Inclusionality and the Role of Place Space and Dynamic Boundaries in Evolutionary Processes.

Abstract

Inclusionality expresses the idea that space, far from passively surrounding and isolating discrete, massy objects, is a vital, dynamic inclusion within, around and permeating natural form across all scales of organization, allowing diverse possibilities for movement and communication. This way of understanding natural form radically affects the way we interpret all kinds of irreversible dynamic processes. Boundaries that from a conventionally rationalistic perspective are regarded as discrete, fixed limits - smooth, space-excluding, Euclidean lines or surfaces - are seen inclusionally as pivotal places. Here, complex, dynamic arrays of voids and relief both emerge from and pattern the co-creative togetherness of inner and outer domains, as in the banks of a river that simultaneously express and mould both flowing stream (and what this stream contains) and receptive landscape (and what this landscape is contained in). At the heart of inclusionality, then, is a radical shift in the way we frame reality, from fixed to dynamic. We thereby move from a conventionally rationalistic, impositionai logic of discrete, assertive (independent) objects (simple entities) transacting in Cartesian space, to a relational, inclusional logic of distinct, inductive places (interdependent, complex identities) communicating between reciprocally coupled insides and outsides through intermediary spatial domains. This inclusional logic removes the paradoxes of completeness characteristic of atomistic thought and enables evolution to be understood primarily as a process of contextual transformation rather than the operation of external selective force on discrete informational units lacking internal agency.