--- abstract: |- What should be the ontology of the world such that life and cognition are possible? In this essay, I undertake to outline an alternative ontological foundation which makes biological and cognitive phenomena possible. The foundation is built by defining a model, which is presented in the form of a description of a hypothetical but a logically possible world with a defined ontological base. Biology rests today on quite a few not so well connected foundations: molecular biology based on the genetic dogma; evolutionary biology based on neo-Darwinian model; ecology based on systems view; developmental biology by morphogenetic models; connectionist models for neurophysiology and cognitive biology; pervasive teleonomic explanations for the goal-directed behavior across the discipline; etc. Can there be an underlying connecting theme or a model which could make these seemingly disparate domains interconnected? I shall atempt to answer this question. By following the semantic view of scientific theories, I tend to believe that the models employed by the present physical sciences are not rich enough to capture biological (and some of the non-biological) systems. A richer theory that could capture biological reality could also capture physical and chemical phenomena as limiting cases, but not vice versa. altloc: - http://db.hbcse.tifr.res.in/Life-Cognition.pdf chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: - Nagarjuna G. creators_name: - family: G. given: Nagarjuna honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2004-08 date_type: published datestamp: 2005-02-26 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/41/09 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 4109 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/4109/1/Life%2DCognition.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: ~ issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'life, cognition, philosophy of biology, cognitive science, foundations of life, theoretical biology, invertibility, self-organization, biological roots of cognition, autopoisis, self-reproduction, metaphysics, ontology, evolution, adaptation, complexity, measure of complexity, autonomy, dialogical invertibility, knowledge, evolution of complex systems, Darwin, natural selection, logic of construction, perturbation' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:51 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: FALSE referencetext: |- References [1] Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, and James D. 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North Holland. relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:55:49 subjects: - bio-ani-cog - phil-mind - phil-sci - bio-theory - phil-metaphys succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: Towards a Model of Life and Cognition type: preprint userid: 5430 volume: ~