David Dunér

Lund University | LU · Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences

The last decades have seen a noticeable increase in cognitive science studies that have changed the understanding of human thinking. Its relevance for historical research cannot be overlooked any more. Cognitive history could be explained as the study of how humans in history used their cognitive abilities in order to understand the world around th...

This a contribution to the cultural semiotics of African cultural encounters seen through the eyes of Swedish naturalists at the end of the eighteenth century. European travellers faced severe problems in understanding the alien African cultures they encountered; they even had difficulty understanding the other culture as a culture. They were not j...

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a discovery of extraterrestrial life, life developed in a laboratory, or machines equipped with abilities previously o...

The last decades have seen a noticeable increase in cognitive science studies that have changed the understanding of human thinking. Its relevance for historical research cannot be overlooked any more. Cognitive history could be explained as the study of how humans in history used their cognitive abilities in order to understand the world around th...

This chapter examines the human search, understanding, and interpretation of biosignatures. It deals with four epistemological issues in the search for signs of life in outer space: (1) conceptualization, how we form concepts of life in astrobiology, how we define and categorize things, and the relation between our concepts and our knowledge of the...

This White Paper describes the state of astrobiology in Europe today and its relation to the European society at large. With contributions from authors in twenty countries and over thirty scientific institutions worldwide, the document illustrates the societal implications of astrobiology and the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to...

This White Paper describes the state of Astrobiology in Europe today and its relation to European society at large. With contributions from authors in twenty countries and over thirty scientific institutions worldwide, the document illustrates the societal implications of astrobiology and the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to Euro...

Capova, Klara Anna*; Persson, Erik; Milligan, Tony; Dunér, David: “Astrobiology and Society in Europe Today: The White Paper on the societal implications of astrobiology research in Europe and the need for a European Astrobiology Institute” European Planetary Science Congress – Berlin 2018

The apprehension of the last three factors of the Drake equation, fi · fc · L, is misguided or at least not very well examined. This article scrutinizes the underlying suppositions involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) research. What is meant by “intelligence,” “technology,” and “civilization”? What makes them possible, an...

The poster presents’ recent work of Working Group 5 Philosophy and History of Science, is a Trans-Domain European COST Action Life-ORIGINS TD1308 and introduces the latest draft of the White Paper on societal implications of astrobiology research in European context, ‘Astrobiology and Society in Europe Today.’ The poster provides overview of sectio...

The history and philosophy of the Origin of Life – ADDENDUM - Volume 15 Issue 4 - David Dunér, Christophe Malaterre, Wolf Geppert

The “eTimeTrek” proposal describes a new approach to promote general science education in schools, and in society, by merging the natural sciences with the latest developments in information technology, using a bit of a philosophical and artistic touch to make them highly attractive to all audiences. All the materials will be based on the “Long sto...

Traditional scientific disciplines have significantly evolved in depth and in broadness in a significant degree, such that overlap causes an overload of information, challenges communication, and bottlenecks assimilation of scientific results and theories. On the other hand, merging well-established disciplines increases “enthalpy” bringing forward...

This book, which presents a cognitive-semiotic theory of cultural evolution, including that taking place in historical time, analyses various cognitive-semiotic artefacts and abilities. It claims that what makes human beings human is fundamentally the semiotic and cultural skills by means of which they endow their Lifeworld with meaning. The proper...

The history and philosophy of the Origin of Life - Volume 15 Issue 4 - David Dunér, Christophe Malaterre, Wolf Geppert

The possible existence of extraterrestrial life led in the eighteenth century to a heated debate on the unique status of the human being and of Christianity. One of those who discussed the new scientific worldview and its implications for theology was the Swedish natural philosopher and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. This article discusses Swedenbo...

This chapter is an overview of the prehistory of L, how people across the globe from our earliest sources to 1961 have tried to understand the beginning and end of history, and the rise and fall of civilizations. Factor L is put into a longer historical context of human conceptions about history, time, and civilization. In focus is the question of...

What kind of indispensable cognitive ability is needed for intelligence, sociability, communication, and technology to emerge on a habitable planet? My answer is simple: intersubjectivity. I stress the significance of intersubjectivity, of shared cognition, for extraterrestrial intelligence and interstellar communication, and argue that it is in fa...

The stars instil wonder, affording a presentiment of a divinity behind the order.‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork,’as we read in Psalm 19:1. It was determined that animals should walk prostrate, looking towards the ground, says Ovid, while it was granted to man to carry his head high and look up towards...

To live is to tremble. The body shakes and twitches in constant convulsions. A vibrating, oscillating wave movement runs through the nerve threads, causing the whole living being to tremble with it. The slightest touch, the smallest movement of thought, can spread in seconds over tissues and ligaments, like the strings to the sounding board in a cl...

Arithmetic, the art of counting from 1 to 8, is what the cryptic exercises in pronunciation represent. They concern figures, digits, and numbers, with la le li lo lu lyl being another way to say two hundred and ninety-nine thousand five hundred and ninety-three. In October 1718, during the construction of the canal known as Karls Grav (‘Charles’s D...

It was still early in the spring, one day in March 1716, and perhaps time was passing slowly in the countryside outside Skara. From the episcopal residence of Brunsbo, Swedenborg wrote to ask Benzelius to send him his camera obscura in the blue case. With the camera he intended to ‘make reflexions on the perspective art by the taking of a number of...

The world is geometry, a finite universe that obeys geometrical and mechanical laws. In the world geometry, the spider follows nature’s laws of mechanics and spins its web in polygonal and circular forms, the beaver builds dams according to geometrical principles, the bird makes its nest based on the figure of the circle, and bees shape their honey...

One October day in 1736, Swedenborg was strolling through the Tuileries Garden in Paris. It was a pleasant walk as he speculated about the forms of atmospherical particles. It no longer happened so often that he mused about particle physics. His thoughts were instead turned towards anatomy and physiology. His quest for proof of the immortality and...

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it became possible to believe in the existence of life on other planets on scientific grounds. Once the Earth was no longer the center of the universe according to Copernicus, once Galileo had aimed his telescope at the Moon and found it a rough globe with mountains and seas, the assumption of life on oth...

After the "Venus Transit Conference" that took place at the University of Tromsoe from June 2 to June 3, 2012, participants were given the opportunity to either stay in Tromsoe until the night of June 5-6, or to participate in a voyage to Finnmark, where the historical sites Vardoe, Hammerfest, and the North Cape were to be visited. This voyage cul...

Although Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) is commonly known for his spiritual philosophy, his early career was focused on natural science. During this period, Swedenborg thought the world was like a gigantic machine, following the laws of mechanics and geometry. This volume analyses this mechanistic world-view from the cognitive perspective, by means...

‘Behold, a wonderful thing!’ With a mixture of terror and rapture, Swedenborg descends into the Falun mine in 1716: The subterranean beings toiled in the mine, rolling rocks, sweating in the dusty air, throwing wood down the shaft, carrying torches. One went into a recess, another came out of a hole with his face scorched. Some climbed up quivering...

The spiral curves, twists in expanding circles from a centre, as in the coiling of the snail, in the whirling waters of the maelstrom, in the vortices of the universe. For Swedenborg the spiral is the most beautiful and complete of all geometrical figures. It is return, it is perfect motion in the particle world and in the firmament. Its movement l...

Human beings have wondered about the stars since the dawn of the species. Does life exist out there - intelligent life, even - or are we alone? The quest for life in the universe touches on fundamental hopes and fears. It touches on the essence of what it means to formulate a theory, grasp a concept, and have an imagination. This book traces the hi...

During 2010/11, a program in “Astrobiology: Past, Present, and Future” is carried out. This comprises not only the common astrobiological themes at the intersection of astronomy, biology, and the geosciences, but also various more historical and philosophical aspects. The program aims to strengthening and further developing multidisciplinary astrob...

The human desire for exploration and man’s encounters with the unknown are a fundamental part of the cultural history of mankind, from the first stumbling steps on the African plains to the recent explorations of our globalised and urbanised world. From the dawn of the hominids to the days of the modern man, this ever changing terrestrial being has...

Astrobiology: Past, Present, and Future

Could communication be possible between intelligent beings of totally different evolutionary and cognitive histories? I believe that cognitive science can give clues to how we might interpret and formulate interstellar messages.

On the basis of his daily life experiences of water waves the Swedish natural philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) could use the wave metaphor to transfer the qualities of these waves to other physical phenomena such as sound waves and light waves. In the last issue of his scientific journal Daedalus Hyperboreus (1718), he published an overvi...

"The Swedish natural philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) thought in his early scientific career that the world was like a gigantic machine, following the laws of mechanics and geometry. The work presented here is a study of his mechanistic worldview and metaphorical way of thinking up to the year 1734, examining most of his fields of interes...