sub-jectum - beyond the being

by Maria Odete Madeira

Autrement qu'être... outramente... ipseity and alterity (Lévinas, Ricoeur)... dialectics of the dictum, as major sense of the subjectivity (sub-jectum, beyond the being).

Ipseity as response (res-posta) to the convocation of the alterity,... as ethics of the pre-original vocative and accusative of the human... between the same and the other, between the dictum and the irreducible to say is the character of the ontological difference as an amphibology, between the entity and the being, that, in the end, restates the verbality of the verb linked to the substantiality of the name. I am my logos to myself, I am by the being, I am by my voice.

Chaos

by Maria Odete Madeira

Primeiro que tudo havia o Caos e a Noite e o negro Érebo e o vasto Tártaro (Aristófanes, Aves).

Before every thing there was the Chaos and the Night and the dark Erebus and the vast Tartarus (Aristophanes, Birds).

The notion of Chaos comes from the Greek Khaos, with the primitive sense of opening, or primordial interval, from which all the things came (Hesiod, Theogony).

The concept of Chaos has been addressed, perspectivically, along the Western thinking, from a double referential ontological displacement in which the Chaos can be signaled as an originating operative negative, meaning: void, indetermination or disorder; or it can be signaled as an originating operative positive, meaning: undifferentiated absolute wholeness.

Anaxagoras incorporated the meaning of absolute wholeness in an idea of initial homogeneity. In Plato’s Timaeus, the Chaos is referred as chaotic mass, and, in Aristotle’s Physics, it is addressed as empty space.

Later on, Schelling tried to synthesize the notion of Chaos, in an idea of absolute potency, worked upon from Aristotle.

Nietzsche, in turn, strongly influenced by Spinoza, thought the Chaos as a vital dynamism.

Quantum Game of Life II

by Carlos Pedro Gonçalves

Below is a video of a simulation of the quantum game of life, implemented in Netlogo.




Following the previous blog post on this game, each cell (patch) can be in a vacuum state, or it can become punctured by a qubit state.

In the video, the grey cells correspond to the vacuum states that may potentially become occupied by a qubit state Q> = a0>+b1>, while the black and white cells have become occupied (in act) by a qubit state. Each color corresponding to one of the two basis states of the qubit, that is, white corresponds to 0> and black corresponds to 1>.

The actualization of each of the two qubit computational basis states occurs through a probabilistic process since there is decoherence in the qubit histories. The model works with two gate rules, a simple Haddamard rule, and a chaotic rule that exemplifies path dependent quantum computation. The video above uses path dependent quantum computation, in the dynamics of creation and anihilation as well as in the qubit information dynamics.

The video is also available at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14jdqWEe0wE

Quantum Game of Life

by Carlos Pedro Gonçalves

The following are pictures of a simulation of a quantum game of life, implemented in Netlogo:

Initial Configuration

After a Few Steps

Each cell (patch) can be in a vacuum state, or it can become punctured by a qubit state. In the pictures the black cells correspond to the vacuum states that may potentially become occupied by a qubit state, while the white cells have become occupied (in act) by a qubit state.

Quantum information is, thus, created and annihilated out of an information vacuum. A clustered patchworked dynamic geometry emerges, in the current simulation, from local connectivity rules that make it more probable for clustering to occur.

Defining Complexity

by Maria Odete Madeira

Diversity and complexity are contextually (co)implicated , depending, the nature of each, from the nature of the context, in which they are rooted and upon which they systemically depend. This means that to refer the term complexity to a single definition would be not only impoverishing but also difficult in terms of a desirable explicative rigor.

To speak of complexity one must comprehend complexity, itself. To comprehend comes from the Latin cum+prehender that means to apprehend conjointly, thus, the term “comprehend” folds, it its own definition, the diversity that allows one to design it also as complex, in the sense in which it folds in the same act of comprehension, successive resendings between different individuals, or subjects, which implies an explicare and, thus, an unfolding of the subjectivity in intersubjectivity.

Any attempt to define complexity will have to consider, in the act itself of defining complexity, the complexity implicated in the act of comprehension, necessary to that definition.

Comprehending complexity systemically depends upon individuals, groups, species, cultures, societies and civilizations, in their differences, multiplicities and diversities.