Biological systems grow, live, adapt, and reproduce, characteristics that are not truly encompassed by any existing computing system. If one considers life on Earth since its very beginning, three levels of organization can be distinguished: phylogeny, ontogeny, and epigenesis. Machines that combine evolutionary mechanisms (Phylogeny), developmental processes (Ontogeny), and learning algorithms...

The power of poetry is universally acknowledged, but it is debatable whether its appreciation is reserved for experts. Here, we show that readers with no particular knowledge of a traditional form of Welsh poetry unconsciously distinguish phrases conforming to its complex poetic construction rules from those that violate them. We studied the brain response of native speakers of Welsh as they re...

Louis said from the grave, If I am Remembered, don't make me a sham Of a nice Jewish boy, Or the life of a goy (Not to shul [1], Christmas tree [2], and ate ham [3]). False biography would be a flaw-Don't recount what would stick in my craw And thus bring me to grief. For my spiritual brief Was Democracy. Ideas. The law. (It is clear to me that there's a God. Justice comes from Him. But it's no...

This poster presentation is the culmination of an extensive statistical study of Latin elegy. The notion that poetic sound represents a distinct layer of information where discrete patterns can be found is an intriguing one. In a theoretical context, sound captures a "metalanguage" that is universal to all discourse, but only exposed in poetry. This poster develops a model for metalanguage and ...

The vagaries of poetic inspiration have often been regarded as ineffably mysterious, and have provoked conjectures since antiquity. Instead of invoking the muses, we today are more apt to consider neurophysiological factors. The case of the great English poet John Milton, whose poetic inspiration seemed to follow a marked seasonal pattern, is considered here, and evidence is presented to show c...

This paper is an exploratory sociological analysis of poetic confluence, a spontaneous telepathic phenomenon that occurs in everyday social interaction. In one person’s talk exhibits enigmatic relationship to another’s unstated thoughts or imagery at moment. The analyses draw from empirical approach called Conversation Analysis, formal qualitative method for the naturally occurring interaction ...

Music, unlike ordinary language, can ‘make sense’ or have ‘meaning’ even when it does not refer to anything in particular (other than music). Although we often think of music as a kind of language, on the whole we do not regard it as a ‘translatable’ language, the inherent meaning of which could be sufficiently expressed in a different form. If you strip away the ornaments and metaphors of a po...