Brian Goodwin
Brian Goodwin was born in 1931 in Canada where he studied biology.
He then took a mathematics degree at Oxford and a PhD involving biology and mathematics at Edinburgh University.
He has held research and teaching positions at MIT, at the University of Sussex, and the Open University, UK, where he was Professor of Biology.
He was connected with the Santa Fe Institute for a number of years in the 80s and 90s.
He now teaches Holistic Science at Schumacher College in England.
His interests are in developing a science of qualities that can address issues of health and quality of life in diverse areas, in promoting holistic patterns of living, and in the reunion of the arts and humanities with the sciences.
march 20th / The Language of Living Processes: Finding Meaning in Nature and Culture.
The genome project has made it clear that organisms cannot be reduced to the hereditary information in their genes: we now have this information but we still cannot understand how organisms make themselves. There is a complex and intricate network of interactions within organisms during their development that somehow creates the organism as a coherent structural and functional whole. The proposal that I will explore is that this network has the characteristics of a language that generates the organism in a manner similar to the way we generate meaning in conversation. The organism with its coherent form is then the embodied meaning that emerges from this creative process. A major consequence of this viewpoint is that mechanistic molecular interactions are not involved and a primary ambiguity underlies the adaptive creativity of living processes. This point of view clarifies why complex plant extracts or phytocomplexes are much more effective in their healing properties than purified extracts. It also explains how meaning pervades both nature and culture. Evidence supporting this proposal will be presented from the analysis of molecular interaction patterns in organisms.
D I S C U S S A N T S
Simon Mills is Teaching Fellow in Sustainable Health at Schumacher College in southwest England. He has been prominent in the UK herbal scene for 30 years, and is currently a member of the government’s Herbal Medicines Advisory Committee, and Secretary of ESCOP (European Scientific Cooperative on Phytotherapy). He was appointed by the Prince of Wales in 1996 as Chairman of the Regulatory Working Group on his Foundation for Integrated Medicine.
Philip Franses studied Mathematics at Oxford University and later, as a computer systems analyst, came to explore the relationship between the scientific and the spiritual. This was given firm foundation by embarking on the MSc Holistic Science at Schumacher College, first learning and now teaching the participatory science of Goethe.