CarlReshkeAbstracts

Carl Henning Reschke, Dr., IMFK, Cologne, Germany

Information Organization and Knowledge Evolution: The Case of Innovations in Pharmaceuticals (Evo Devo Universe 2008 | Not Presented)

This paper explores how a systemic evolutionary view, which argues that evolution is a knowledge generating process, and conceptually or mathematically related perspectives can contribute to an integrated perspective on the evolution of information organization from inanimate matter to molecules to social systems by linking the latter two domains. If correct, the first domain of inanimate matter should in principle—though not necessarily easily in practical research—be subsumable to the perspective sketched here, particularly as it is the least complex one on a process-level.

The paper uses the illustrative example of punctuation patterns in pharmaceutical innovations as a starting point for discussing a number of theoretical models and perspectives with respect to their suitability for such an integrated perspective. These models, if sufficiently correct representations of the characteristics of and tools for research into evolutionary development processes, should play a role in explaining the molecular makeup of human organisms. Thus they also must find a reflection in the history and characteristics of pharmaceutical research as well as the more general characteristics of knowledge processes. The implied circularity of scientific concepts used for analysis and processes operating in the domain indicates the relativity and reflexivity of knowledge which is seen as expression of evolutionary processes of knowledge growth in the social domain being 'eigenprocesses' of evolutionary development from inanimate matter to the social domain.