Reading
The paper compares a real-coded haploid genetic algorithm with a diploid variant on 17 benchmark functions. Each diploid individual has two chromosomes, with fitness evaluated on their per-gene average. In the matched-population experiments, the diploid variant reports better mean values on all tested functions but runs longer. The primer covers representation, seven crossover families, settings, results, and limits in the benchmarks, metrics, and generality of the conclusions.
The diary records Kolmogorov’s life from wartime research and administration to domestic life at Komarovka, reading, mathematics, self-discipline, and long plans for future work. Grades, diagrams, jokes, and drawings form part of the record, including his Kholmogory Goose signature. This translation is in progress and is published in date order. The current edition runs from 1 August 1943 through 28 March 1944.
The report asks whether automata can model life and mind. Kolmogorov argues that finite, discrete mechanisms may in principle reproduce living and conscious functions when sufficiently large, and discusses self-reproduction, machine imitation, and the limits of simplification. This edition brings together the authentic theses, the authorised popular exposition, and two later commentaries that explain the report’s publication and place in Soviet cybernetics.
The treatise attempts to construct a general theoretical biology. Its central principle is stable non-equilibrium: living systems continually use free structural energy to perform work against the equilibrium otherwise imposed by their conditions. Part I develops structural energy and systemic forces. Part II applies the framework to metabolism, reproduction, adaptation, and evolution. The historical comparison with later non-equilibrium theories is suggestive, not an identity.
The chapter examines takwīn, or artificial generation, in the Jabirian corpus. The texts claim that minerals, plants, animals, and even human forms can be produced by reconstructing the quantitative balance through which nature generates them. Kraus traces the doctrine through alchemical, Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and pseudo-Porphyrian sources, while his wider study questions whether the corpus belongs to a single historical Jābir.
The lectures argue against psychologism, defend a vitalism intended to complement mechanical explanation, and treat perception and imagination as active relations between organism and world. Their account of consciousness is intermittent rather than a continuous Bergsonian stream. The work joins epistemology, biology, and psychology in a single inquiry into how mental development relates to living process. The twenty-lecture translation remains in progress.
The essay gives Goethe’s concise account of his own method. Responding to Heinroth’s description of his thought as gegenständlich, or object-directed, Goethe says that thinking should remain with the object rather than separate from it. Perception and thought develop together through sustained attention. The essay states the epistemic method behind Goethe’s morphological work.
The essay presents Lapicque’s late account of the biological basis of consciousness. Beginning from feedback and automatic machines, it asks how conscious unity might arise from cellular activity and proposes that cellular excitation provides its basis. The argument is speculative and belongs to Lapicque’s late work. It is historically linked to his earlier electrical model of neuronal excitation, an ancestor of integrate-and-fire models.