Protention and retention in biological systems

Giuseppe Longo (1, 2, 3) , Maël Montévil (4, 5)

1 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
2 ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris
3 CREA - Centre de recherche en épistémologie appliquée
4 MSC - Matière et Systèmes Complexes
5 IHPST - Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques

This article proposes an abstract mathematical frame for describing some features of cognitive and biological time. We focus here on the so called "extended present" as a result of protentional and retentional activities (memory and anticipation). Memory, as retention, is treated in some physical theories (relaxation phenomena, which will inspire our approach), while protention (or anticipation) seems outside the scope of physics. We then suggest a simple functional representation of biological protention. This allows us to introduce the abstract notion of "biological inertia".

Mots clés: Memory and Cognition; protention; retention; biological time

Domaines: Autre [q-bio.OT]

Giuseppe Longo, Maël Montévil. Protention and retention in biological systems. Theorie in den Biowissenschaften / Theory in Biosciences, 2011, 130 (2), pp.107 - 117. ⟨10.1007/s12064-010-0116-6⟩. ⟨hal-01192905v2⟩