Thanks, Matthew, I'd love to get a pdf of the book [jcl@vt.edu]

I agree, but I think that you need many people from the field (e.g., neuroscience) to identify the systems that they are going to collectively work on, or to have a scientific approach to collectively do this - it has to be more systematic than just relying on individual researchers or small groups.

Surely the brain would itself be a system of systems that interact via interoception with a system of systems inside the organism and via exteroception with another system of systems outside the organism. Then you need to start identifying the various systems and figure out how they all interact.

Sounds great, thanks Kevin, but the timing is not good for me. Instead, please look at our evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence paradigm:

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Systems thinking on its own is futile - a common language and computational framework is needed to make progress.

I'm not a biologist, and I only came across this idea recently, but it makes so much sense from an evolutionary perspective ...

There is "cognition" all the way down to cells:

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Even cells have an elementary form of "consciousness"
doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Thanks, Philip, I enjoyed How Life Works and appreciate your new Commentary! My colleagues and I suggest an evolutionary, system-of-systems approach in a new preprint: [https://doi.org/10.32942/X22S7T]. It may appear impossible, but what other viable approaches are there?

This is not my field, but HFGT can overcome some of the limitations of MLNs www.arxiv.org/abs/2409.04936

The way Amro puts it, HFGT is a fusion of network science and model-based systems engineering (with the common SysML language) and has the advantages of both methodologies combined. But there are many similarities in what we are doing and it is great to be in touch with you!

My colleague, Amro Farid, is the HFGT expert - please see text on page 19 in preprint and his cited references.

Yes, thanks Manlio, but HFGT overcomes the limitations of multi-layer networks and enables greater functionality - please see the text and my colleague, Amro Farid.

Could not agree more - please see: One Earth + One Health: An agile, evolutionary, system-of-systems, convergence paradigm for societal challenges of the Anthropocene
DOI: doi.org/10.32942/X22...

Thanks, Sergi, please add me if possible ...

Please add me if possible ...

Thanks, Josefine, please add me ...

Thanks, please include me ...