This book is concerned with the notion of strong anticipation. Clearly defined necessary and sufficient conditions are laid out.

The focus lies on strong anticipation as delay and distance compensation (as in temporal recalibration and synchronization of coupled systems). Of particular interest are delays which correspond to a boundary shift between a systemic whole and its context. Such boundary shifts result from assignment conditions which determine what belongs to the systemic whole and what belongs to its context.

Delay and distance compensation is described, along with long-range correlations, against the background of a theory of time capable of describing anticipative systems. My Theory of Fractal Time describes anticipatory systems in terms of two temporal dimensions: succession and simultaneity, which are defined and measured in Δtdepth, Δtlength and Δtdensity. These extensions form an extended present and allow a quantified comparison of obserpants’ (observer-participants’) temporal interfaces. Compensated delays are revealed as phenomenal blind spots, which result in a new kind of relativity: What may be compensated for obserpant A is delayed for obserpant B.

Compensated delays are ubiquitous and can be found in both cognitive and physical processes. Examples are temporal recalibration to restore degraded visuomotor adaptation, coupling environment and brain, biosemiotics and homeostatic processes, dynamical diseases, embedded and situated robots, control loops with inserted or removed delays, cellular automata, analog and digital notions of trust, transitional objects and potential spaces, our perception of time and judgement of duration. It is proposed that compensated delays emerge as natural laws.

Contents:

• Preface


• Acknowledgements


• Introduction: Predicting the Future


• Models, Weak and Strong Anticipation


• Extended and Reduced Obserpant Perspectives: Boundary Shifts


• Strong Anticipation as Delay Compensation


• A Model of Time to Describe Anticipative Systems


• Embodied Cognition/Embodied Anticipation


• The Transitional Object as a Precursor to Strong Anticipation


• Trust as Weak or Strong Anticipation


• Contextualization and Decontextualization


• Compensated Delays as Phenomenal Blind Spots


• Strong Anticipation as an Indicator of Well-Being


• Insight and Nonlocality as Strong Anticipation


• Index

Readership: The book addresses both scientists and laymen readers interested in systems theory (self-organization and cybernetics), anticipation, anticipative systems, endophysics, assignment conditions, delay compensation, embodied cognition, fractals, fractal time, biological and social rhythms, dynamical diseases, synchronization and well-being, developmental psychology, the nature of time and human perception, endophysics, assignment conditions and boundary shifts, chaos and anticipative synchronization, embodied agents and decision-making, transparency, temporal interfaces, synchronization, dynamical diseases, biosemiotics, attractors and epistemological concerns in connection with anticipation and endophysics.

Key Features:

• The subject of Strong Anticipation is presented within a unifying framework, i.e. as a manifestation of delay and distance compensation. Clearly defined necessary and sufficient conditions for Strong Anticipation are laid out and applied to examples in a variety of fields from the life sciences to physics


• The book presents a theory of time customized for the description of strongly anticipative systems. (This is based on My Theory of Fractal Time, see my publication with World Scientific with the same title)


• No mathematical background or specialist knowledge is required