of material research could be complementary and beneficial to IIT’s formal approach.

In traditional Chinese literary criticism, textual strategies comparable to intertextuality have governed Chinese critics’ and poets’ reading and writing aboutliterature throughout the dynasties. Drawing on the intertextual theories of Kristeva and Riffaterre, the paper probes into the phenomenon of sign system-mutations in two highly influential ancient texts: the Confucian Classic of Changes of the fifth century B.C.E. and Liu Xie’s The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, an ars poetica in the third century. The transformation of sign systems (...) from nonverbal to verbal, in the case of the Changes, and from literate to literary or “creative” to “theoretical”, in the case of the Dragons, bears witness to the Hjelmslevian reciprocity of object-semiotic and meta-semiotic. (shrink)

Does energy create intelligence? If intelligence in the AI era is fundamentally defined by computational capacity, then the geography of this digital intelligence is deeply grounded in material infrastructural conditions. This study investigates the interplay between energy systems, AI readiness, and data center deployment patterns, arguing that the geography of digital intelligence is fundamentally grounded in infrastructural conditions. Through a two-stage, multi-scalar analysis across 84 countries, we first examine how national-level energy consumption and institutional digital capacity (AI readiness) are structurally (...) associated with the presence and scale of data centers. A mediation analysis suggests that energy facilitates data center proliferation both directly and indirectly through AI readiness, highlighting the layered infrastructural logic of digital expansion. At the subnational level, we analyze spatial entropy and clustering patterns in 34 countries with at least 10 data centers, identifying typologies of concentrated versus decentralized infrastructure. Our findings demonstrate that spatial configurations are not solely dictated by economic scale or technological demand, but rather reflect broader national contexts, energy grid structures, and planning paradigms. Countries such as the United States and Canada exhibit distributed spatial patterns likely driven by optimization goals, while others at earlier stages of digital adoption exhibit urban-centric concentration. This study introduces the concept of the infrastructure divide, a structural condition that precedes and shapes the digital divide, as a critical lens for understanding global inequality in the AI era. We argue that energy availability, spatial governance, and institutional alignment are core determinants of digital capacity. As AI becomes more energy-intensive and infrastructure-dependent, addressing disparities in foundational infrastructure is essential for ensuring sustainable participation in the future of intelligence. (shrink)

The intensification of cross-sector collaboration phenomena has occurred in multiple fields of action. Organizations in the private, public, and social sectors are working together to tackle society’s most wicked problems. Some success has resulted in a generalized belief that cross-sector collaborations represent the new paradigm to manage complex problems. Yet, important knowledge gaps remain about how cross-sector alliances generate value for society, particularly to its beneficiaries. This paper answers the question: How cross-sector collaborations lead to systemic change? It uses (...) a qualitative embedded case study design. I use two general cases of alliance-based interventions in the developing country Colombia. Embedded cases within each general case identify evidence of collective action capacity of the beneficiaries. Findings identify and explain alliances’ contributions to beneficiaries’ capacity building: brokering trust and creating spaces where beneficiaries develop an emergent collective action capacity. Alliances also enable beneficiaries to enact that capacity by building bridges, circulating capitals, and buffering relationships to protect people’s initiatives. Alliances and empowered collectives of beneficiaries produce systemic change using five mechanisms: brokering trust, creating spaces, building bridges, circulating capitals, and buffering relationships. Beneficiaries increased capacity for collective action is an outcome that becomes an alliance input, leading overtime to further benefits involving systemic change. (shrink)

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super‐organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super‐organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed (...) systems, such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super‐cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management. (shrink)

Intelligent systems realized by artificial deep neural networks are entirely composed of Fodorian modules. Human mind exemplifies either the massive modularity or does not exhibit modular structures. In either case, human mind is not entirely composed of Fodorian modules. Human mind thus has a different architecture in compare with systems realized by neural networks. Realizing strong AI by deep neural networks alone turns out to be an unrealistic vision.

Feyerabend had many interlocutors in his controversial career, and one of them was Kuhn. One key point of contention in their interaction was the divergence between the monism inherent in Kuhnian normal science and Feyerabend’s pluralism about the content and methodology of science and other systems of knowledge. In this paper I offer my perspective on this disagreement. After presenting Feyerabend’s critique of Kuhn, I argue that the disagreement between Kuhn and Feyerabend on this point was not as radical as (...) it may appear. Feyerabend respected the autonomy of diverse cultural and epistemological traditions, and such traditions are often monistic within themselves, in the manner of Kuhnian normal science. On the other hand, Kuhnian revolutions require the presence of competing paradigms at least during periods of extraordinary science. I propose a pluralist position that can accommodate local monism, but ultimately recommends going beyond monism for the purpose of productive interactions between different systems of practice. Such a pluralism can incorporate the advantages of both Feyerabend’s liberal epistemology and Kuhn’s advocacy of disciplined normal science. (shrink)

This paper seeks to clarify the elements of extremism inherent in both neoliberalism and totalitarianism in order to identify the factors that shape and characterize the extreme right groups that are expanding their influence in the world today. It is easy to see the two in opposition because neoliberalism emerged as the counter-ideology to totalitarianism, but this opposition, by empowering the neoliberal meaning of freedom, blurs the meaning of politic al freedom based on equality and blinds us to the destructive (...) effects and anti-political impli cations of competition. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's analysis of the elements of totalitarian ism, this paper reveals the key elements of extremism inherent in both ideological systems: the anti-democratic and genocidal tendency to distinguish between enemies and allies within the people and to expel enemies from the community. These elements are manifested in the principle of competition in the neoliberal system and the principle of production of superflu ous beings in the totalitarian system, both of which share a social evolutionary theory and affect the public and private spheres, undermining not only democratic institutions but also the democratic capacity of the people. (shrink)

We compare the predictions of two important proposals made by De Neys to findings in the anchoring effect literature. Evidence for an anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic supports his proposal that system 1 and system 2 are non-exclusive. The relationship between psychophysical noise and anchoring effects, however, challenges his proposal that epistemic uncertainty determines the involvement of system 2 corrective processes in judgment.

In this paper, we study the radial neural network algorithm for low-carbon circular economy in forest area, design a coupled development evaluation model, study its algorithmic ideas operation mode and the update formula obtained by standard algorithm, and finally optimize the RBF neural network by particle swarm algorithm. After an in-depth analysis of the particle swarm algorithm, an improved particle swarm algorithm is proposed to improve the search accuracy and capability of the algorithm by nonlinearly adjusting the inertia weights and (...) introducing the average extreme value factor, in response to the problems of premature convergence and poor search capability that appear in the particle swarm algorithm. Through the analysis and evaluation of the interaction between industrial ecosystem and carbon emission, the main influencing factors of carbon emission are identified, and the size and magnitude of the influence of economic growth, industrial structure, energy intensity, and energy structure on carbon emission are determined; the current situation of the industrial ecological structure is evaluated, and the direction of optimization and adjustment of industrial economic structure, energy structure, and ecological structure is clarified. We construct a multidimensional multiconstraint multimodel industrial ecological structure optimization prediction model, set the development scenarios of economy and society, and optimize the prediction of low-carbon industrial ecological structure in forest areas; based on the simulation analysis of the prediction results, we propose the direction of industrial ecological structure adjustment and the path of industrial ecological system construction. (shrink)

Thomas A. Sebeok’s global semiotics has inspired quite a few followers, noticeably Marcel Danesi, Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio. However, for all the trendiness of the word, the very concept of global should be subject to more rigorous examination, especially within today’s ecological and politico-economic contexts. With human and natural disasters precipitating on a global and almost quotidian basis, it is only appropriate for global semioticians to pay more attention to such phenomena and to contemplate, even when confined to their (...) attics, the semiotic consequences of disasters. The paper probes into the semiotic implications of the tsunami disaster that claimed quarter of a million lives in South and Southeast Asia during the Christmas holidays in 2004, and proposes a semiotics of disaster, developed from the discussions of the eighteenth-century British Empiricist philosopher Thomas Reid and the contemporary semiotician David S. Clarke, Jr. As the word’s etymology indicates, disaster originally referred to a natural phenomenon, i.e., ‘an obnoxious planet’, and only by extension was it later used to cover man-made calamities, be it political or economic. Although the dichotomy of nature versus culture no longer holds good, the author uses theword disaster in the traditional sense by referring to ‘natural’ disasters only. (shrink)

Much confusion exists within the robotics and the biology communities regarding the definition of biorobotics and the aims and strategies that characterize this approach. Not even the basic criteria for identifying biorobotic research are being applied consistently. Barbara Webb has taken a crucial step towards setting a common ground from which biorobotic systems can be described, analyzed, and compared.

For laying the foundation for human knowledge, Kant distinguished the ontological world from the phenomenal world. Kant put freedom in the ontological world to make its existence possible, and relied on the moral practice according to the pure rational. By criticizing God, Kant established reason as a relative absolutist that human beings can trace back to. However, in the path of freedom realization, he re-quoted God as a secular arbiter for the need of his system. The deviation of “God (...) being” in Critique of pure reason and critique of practical reason exposes the difficult problem of Kant’s realization of freedom that perceptual beings cannot realize freedom. Marx’s view of freedom experienced two turns and finally came into reality. Based on the realistic, Marx sought the realistic path to realize freedom by enriching the connotation of practice, and completed the redemption of Kant’s dilemma. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that a fair tax system is one of the most crucial foundations for any country to pursue stable development and human values. So how does a country accomplish tax fairness? This article argues that war finance and domestic economic inequality are two critical conditions. Historically, wars usually create opportunities for countries to enact progressive tax reforms. However, countries’ war finance choices are conditioned by domestic economic inequality. When inequality is low, the political leadership is more (...) likely to secure a consensus of ‘equality of fiscal sacrifice’ between domestic wealthy elites and ordinary citizens. As a result, the leadership can more successfully enact progressive taxation, money creation and non-military spending cuts to pay for the war. Conversely, when inequality is high, the societal redistributive conflict could be more serious. Unable to strike a bargain of fiscal sacrifices without severe social instability, the leadership is expected to resort to a debt-financing strategy, which stifles tax progressivity and fairness. This article compares the United States’ war finance in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and finds supportive evidence. This article has important implications for the pursuits of tax fairness, democratic accountability, and the prospect for peace. (shrink)

In this paper, a two-level green supply chain composed of a manufacturer and a retailer is taken as the background. Considering the consumer’s double consumption preference and the manufacturer’s green product R&D investment, a differential game model of the green supply chain under the government cost subsidy strategy is constructed. Firstly, the equilibrium points of the system are solved and their stability is discussed and analyzed. Secondly, the dynamic evolution process of Nash equilibrium under the parameters of green degree, (...) green preference coefficient, retail channel preference coefficient, coefficient of the sensitivity of price, and adjustment speed are described by numerical simulation. The results show that the two ways of a system entering chaos are Flip bifurcation and N-S bifurcation, respectively, by 2D bifurcation graph, and it is also verified in 1D bifurcation diagram. When the bifurcation parameters are small, the system maintains Nash equilibrium stability. If the green degree of products is increased, the green preference coefficient will also increase; on the contrary, the retail preference coefficient will decrease. Research and development cost subsidy policy can effectively improve the green degree of products and increase the sales volume of products, so as to improve the profit of supply chain members. (shrink)

The modem age reflects a pluralistic mentality of norms and regularities assuming a dualistic polar character. Man lives in this dualistically conditioned time and space--topos gaios (earthly sphere). In ancient times, attempts were made to transcend this situation via distinct temple cultures involving colorful sacrificial systems. Eventually, there was a transition from empirical temple cultures to mental and metaphysical ones involving laws, norms, and ascetic practices. However, the human heart, the source of all contradictions and cravings, remained unchanged. There is (...) a perennial impetus to overcome human bondage to all the laws of dualistic world structures and return to the original primeval state of the universe-topos ouranios (heavenly sphere). Yet there is no bridge between the earthly and heavenly spheres other than Jesus Christ Who was the first to proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ removed the barrier between "above" and "below" by pacifying the wrath of the transcendent, and introducing the heavenly sphere to man whose heart is opened by the Holy Spirit and cleansed by grace. This represents Christianity's conceptual transformation. (shrink)

Axon regeneration is a conserved process across the animal kingdom. Recent studies using the soil worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system revealed that machineries regulating engulfment of dying cells also control axon regeneration and axon debris removal. In this review, the relationships between the engulfment machinery and the biological processes triggered by axon injury and subsequent axon regeneration drawn from divergent views are examined. In one study, it is found that engulfing cells directly promote axon regeneration. In this (...) context, CED‐1 (Drosophila Draper/mouse MEGF10), an engulfment protein expressed on the surface of engulfing cells, functions as a receptor for axon debris removal and as an adhesion molecule for axon regeneration. In other studies, it is shown that those engulfment genes, previously known to function within the engulfing cells for cell corpse removal, can have a cell‐autonomous “non‐engulfing cell” role in axon regeneration. Together, these findings suggest that engulfment genes are repurposed for neuronal regeneration by acting in both engulfing cells and regenerating neurons. (shrink)

The development of access rights as, perhaps, a replacement for copyright in digital rights management (DRM) systems, draws our attention to the importance of ‚the balance problem’ between information industries and the individual user. The nature of just what this ‚balance’ is, is often mentioned in copyright writings and judgments, but is rarely discussed. In this paper I focus upon elucidating the idea of balance in intellectual property and propose that the balance concept is not only the most feasible way (...) to examine whether past solutions to copyright problems are fair, but it also provides the ability to predict what will be the better solution for all affected parties. Based upon an envy-free contribution towards predicting the efficient balance, game theory is applied in a novel manner to the DRM problem to infer where and what might be the optimal balance in the debate over the nature of access right. (shrink)

The existing computer technology is used to conduct an in-depth study and analysis of drilling waste treatment, and the results are analyzed by computer simulation optimization algorithms. Based on the system theory, we define the research system, combine the unique characteristics of the technological innovation mechanism of drilling waste treatment, and use the internal and external factors affecting the technological innovation dynamics of drilling waste treatment, such as drilling waste treatment capacity, from the current actual situation. On this (...) basis, factor analysis is used to analyze the factors affecting technological innovation dynamics from both internal and external aspects of the system, establish a system model of technological innovation dynamics of drilling waste disposal, and give the initial values of the simulation model. This will reduce the pollution of the environment and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. Drilling waste treatment technology is getting increased attention, but at this stage, there is no suitable technology innovation mechanism for drilling waste treatment. Through the simulation trend chart obtained by sensitivity analysis, the key factors in the system are found, and the innovation power mechanism of drilling waste treatment technology is constructed, which provides a basis for the formulation of enterprise technological innovation strategies and the development of technological innovation activities. Research on the dynamic mechanism of drilling waste treatment technology innovation explores a waste treatment mechanism suitable for the drilling industry, so as to promote the steady development of the drilling industry and at the same time provide theoretical support for the treatment of drilling engineering waste. (shrink)

Like other sciences, biosemiotics also has its time-honoured archive, consisting, among other things, of writings by those who have been invented and revered as ancestors of the discipline. One such example is Jakob von Uexküll who has been hailed as a precursor of semiotics, developing his theory of “sign” and “meaning” independently of Saussure and Peirce. The juxtaposition of “sign” and “meaning” is revelatory because one can equally legitimately claim Uexküll as a hermeneutician in the same way as others having (...) claimed him as a semiotician. Such a novel temptation can be justified by Uexküll’s prolonged obsession with Sinn and Bedeutung since his first book in 1909. This paper attempts to reconstruct the immediate intellectual horizon of Uexküll’s historicity, a discursive space traversed by his contemporaries Frege and Husserl, in order to see how Uexküll’s discussions of Zeichen and Gegenstand, Sinn and Bedeutung, were informedby other philosophers of language, and to establish Uexküll as a phenomenological hermeneutician in the tradition of Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer. To forestall and counter possible criticism that hermeneutics is primarily concerned with textual interpretation, while Uexküll is at most an interpreter of animal life, the paper will discuss his unfinished parody of the Platonic dialogue Meno, which is entitled Die ewige Frage: Biologische Variationen über einen platonischen Dialog (1943). It is through such textual practice that one witnesses the emergence of an Uexküll who embodies at once the addressee exercising his understanding of ancient texts as well as the second addresser recoding his explanation to another group of targeted addressees. This textual practice already goes beyond the confines of biology and in fact involves the linguistic pragmatics of rhetoric and speech act. (shrink)

For all his profound interest in Secondness and its manifestation in various kinds of indices, including deictics, Peirce rarely addresses the inter-pronominalrelationships. Whilst the American founder of semiotics would designate language as a whole to Thirdness, only within the larger framework of which deictics can work, the German philosopher Cassirer observes that “what characterizes the very first spatial terms that we find in language is their embracing of a defi nite ‘deictic’ function”. For Cassirer the significance of pronominals, especially the (...) I-Thou relationship, lies in its impact on the development of spatial concept that lays the foundation of symbolic forms. It may look strange why the “designatives” of I, Thou, He, in Peirce’s own terms, so obvious in their categorial and empirical differentiation, should fail to be reduceable to the triad of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. It is interesting, however, that in his 1906 correspondence with Lady Welby, Peirce should refer to the strange “Communicational Interpretant”, or “the Cominterpretant, which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place”. Peirce asserts that this communication of a Form, say, being in love, is made possible by sign. This paper discusses Peirce’s and Cassirer’s references to deictics or indexical sign, in particular, inter-personal relationships, in light of Benveniste’s concept of discourse, and probes into a possible subtext underlying the Peirce-Welby correspondence. (shrink)

Naming, according to Sebeok, constihttes the first stage of zoosemiotics. This special but common use of language acrually inaugurates more complicated procedures of human discourse on non-human kingdom, including classification of its members. Because of language's double articulation in sound and sense, as well as the grapheme's pleremic (meaning-full) rather than cenemic (meaning-empty) characteristic (according to Hjelmslev). Chinese script is capable of naming and grouping animals randomly but effectively. This paper attempts to describe the said scriptorial "necessity of naming" (Kripke) (...) in classical Chinese by citing all the creatures, real or fabulous, with a /ma/ (horse) radical. (shrink)

The metaphor of parasites or parasitism has dominated literary critical discourse since the 1970s, prominent examples being Michel Serres in France and J. Hillis Miller in America. In their writings the relationship between text and paratext, literature and criticism, is often likened to that between host and parasite, and can be therefore deconstructed. Their writings, along with those by Derrida, Barthes, and Thom, seem to be suggesting the possibility of a semiotics of parasitism. Unfortunately, none of these writers has drawn (...) enough on the biological foundation of parasitism. Curiously, even in biology, parasitism is already a metaphor through which the signified of an ecological phenomenon involving two organisms is expressed by the signifier of “[eating] food at another’s [side] table”. This paper will make some preliminary remarks on semiotics of parasitism, based on the notions of Umwelt (Jakob von Uexküll) and structural coupling (Maturana and Varela). It will look into the phenomenon of co-evolutionary process in community ecology. With reference to empirical history, the project will briefly surveythe literary and medical praxis of the 17th century England where large number of creative writings referred to the phenomenon of parasitism, which was deeply embedded in religious practice (e.g., the Eucharist) and political life (e.g., the courtier ecology in monarchy) of the times. Finally, it will touch upon the possible ‘parasitic’ relationship between language and biology. (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)