Neuroergonomics and sociogenesis, lectures part2

Neuroergonomics and sociogenesis
Internationa Society of Biourbanism
Summer School 2014
www.biourbanism.org - info@biourbanism.org

International Society of Biourbanism - Summer School 2014
Biourbanism and sociogenesis
Stefano Serafini
stefano.serafini@biourbanism.org
Lecture 03

A city has a
physical and a
social structure.
The two are
connected through
complexities who
in turn refer to a
systemic
vectoriality.

Social life is not a structure, but a
process that turns out in a system.
It’s invisible because it’s about
meaning, goals, and intentionality.

INVISIBILEM RESPICE FINEM
Social (and economical) ties
Fields of attraction/repulsion
Relations and systems
Processes
Life
CultureStructures
DESIGN DESIGN

The «invisible» becomes «visible»
through its effects
The system acts through a process
that in turn brings in a structure

Comparaggio
fellowship
Not «just a ritual»
It’s about overcoming the ties of
blood for sharing, helping each other,
and surviving.
Between peers of a community who
share a common space

• Ties
• Desires
• Ideals
• Interests
• Built
environment
• Infrastructures
• Resources
• Natural
environment
• Climate
• Flora and Fauna
• History
• Religion
• Art
• Customs
Social
structure
Physical
structure
Social
structure
Physical
structure
HUMAN BODY

Such an urban
system is resilient,
stable, dynamic,
and self-organizing.
It can be broken by
heteronomy – when
self-determination
gets parasitized.
But… what is autonomy?

BIOLOGICAL SELF-ORGANIZATION.
PROCESSES, NOT FEATURES.

Hi, I’m a starling
I’m sociable, I like insects
and fruits but I can eat
more or less whatever. I
like cities because they
are warm, and I can learn
human and artificial
sounds and repeat them.
I hang out a lot.

Flocks of starlings above Rome

Competence without comprehension

Duncan J. Watts &
Steven H. Strogatz
Collective dynamics
of 'small-world'
networks
Nature 393 440-442
(4 June 1998)

Could a machine think?
Paul e Patricia Churchland: yes, it can
John Searle: no, because syntax ≠ semantics

What is self?

Questioning if God is alive and if we can
define water alive
∞

What is life?
Erwin Schrödinger
What is Life?
Cambridge University Press 1944

ORDO AB CHAO
MACRO
Micro

Mutations need stability

« ...living matter, while not eluding the "laws of
physics" as established up to date, is likely to
involve "other laws of physics" hitherto
unknown, which however, once they
have been revealed, will form
just as integral a part
of science as
the former. »

Isolated systems go towards
disorder, according to the
second law of
thermodynamics
Living systems (who are very
ordered) seem to contradict
such a principle – but they
are NOT isolated
Increase of order in living
systems is balanced by an
increase of disorder in the
environment.

The Osaka Group for the Study of
Dynamical Structures

Evolution without
design
Antonio Lima-de-Faria
Evolution without Selection.
Form and Function by
Autoevolution
Elsevier 1988

Wings appear suddenly in genera and species with no direct genetic
relationship – pterosaur, bat, bird, insect, flying fish – according to a biological
periodicity of forms, as in Mendeleev’s table of elements.

The spandrels of
San Marco

Examples of “free-rider” characters
(“spandrels”)
• Insects’ wings
• Bacterial digestion of sugars
• Noise of heart beat
• …they are everywhere!

• Forms and functions of genetically-not-
correlated organisms follow identical
patterns.
• Such patterns are the result of natural
laws, and show up earlier than the gene.
• Here they are, “constraints”.

Why pigs have no wings?

The old «central dogma» of molecular biology:
DNA
has just stop working
RNA PROTEINS
U n i v o c a l a n d l i n e a r d i r e c t i o n

P H I S I C A L C O N S T R A I N T S / E N V I R O N M E N T
DNA
RNA
TRANSPOSONS
FENOTYPES

Think of it in terms of design
P2P urbanism
Participatory processes
Evidence based design
Bio-climatic design
Self-building practices
Spontaneous design
...the designer
as a catalyzer
> Biourbanism

What has totally changed in the last twenty
years is not urbanism only, but rather the very
concept of what an “organism” is.

Four modern fathers of Biology
of Form:
Nikolaj Vavilov
(Russia)
D’Arcy Thompson (UK)
Antonio Lima-de-Faria (Sweden)
Giuseppe Sermonti (Italy)

DISCLAIMER!
We are not dealing with a kind of
INTELLIGENT DESIGN vs LUCKY SCRIBBLE

rather we are dealing with
LAWS OF FORM vs SELECTIONISM

A substantial difference, as
• First opposition occurs among two
metaphysical programs, which are
equivalent from an epistemological point
of view;
• Second one accurs among a nomological-
empirical view, and a historical one about
Life Sciences.

• The so called Intelligent Design is a cultural reaction
against Evolution’s invasiveness in metaphysics and
theodicy.
• It’s not science, whatever some Authors belonging to
such a movement can say.
• Nevertheless, it has an intellectual dignity.
• It belongs to a “biblical/darwinian horizon”.

• The LUCKY SCRIBBLE (Life by chance and
necessity – Ch. Darwin, J. Monod) is a cultural
reaction against Religion’s invasiveness in
science and cosmology.
• It’s not science, whatever some Authors
belonging to such a movement can say.
• Nevertheless, it has an intellectual dignity.
• It belongs to a “biblical/darwinian horizon”.

Darwin or Bible?
More a common horizon than a radical
opposition
• Darwin admittedly got inspired by reverend
Malthus, who believed God to use hunger and
diseases to prod humankind’s evolution.
• Darwin put Natural Selection in the place of
such a coruscating deity.

GenesisGenesis 1, 11, 1--2727
ComposedComposed probablyprobably duringduring the 5ththe 5th centurycentury BC,BC,
whenwhen naturalisticnaturalistic prepre--socraticsocratic philosophyphilosophy waswas
flourishingflourishing inin IoniaIonia,, notnot so farso far awayaway fromfrom
MiddleMiddle--EastEast coastscoasts.
In the beginning God created the heaven andIn the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth, then plants, then acquatic animals,the earth, then plants, then acquatic animals,
thenthen birdsbirds,, thenthen otherother moremore complexcomplex animalsanimals,,
andand finallyfinally man.man.

Other experimental questions
• Evo-devo
• Epigenetics
• Horizontal transfer of genetic heritage
(transposons)
• Physical constraints
• Internal constraints
• Systems Biology
• Etc.

Michael J. Denton, Craig J. Marshall
and Michael Legge, “The Protein Folds
as Platonic Forms: New Support for the
Pre-Darwinian Conception of Evolution
by Natural Law”, J. theor. Biol. (2002)
219, 325–342

Johan Gielis, "A generic geometric transformation that unifies a wide range of
natural and abstract shapes", American Journal of Botany 90 (2003) 3: 333–338

Johan Gielis, the superformula

Antonio Lima-de-Faria
Molecular Geometry of
Body Pattern in Birds
Springer 2012

• Charles Darwin (1809-1882): Gradual and linear selection of adaptive
characters
background: NEWTON MECHANICS (linear dynamics of bodies)
• Julian Huxley (1887-1975): Neodarwinism or Modern Synthesis, selection
by recombination of mendelian characters
background: STATISTICAL MECHANICS (Boltzman’s dynamics of gases)
• René Thom (1923-2002): Epigenomics, Systems Biology, Laws of Form
background: PHYSICS OF COMPLEXITY (non-linear dynamics of complex
systems)

The Constructal Law
"For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a
way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through
it”
Bejan, A & Lorente, S. (2011). “The constructal law and the evolution of design
in nature” Physics of Life Reviews, Vol. 8, No. 3: 209-240

Design by flow

Self-organization is not mechanicism
Animal behaviour, natural
structures, even social mass
behaviour speak of self-
organization.
Psychobiology considers this as a
sign of mechanical determinism
(reductionist program).
This is Social engineering, or the
Totalitarian dream.

Sociogenesis is about listening
Spontaneous order theory
about social realities tells us
nothing about our freedom.
Nature is not a God to be
followed and obeyed, but
rather a relation between
us and our surroundings,
including other human
beings.

«I love Herbert Simon's definition of design as the transformation
“from existing states to preferred ones.” That definition raises
more questions than answers – but they are the right
questions! Who is doing the preferring? How do they (we)
know what is existing? What methods do we use to make the
transformations? How do we know if they are working? What
do we do if they are not? What are the necessary social and
political conditions of that process? These are all very
important questions that usually get too little attention.»
Michael Mehaffy
interview with Michela Ventin, DesignDecode, June 2014

BIOURBANISM AND
NEUROERGONOMICS

Biourbanism
The first definition of the term “biourbanism” has been given in
2010 by the philosopher and psychologist Stefano Serafini (ISB),
the bio-statistician and complexity scientist Alessandro Giuliani
(Italian NIH), the architects Antonio Caperna and Alessia Cerqua
(Roma Tre University), and the mathematician and urban theorist
Nikos A. Salingaros (University of Texas at San Antonio).
See: www.biourbanism.org/biourbanism-
definition/

Biourbanism means considering the city as a living
organism, and study it within the frame of Integrated
Systems Sciences and the last advancements of Life
Sciences, mainly:
 Laws of form and Self-organization in evolution
(S. Kauffman, A. Lima-de-Faria)
 Epigenetics
 Systems Biology
 Constructal Law (A. Bejan)

Different Authors
have already
considered the city
to be like an
organism at the
beginning of the
20th century, e.g.
the biologist and
urbanist
Patrick Geddes

Nevertheless the concept of organism was strongly biased by a
functionalist view , making it very close to a machine.

1516, Venezia
La Serenissima
decrees that all
jews stay in the
same area of the
city, called «geti»
in venexian.
The «Gheto» were
secured every
night so that
nobody could exit.

Shenzen, Cina, 1988

Shenzen, Cina, 1996

Shenzen, Cina, 2009

Urban-dwellers suffer
from higher rates of
schizophrenia, depression
and other mental health
problems, compared to
people who live in quieter
places.

Researches show that people
who were brought up in
cities had higher levels of
activity in a region of the
brain called the perigenual
anterior cingulate cortex
(pACC), which regulates the
amygdala
In people and animals,
hyperactivity in the amygdala
has been linked to anxiety
problems and other mental
health disorders
Human brain in the coronal orientation.
Amygdala is shown in dark red.

«Tell me your address, and I’ll tell you how
long you are going to live»
(Richard Jackson, MD)

“Being lonely increases the risk of everything from heart
attacks to dementia, depression and death, whereas
people who are satisfied with their social lives sleep
better, age more slowly and respond better to vaccines.
The effect is so strong that curing loneliness is as good
for your health as giving up smoking.”
John Cacioppo (Psychologist, University of Chicago)

mind/body/functions/forms
It there exists a zoning about humans

We are not a brain
in a tank

Motor system, perception, connection to the
environment are based on the body,
in the sense it forms a wired system, fully connected to
what is going on inside and outside us.

The embodied mind
as opposed to cognitivism

TOTE, or living as a flow chart
• Test
• Operate
• Test
• Exit

TOTE is from behaviourism

The embodied mind
as
opposed
to
dualism

The embodied mind
Try understanding a joke whilst in a depressed
frown position of your lips muscles.
 

No Artificial Intelligence without a body: senses,
motor skills, and physical connected system.
(Rodney Brooks)

We even recognize words, through embodied
perception: our vocal muscles “repeat” the
movements by which spoken words are made.
(Alvin Liberman)

Soul AND body?

….just soul?

…or just
body?

«mind & body» as vectoriality
Organization Morphological structuring
Direction

which is takete, which is maluma?

Mirror neurons

Nikos Salingaros

What is sustainability?
Design must deal with energy- and environment-
saving technical solutions, but also with functional
and restorative connections to the human
neurophysiological system.

Psychology, medicine, and pedagogy show
how space design can nurture or damage
our well-being.
HEALING PLACES (Jackson)
EVIDENCE BASED DESIGN (Ulrich)
BIOPHILIA (Wilson, Kaplan)
MIMESIS (Plato, Girard, Winnicott)
FIFTEEN PROPERTIES (Alexander)

Neuroergonomics is a discipline that
merges neuroscience and ergonomics in
order to match design with human
biological and psycho-neuro-
immunological wellness.
It measures the real psycho-physical
effects regardless of fashion, ideology,
culture, or current use.
It stems from evidence-based design.

• Neurosciences
• Ergonomics
• Evidence based design

neurosciences
Nervous system
Endocrine system
Immune system
Psychoneuroendocrinoimmunology (PNEI)

ergonomics

Environmental psychology

Coehrence to an underlying order
 
BEAUTY FUNCTION
(or DELIGHT)
 
Perceptual system Reality
Care for context

• Abstraction, like language, is very helpful
• But it takes out «fleshy» and
«accidental» information
• It disconnects from the dynamic
information flowing through our
senses/body

How difficult is it to skip abstracton?

Coming back to flesh
• Senses
• Feelings
• Concreteness
• Connection
• Real needs as experienced, not talked
• Humility

Drawing comes before language

Bridging nature & culture
Drawing is an extension of body movement.
- «first brain» (corpus reticulatum, basal ganglia)
physiological motions and reaction
- «second brain» (amygdala) emotions, consciousness,
coordination and motion
- «third brain» (neocortex) language, judgement,
abstraction
- Feelings
- Reaction through space (movement)
- Abstraction/interpretation through signs

The «sentimento»
of Mr. Giovanni Gabrielli, 1789

Monsignor Tomati and
Monsignor Ossoli have an issue
about the boundaries of their
vineyards.
Observation
Not artificial nor fixed boundary
No road
No hedge
No ditch
«No other clue of asimilar
nature»
No different vineyard growth in
height

First clue: a wall of stone between two
areas, one pebbly, another one with very
few pebbles.
Second clue: oaks
until the slope
Third clue: a natural
slope

Architects and urban
planner usually think of
space in terms of
syntax – tectonics and
functions. But of any
discourse what really
matters beside the way
of saying it, is its
meaning – what it says.

Every semantics deals with a
meaning. There is a meaning
if there is a receiver. The
“meaning of meaning” lies in
the body of the one who
understands it, in its reaction
– in the performative effect
that it triggers.
Thus, space is performative.

What the urban space around you is saying to you?
What is the performative action it induces in your body?

The message of a spoiled train station square after you
come back from your commute to the big city can be
retrieved by the emotions and thoughts you may feel
and think almost every time you land out the train.
Exercise: try decoding the message coming from the
square.

Forget syntax (bad, good, functional, dumb, beautiful, ugly)
and focus on semantics by listening to what you feel and think almost
automatically as a reaction to the place.
Don’t think – feel. Don’t judge – report.
Optimism/pessimism
Expansion/reduction
Happiness/Sadness
Hope/Despair
Infinity/Limits
Eternity/Running out of time
Meaning/ Meaningless
Connection/Disconnection
Love/Hatred

Neuroergonomics and sociogenesis, lectures part2

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