Excellent essay. Philosophically, I see echoes of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, which he laid out in a profound but very difficult text _Process and Reality_. It presents an ontology that has place for the notions of interaction, constraint, and values. I had originally picked it up on Sanjoy Mitter's recommendation. It took me years to really understand and internalize what Whitehead was saying, and I keep coming back to it for more insights. In 1965, the physicist Johannes Burgers wrote a book called _Experience and Conceptual Activity_, where he connected Whitehead's philosophy to ideas in physics, including the principle of least action and the emergence of conservation laws and other constraints, and to ideas in biology and AI that were only emerging at the time he was writing it. Incidentally, one of the key notions in Whitehead's philosophy is coherence, which is more than logical consistency because it involves the notion of open systems interacting with their environments.
Thank you so much! These ideas have been on my mind for over a decade, and I’m glad they resonated. I’ll check out Whitehead and Burgers—so much to learn from you.
Excellent essay. Philosophically, I see echoes of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, which he laid out in a profound but very difficult text _Process and Reality_. It presents an ontology that has place for the notions of interaction, constraint, and values. I had originally picked it up on Sanjoy Mitter's recommendation. It took me years to really understand and internalize what Whitehead was saying, and I keep coming back to it for more insights. In 1965, the physicist Johannes Burgers wrote a book called _Experience and Conceptual Activity_, where he connected Whitehead's philosophy to ideas in physics, including the principle of least action and the emergence of conservation laws and other constraints, and to ideas in biology and AI that were only emerging at the time he was writing it. Incidentally, one of the key notions in Whitehead's philosophy is coherence, which is more than logical consistency because it involves the notion of open systems interacting with their environments.
Thank you so much! These ideas have been on my mind for over a decade, and I’m glad they resonated. I’ll check out Whitehead and Burgers—so much to learn from you.