Fundamental Principles of Cognitive Biology 2.0

Abstract Cognitive biology, as a scientific program-in-waiting, is the direct (if unacknowledged) offspring of the 20th century revolution in molecular biology, which revealed for the first time the deep, nonmetaphorical parallels between the activities of biological components and processes and the knowledge-generating capabilities characteristic of cognition. The article examines cognitive biology’s parentage—Brian C. Goodwin and Ladislav Kováč—and the context which gave birth to it, twice. Special reference is made to Kováč, without whose work, which is honored in this special issue, cognitive biology as such could have perished. Putting to one side Kováč’s own continuing work in the area, cognitive biology developed in the 21st century both in ways he and Goodwin (who died in 2009) would recognize and in ways they would not. One of the paths taken within their lineage is my own, which has travelled under different labels (the biogenic approach to cognition, basal cognition) and developed, also independently, from unorthodox beginnings. It is important to emphasize that cognitive biology is not simply the “biologizing” of the study of cognition. In a very real sense, cognitive biology is not about cognition—as a biological function of whole organisms—at all. It is a recognition that biological processes, what normally passes for mere physiology and development, have properties traditionally associated with cognitive capacities in animals, properties that are inadequately captured by a generic (usually poorly specified) notion of “information processing.” Cognitive biology is related to the search for the biological basis of cognition, and does much to illuminate that search, but was never motivated by that search. It was motivated entirely by the search for a more general biological theory. Inspired by Kováč’s seminal “Fundamental Principles of Cognitive Biology,” a considerably expanded set of principles is gathered here for the first time from multiple sources. Together they show how cognitive biology reunites the sciences of life and cognition on a foundation that is gratifyingly substantial, and which may point the way to a future science.