Understanding Origins: Contemporary Views on the Origins of Life, Mind and Society

Understanding Origin: An Introduction; J.-P. Dupuy, F.J. Varela. Origins: A View from Literature; R. Girard. Part I: Violence: The Origin of Social Order. Supplement to Apocalypse: Girard and Derrida; A.J. McKenna. A Morphogenetic Hypothesis; P. Dumouchel. Girard and the Origin of Culture; P. Livingston. Part II: The Origin of Money: Symbols and Texts. The Origin of Money; A. Orléan. Primitive Money, Modern Money; J.-J. Goux. Part III: Evolution and the Diversity of Life. Origins of Order in Evolution; S.A. Kauffman. Optimization in Question; J. Dupré. Incorporating Origins into Evolutionary Theory; D.R. Brooks. The Evolution of Generic Forms; B. Goodwin. Is Phylogeny Recapitulating Ontogeny? S. Oyama. Part IV: Perception and the Origin of Cognition. Whence Perceptual Meaning? A Cartography of Current Ideas; F.J. Varela. Perception, Connectionism, and Cognitive Science; C.A. Skarda. The Original and the Copy; U. Eco. Appendix. Index.