This study explains the life phenomena as complex phenomena from the viewpoint of information exchange in the premise that the essence of life is information, and finally presents the 'global culture' paradigm, where the relationship between nature, h ...
This study explains the life phenomena as complex phenomena from the viewpoint of information exchange in the premise that the essence of life is information, and finally presents the 'global culture' paradigm, where the relationship between nature, human and society emerges as a huge complex system through information exchange. In order to propose a new paradigm of 'global culture as a whole global environment and human culture', this study first examines the contact point of life and culture in terms of theory of complex systems. We define the concept of global culture consisting of three axes: organization, technology, and idea, adding, to the concepts of global life and eco-cultural theory, the viewpoint of information exchange with the environment. In other words, global culture is the whole of the organization, technology, and idea of the human group that has been achieved by utilizing natural resources in the history of mankind. It is close to a living creature that constantly interacts with the environment and changes itself. Based on this concept, we propose an interdisciplinary research model consisting of the ‘organization’ axis, ‘idea’ axis, and ‘technology’ axis, which are major research subjects in the fields of social science, humanities, and natural science, respectively. Although these three axes can be studied independently discipline by discipline, it is important to note that one can expect deep and intrinsic understanding of the global culture as well as original and universal academic awareness through fusion research. In order to accomplish this task successfully, we have composed our research team of three sections: “Complex systems and global life” (two members) in natural science, “Social organization and global culture” (two members) in social science, and “Humanities and the conceptual world of global culture” (two members) in humanities. The “complex system and global life” section conducts research on information and global life through the approach of physics of complex systems and theoretical neuroscience. All living creatures, including humans, interact with the environment, by exchange of information and energy, to form the global life, where each individual carries adequate independence and performs inherent function while at the same time maintaining peaceful balance with surrounding objects and the environment. If some individuals break this balance and become to possess monopoly status, they correspond to cancer cells. As cancer cells with excellent survival and reproductive ability flourish but eventually lead to death itself, so the loss of peace and balance among the members would destroy the global life and eventually ruin themselves. In this study, we first examine the life phenomenon from the viewpoint of complex systems, and combine it with the concept of global life, to probe the global life system that considers the earth and the sun as one life unit. This would establish the concept of life scientifically appropriate in the information society and build the basis of a new interpretation of human and social phenomena. The “social organization and global culture” section makes use of the sociological approach to establish a global culture model that regards nature, human, and society as an organic and harmonious relationship, and extends perspectives to the study of cultural phenomena where the complexity of nature-human-social relations is increased by the evolution of information and communication technology. In the information revolution era, the advancement of various communication technologies enables generation, sharing, and distribution of information to be possible on a global basis, thereby reducing the regional cultural differences. On the other hand, global complexity of nature-human-society relations is growing. In consideration of this, we build a global culture model based on the concepts of global life and eco-culture, and explore a new paradigm of healthy global culture, where reconciliation of nature-human-society relations and cultural diversity are linked by mutual cooperation. Finally, the “Humanities and the conceptual world of global culture” section is responsible for the study of the conceptual world of global culture through philosophical and literary approaches. In the era of information revolution, human communication has rapidly shifted to the Internet-based virtual space. As English has swept around the world, many languages have been put to a crisis of extinction, which changes the conceptual world of human. Language is the ultimate intellectual cultural heritage and a tool to convey human thinking, and interacts with culture to evolve. Therefore, language uniformity means that culture can lose its diversity and become uniform as well. In consequence, the standardization of language and culture brings on the threat that the spiritual world of global culture can become uniform. Our research team focuses on the relationship between the information revolution and language and culture from the standpoint of maintaining a close relationship between the brain, mind, and environment, and explore alternatives to the healthy spiritual world of global culture through philosophy of science and cognitive linguistics research.