ABSTRACT

Behavior and Culture in One Dimension adopts a broad interdisciplinary approach, presenting a unified theory of sequences and their functions and an overview of how they underpin the evolution of complexity.

Sequences of DNA guide the functioning of the living world, sequences of speech and writing choreograph the intricacies of human culture, and sequences of code oversee the operation of our literate technological civilization. These linear patterns function under their own rules, which have never been fully explored. It is time for them to get their due. This book explores the one-dimensional sequences that orchestrate the structure and behavior of our three-dimensional habitat. Using Gibsonian concepts of perception, action, and affordances, as well as the works of Howard Pattee, the book examines the role of sequences in the human behavioral and cultural world of speech, writing, and mathematics. 

The book offers a Darwinian framework for understanding human cultural evolution and locates the two major informational transitions in the origins of life and civilization. It will be of interest to students and researchers in ecological psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and the social and biological sciences.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

Sequences, Sequences, and Sequences 1

chapter 1|27 pages

The Problem of Sequentialization

chapter 2|21 pages

The Emergence of Constraint

chapter 3|27 pages

The Grammar of Interaction

chapter 4|24 pages

The Grammar of Extension 1

chapter 5|22 pages

The Grammar of Abstraction

chapter 6|22 pages

The Conundrum of Replication 1

chapter 7|29 pages

The Threshold of Complication 1

chapter 8|28 pages

The Institution of Sequences

chapter 9|9 pages

The Continuum of Abstraction