Anticipatory systems: philosophical, mathematical and methodological foundations

摘要

After having been out of print for decades, Anticipatory Systems (AS) is finally available again. For reasons that will become evident as this review proceeds, I shall distinguish the evaluation of the content of AS from the editorial scaffolding of the book. AS is the second volume of Rosen's ground-breaking elaboration of the theoretical basis of biology. The series includes Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems (1978), AS (1985, 2nd ed., 2012), Life Itself (1991) and Essays on Life Itself (2000). The first volume lays the bases for, and the fourth one further elaborates on, the ideas of AS and Life Itself.