Science as Becoming

Philosophical Implications of Scientific Understanding
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-3-032-41785-5
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, 245 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: The Frontiers Collection

This book develops a unified account of reality as a process of continuous becoming that unfolds across multiple levels of organization. Rather than treating matter, time, order, evolution, and knowledge as fixed or self-evident, it asks how each emerges, persists, and transforms. Beginning with the encounter between observer and observed, it traces the construction of scientific representation from experience through order to geometry. Matter is recast as persistent structure, interaction as geometry, and symmetry breaking as the origin of distinction and stable form.
The argument then follows the passage from structure to time, novelty, and organization. Coarse-graining and the loss of recoverable information give time its direction. Chaos renders deterministic dynamics unpredictable and supplies novelty, while interaction constrains this variation into the self-organized collective patterns of complexity. Evolution carries these patterns forward through the coevolution of agents and their environment: new ways of combining resources and organizing interactions that increase replicative success are preferentially retained, even as they reshape the conditions of future selection.
Finally, the book turns this framework upon science itself. Concepts, theories, paradigms, and worldviews are understood not as timeless mirrors of reality but as evolving networks shaped by evidence, constraint, selection, and use. The mental picture of the world thus becomes part of the same becoming it seeks to describe. Bringing together physics, nonlinear dynamics, complexity theory, evolutionary thought, and philosophy, the book reveals recurring patterns across radically different domains without reducing any one domain to another. Written as a work of modern natural philosophy, it offers advanced students, researchers, and reflective readers at the intersection of science and philosophy a rigorous yet accessible path from matter and interaction to the evolution of knowledge itself.

Zielgruppe

Upper undergraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Velev, Julian

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Physik Physik Allgemein
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Forschung und Information Kybernetik, Systemtheorie, Komplexe Systeme
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Reality and Representation.- Representation as Order.- The Geometry of Order.- From Geometry to Nature.- Matter and Interaction.- Interaction as Geometry.- Symmetry and Structure.- Emergence Across Scales.- Time and Irreversibility.- Dissipative Structure.- Deterministic Chaos.- A Minimal Engine of Chaos.- Complexity and Emergence.- Optimization and Strategic Interaction.- Evolutionary Dynamics.- Conceptual Architecture.- Conceptual Growth and Fracture.- Knowledge-Network Dynamics.- Evolution, Progress, and Rationality.

Über Autor(innen)

Julian Velev earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, following M.S. degrees in Physics and Computer Science from Sofia University. He later completed M.A. degrees in Economics and Philosophy at the University of Puerto Rico. He is currently a Full Professor of Physics at the University of Puerto Rico, where he teaches courses across the physics curriculum as well as in computing and philosophy. His interdisciplinary research spans physics, bioinformatics, and finance, and he is the author or co-author of 75 peer-reviewed publications and an inventor on three patents. Throughout his career, he has contributed to the development of high-performance computing facilities and, more recently, has focused on cloud-based research infrastructure as a professional solutions architect. His work brings together scientific research, computation, and philosophical inquiry to address complex questions across disciplinary boundaries.