Cognitive Biology

Providing a new conceptual scaffold for further research in biology and cognition, this book introduces the new field of Cognitive Biology: a systems biology approach showing that further progress in this field will depend on a deep recognition of developmental processes, as well as on the consideration of the developed organism as an agent able to modify and control its surrounding environment. Any organism is a complex system that can survive only if it is ableto maintain its internal order against the spontaneous tendency for disruption. Therefore, it is forced to monitor and control its environment and so to establish feedback circuits resulting inco-adaptation. Cognitive and biological processes are shown to be inseparable.