The Meaning of Life and Being Alive Through a Cosmological Lens

What does it mean to be alive? This is a hard question to answer. If I look outside my window, I see a squirrel eating atop a tree, and I say to myself, “that is alive” - both the squirrel and tree. Then I realize, not just them, but “I” too am alive. I look around me. I am typing on a desk inside a house. I do not label my desk and house as “alive”, because unlike a squirrel or a tree, my desk and house does not move, eat, grow, reproduce and eventually, die. My desk and house are bodies that persist and are inanimate. At first glance, they are not “alive”.

At this point, I can extend this observation to say that the squirrel, tree and myself are life forms. Whereas my desk and house are not life forms. Now comes the question, what is a “life form”? According to anthropologist Stefan Helmreich in Life Forms: A Keyword Entry, the term life form has “since its earliest nineteenth-century enunciations, pointed to a space of possibility within which life might take shape.” This is a nuanced description because the relationship between “life” and the “space of possibility for shape” can be understood in two ways:

1.????The “space of possibility” the process of “life” manifests.

2.????The “space of possibility” from which the process of “life” arises.

The second understanding closely resembles the origins of the term “life form”, which is the German word Lebensform. The definition of Lebensform is “the physical properties of heavenly bodies and the life forms possible upon them”, which alludes to the manifestation of life from physical circumstances. The first understanding however, follows closely that of German physiologist Karl Friedrich Burdach, who in the 1800s stated, “the occurrence of new life forms is therefore not external, but is determined by inner life forces and grounded in life itself.” Simply put, the first understanding suggests “life” existing before “form” and the second understanding suggests “form” existing before “life”. This dual perspective then raises our third question: which comes first, “form” or “life”, or do they co-arise simultaneously?

To answer this question, the immensity of the words “life” and “form” should be acknowledged. The word “life” is intrinsically tied to all processes which exhibit qualities of being “alive”. The word “form” encompasses the morphological continuum of objects that exist in a single or multi-dimensional space. Keeping this immensity is mind, we shall transition towards the understanding the single-most immense thing known to mankind - our universe – a three-dimensional spatial object traveling through time, or a singular four-dimensional spacetime object. And perhaps, we may find a relationship between our universe and the question we seek to answer, which is “What is life (and what does it mean to be alive)?”

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Our Ever-Changing Universe.???

??????As described by physicists Carl Sagan in Cosmos and Joseph Silk in The Big Bang, the beginning of the universe is theorized to have happened with an explosion, the Big Bang, about 10 to 20 billion years ago. The Big Bang was the first singularity containing, all of the matter and energy now existing in the universe. From the time of the Big Bang till now, the spatial fabric of the universe has been expanding. Figure 1 gives insight into the expansion of the universe, and the evolution of matter and energy with it.?Scientists theorize that right after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with an extremely hot plasma of neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), photons, and neutrinos. Within minutes after the big bang, these elementary particles fused to form hydrogen and helium. The early universe was filled with radiation and matter (the Radiation Era), and as space expanded, the radiation and matter expanded along with it – swiftly cooling the universe. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observed today is a relic of the of the radiation of the early universe; where the extremely high frequency gamma rays then ?has expanded in wavelength to the microwave regime observable now. From about 300,000 to 400,000 years after the Big Bang, and lasting for hundreds of millions of years after, the universe was in a period of darkness: the Dark Ages (Miralda-Escude, 2003). As the universe kept cooling, the first objects condensed, collapsing gravitationally to birth the first galaxies hosting the first stars of our universe. These stars produced photons, that lit up the universe once more, marking the end of the Dark Ages. As generations of stars were born and died, the heavier elements in the universe such as carbon, oxygen, silicon and iron, were synthesized from them. These primordial galaxies which contained gases, and clouds of hydrogen and helium, kept collapsing gravitationally, becoming tighter in space, gaining rotational velocity (as angular momentum is conserved) to transform into the first spiral galaxies – one amongst which is our Milky Way, quite possibly living amongst a hundred billion other galaxies.

????????Within the spiraling Milky Way, in a wispy cloud of gas and dust, about 4.6 billion years ago – part of the cloud collapsed on itself. Similar to the birth of our Milky Way from a primordial galaxy, a flat spinning disk of gas and dust evolved from this collapsing molecular cloud. As matter accumulated in the center of the disk, the temperature rose. When it was hot enough, nuclear fusion happened: two hydrogen atoms fused to become a single helium atom. Our Sun was born. Surrounding it was a disk of dust consisting of 75% hydrogen, 24% helium and 1% of everything else. These dust grain collided with one another, sometimes sticking to each other, slowly accumulating in mass, till the vast array of bodies - from asteroids to gas giants?- were formed in our solar system. And here we find our rocky planet Earth, the third planet closest to the Sun.

????????From this vantage point, we observe that, not just the fabric of the universe, but the objects within the universe are dynamic in nature. As the universe keeps evolving; innumerable galaxies, stars and planets are born; they interact, transform, decay and eventually die. Though these cosmic objects are often considered as not “alive”, these processes which they undergo bear semblance to what is observed in biological systems - thus the use of similar verbs. Oftentimes, the lifecycle continues as the outer layers of dead stars form planetary nebulae, which hold the chemicals that form the building blocks of new stars and planets. When massive stars die, their cores may gravitationally collapse upon themselves causing the birth of black holes. Many galaxies, including our Milky Way, are believed by scientists to possess a black hole in their cores. These black holes have gravitational pulls that are so strong, they warp the very structure of the spacetime fabric, that even light can’t escape once beyond the event horizon. Even more energetic than blackholes, are quasars; some of the most luminous objects in the universe. Quasars are theorized to emerge from a multitude of origins, including supermassive blackholes with extremely high consumption rates; and its existence is believed to imply the death of its galaxy.

????????Taking a step back and looking at the fabric of the universe once more; currently, it is well-accepted that the universe exists in a state of expansion from the Big Bang. The future of universe though remains unknown. Different theories have been proposed on this topic (Sagan, 1985). Amongst them are a forever expanding universe; a reversal of expansion causing the universe to recollapse into a singularity once more (the Big Crunch); an eternally oscillating universe from the Big Bang to expansion to contraction to the Big Crunch, exploding as the Big Bang once more to repeat the cycle; our universe as a mini-universe in an inflationary and eternal multiverse.

?????????The last theory, Eternal Inflation, is particularly interesting as eternity stretches both into the past and future. There is no single beginning and there will be no end to the evolution of the universe as a whole. This also implies that the Big Bang, which signifies a beginning, did not happen. Andrei Linde, in his review on Inflationary Cosmology, described this theory as, “in many inflationary models, large quantum fluctuations produced during inflation may significantly increase the value of the energy density in some parts of the universe. These regions expand at a greater rate than their parent domains, and quantum fluctuations inside them lead to production of new inflationary domains which expand even faster. This leads to an eternal process of self-reproduction (another biological term) in the universe. Most importantly, this process may divide the universe into exponentially many exponentially large parts with different laws of…physics operating in each of them” (see Figure 2). Although the laws of physics may be different, here, the inflationary structure of the universe as it evolves is fractal in nature – a never-ending pattern, that is self-similar across different scales.

????????Ultimately, humanity has?not yet arrived at a definitive answer for the cosmological evolution of the universe. Nevertheless, from our standpoint here on Earth, we have managed to probe the relatively small distance of the universe surrounding us – both in space and time – and have gained certainty about the dynamic nature of our universe, which involves a myriad of astronomical objects and their interdependent formation and evolutionary paths; all of which obey the laws of physics. To push this understanding further, we could ask the question, which aspects of the this dynamic nature do we consider as life?

How is Life Defined

An accurate definition of life has eluded scientists and philosophers for centuries. As expressed by William Bains, a senior biologist at Cardiff University, and Daniel E. Koshland, former Editor-in-Chief of Science; till today, humanity has yet to arrive at a conclusive definition for life. As alluded to in the introduction of this essay, although “I” may have an intuitive understanding that a squirrel is life, and a desk is not life, it is difficult to answer the question: what does being alive mean? In fact, this very paradigm - the humans intuitive understanding to distinguish between objects which are “alive” and “not alive”, yet humans inability to describe life and being alive in well-defined terms - was emphasized by Bains in What do we think life is? A simple illustration and its consequences. In this study, he explained that this intuitive understanding of humans is “probably a pre-formed aspect of our brains in dealing with the visible world, one that we have extended into unseen realms with the invention of the microscope.” He further describes, “the systems where our intuition about the nature of life falters are often very small (viruses) or very large (Gaia), or operate on very different timescales from a conference lecture.” Additionally, our intuition about the nature of life is tied closely to lifecycles observed in biological systems; and falters on systems that do not conspicuously show such lifecycles.

His observation is both thought-provoking and insightful, as it is often goes unacknowledged that the intuition humanity has relied upon, even when creating more formal definitions of life (here, intuition transforms into biases), has its spatio-temporal limitations. Indeed, well-accepted mainstream definitions of life consists of a list of properties, based on human intuition as an undeclared premise, to identify living objects. As Bains pointed out, many textbooks provide a list of properties of life established in general knowledge, as a way of defining life. In his paper, Bains himself goes on to derive a list of four properties that can be used to identify living objects. These properties were inferred from discussions with an audience from three scientific conferences. Bains list consists of,

1.????Structure (physical or chemical), that is improbable in its environment.

2.????Dynamic mantainence of the structure, through activity that is characteristic of the organism.

3.????Occurrence of groups of similar organisms that can be distinguished as a natural group.

4.????Substrate-independence: living things are determined by an internal code, not (solely) by their external environment.

Bains clearly states though that these properties form a “constructive belief” of what life is that can be acted upon, instead of formal definition of life. Another example and point of comparison to Bain’s list, is The Seven Pillars of Life published in Science in 2002. In response to the question of defining life, these pillars were offered as the essential principles on which a living system is based. They are,

1.????Program: an organized plan that describes the ingredients and kinetics of interactions among ingredients as the living system persist through time. For Earth, this program is implemented in DNA which encodes the genes of organisms and that is replicated through the generations with slight changes.

2.????Improvisation: a way for a living system to change its program to survive optimally in a changing environment. On Earth, these changes are achieved by selection and gene mutation.

3.????Compartmentalization: All organisms are confined to a limited volume, surrounded by a surface called a membrane or skin. The surface acts as a container to maintain the concentrations and arrangements of the interior of the living organism and to provide protection from the outside.

4.????Energy: Life involves movement and a system with net movement cannot be in equilibrium, and is instead an open and metabolizing system. On Earth, the energy of the Sun compensates for entropy changes due to the chemical reactions in the cells of living systems.

5.????Regeneration: Life’s way of correcting for the inevitable decline of a continuously functioning metabolizing system, i.e.: the resynthesis of muscle proteins, the division of the bacterial cells to form daughter cells, the birth of an infant.

6.????Adaptability: Behavioural responses at the molecular or living system level to allow survival in changing environments. These responses are part of the program of living systems, and therefore different from improvisation, which is a change of the program itself.

7.????Seclusion: The separation of pathways that allow for thousands of reactions to occur, without interference of miscellaneous molecules from other pathways, in the volume of a living cell.

The Pillars of Life are framed as the necessary principles for the operation of a living system. The author states life on Earth has displayed certain mechanisms to implement these pillars, but there could be other mechanisms to implement the principles, whether in life beyond our galaxies or in the creation of synthetic life.

The definitions of life described above emerge from an inductive thought process, where general laws are induced from particular instances. Specifically, the instances are life forms that humanity has intuited as living; the resulting general law is that life is established on certain properties, whether it is Bain’s list or the The Seven Pillars. Looking at history, we see that the inductive approach to life gained traction in the 19th century. During this time, the term “life form” underwent a transmutation from a deductive view of the archetypes of form as the aesthetic impulse and prior for the plenitude of observable life – to the inductive conclusion, of life itself being the sculptor and prior of form; the greatest proponent of which was Charles Darwin. In 1859, Darwin published the On the Origins of Species, which asserts natural selection as the force behind the evolution of the diversity of form and species. He argued inductively, that “a process of descent with modification could be inferred as the force giving form to organisms – form that was transmitted down generations.” This view of life, has endured till today, as one of the most important theories in science.

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“Where There is Mind, There is Life”: A Different View of Life

It is well established however, that the inductive process of reasoning has a weakness: the observations (instances) from which general laws are drawn may be incomplete. The mainstream view of life in the 21st century, which is a confluence of Darwinian theory with fundamental properties of life, is inherently geocentric – which is where its weakness lies. Additionally, it is possible (as expressed by Bains) that “all terrestrial life is descended from a common ancestor, and so we effectively only have one example of life from which to generalize.” Essentially, the mainstream view of life severely constrained, as it is based upon geocentric instances filtered with intuitive biases. Perhaps a better way to tackle the problem of defining life is to begin with an abductive frame of mind.

J. Mingers in Abduction: the missing link between deduction and induction. A comment on Ormerod's 'rational inference: deductive, inductive and probabilistic thinking’ writes that unlike induction from examples and deduction from laws where, in both cases, conclusions follow as a matter of logic; abduction “does something quite different” - it possesses the potentiality of new knowledge. He describes the process of abduction, as beginning with the study of events and premises that are typically non-conformal and unexpected (and/or unmaterialized in the present moment, as stated by Helmreich). The next step is taking an imaginative leap, to form an explanatory theory for the events. Thus, abduction is the point where “novelty, innovation and creativity enter the scientific method.”

Accordingly, to overcome the geocentric definitions of life that have been propounded for more than a century, an abductive approach might be needed. To begin this reasoning process, a few premises or events should be assembled: First, the cosmological view of the universe which shines light on the universe and the objects within it as having a dynamic and interdependent nature. Second, is a position I have yet to expound, which is consciousness being inherent in all structures of existence across all levels of scale.

This position was represented in Sentience Everywhere: Complexity Theory, Panpsychism & the Role?of Sentience in Self-Organization of the Universe by Neil D. Theise and Menas C. Kafatos. According to them, philosophical understandings of consciousness is divided into emergentist and panpsychist positions. The emergentist position states consciousness arises “from the universe when the universe becomes sufficiently complex (and organized in such a way) to produce it.” In contrast, the panpsychist position states consciousness is pervasive in the universe, at all scales. Probably a more familiar view in humanity, is that consciousness is the result of the complexity and organization of the brain (an emergentist position). However, evolutionary biologists have proved that in lower order living beings (such as sea anemone), there are neuronal structures less complex than the brain, which perform less complex but similar versions of the functions of consciousness. As these evolutionary paths are traced further back into more simplified forms, the components of neurons themselves (i.e., the ionic channels and synaptic structures vital for neuronal signaling) which perform the functional aspects of nervous system-like activity; are found to exist as independent entities in these simpler forms – as simple as the single biological cell, which are themselves quite complex.

This gives rise to an emergentist question, do simpler neuronal structures give rise to simpler forms of consciousness? Both biologists and philosophers, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela answer this question with their theory of Autopoiesis, the name of which derives from the Greek roots, “self” and “creation”. An autopoietic machine is defined by them as a way to constitute living systems that possess a level of mind that is higher than or at the minimum form of mind. Theise and Kafatos describe their autopoetic machines as “a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.” ?The minimum form of mind is sentience: sensing of the surrounding environment, complex processing (inclusive of the activity quenched disorder) of sensed information and generation of a response. According to them, where there is mind, there is life – and the smallest unit of life satisfying the conditions of an autopoietic machine and expressing sentience, is the biological cell.

Fusing Autopoiesis with evolutionary evidence espousing the hierarchies in the complexity of consciousness and neuronal structure, we arrive at Complexity Theory. This theory describes that the self-organization of interacting elements into systems of larger size, is scalable in nature: a chosen element in a scale is dependent upon the self-organization of smaller interacting elements; and interacting elements of the chosen scale self-organizes into larger elements. Therefore, at the smallest unit of life proposed in Autopoeitic theory, the cell; Complexity Theory states that from smaller scales, atoms and molecules self-assemble into a cell; towards larger scales, cells self-assemble into communities of cells such as microorganisms and bacterial colonies. Self-assembly itself is potentiated when interacting elements display four sets of characteristics:

1.????A sufficiently large number of interacting agents.

2.????An overall balance of homeostatic, negative feedback loops governing the interactions between agents.

3.????No global sensing of the conditions of the system. For example, a molecule simply responds to Brownian motion or physiochemical interactions with cellular atoms/molecules without being “aware of itself” as being a part of a larger process.

4.????The need for limited randomness, quenched disorder, in the system. “Too little disorder would prevent exploration of new states of self- organization to adapt to a changing environment. Too much disorder would prevent self-organization.”

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Thus, Complexity Theory implies hierarchies of life do not end at the cellular level, and in fact scale all the way down to the Planck scale, where the smallest entities stop deriving from anything smaller, but appear and disappear from the quantum foam. This process of post-cellular scaling is explained in more detail in the aforementioned paper by Theise and Kafatos; with evidence of biomolecules (such as DNA), atoms and subatomic particles displaying the qualities of sentience, albeit simpler forms. For example, the sentience of atoms can be described as the sensing and processing of the environment mediated by electromagnetism, and interaction that happens through electrical activity of their electron shells \cite{fundamental awareness}. Note that as we move down the scales towards simpler forms of sentience, there are subtleties such as the degree of non-locality, of boundedness of interacting units, and of stochasticity in processing of the sensed environment. These subtleties were used in a later study by Theise and Kafatos, Fundamental awareness: A framework for integrating science, philosophy and metaphysics, to update the definition of sentience to what is called process, that could exist either as creative intra-activity, creative inter-activity and sentience (which is restricted to biological entities). For the sake of continuity, we will refer to all three processes as sentience in this essay; and to clarify, its complex processing refers to internal processing (within each unit) of the sensed information, which is necessarily a stochastic process.

At the smallest scales, the quantum foam, devised by physicist John Wheeler, refers to the topology of spacetime undergoing turbulent quantum fluctuations at Planck scales of distance and time (Jack Ng, 2005). At this level, quantum entanglement and non-locality operate for all possible units of existence. These units of existence extend infinitely in all directions, superposing with each other. Thus, there is no “internal” processing to sense and respond to an “external” environment. The inevitable interactions between units is the processes of sentience at these scales; indeed, these interactions from the baseline requirement for the smallest entities of the quantum foam to self-assemble into larger units. Notably, sentience that exists at this smallest scale is postulated to be an internal and universal (encompassing all units of existence) “self-sentience”. This statement marks the transition of Autopoietic Theory from an emergentist to panpsychist position, because sentience at the Planck level of spacetime which self-assembles to larger and more complex units, ascertains the pervasiveness of consciousness at all levels of scales.

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Scaling Up to Cosmological Scales of the Universe

????????Rerouting to the question “What is Life?” and taking an abductive process of reasoning, we now have at our disposal:

An observation: The universe and its components, on cosmological scales, is dynamic, interdependent and evolves following what we call the laws of physics.

These characteristics are analogous to that of living beings, derived at human scales. For example, dynamism draws parallelisms to the motion and response of living beings to its changing environment; interdependence, as the exchange of chemicals between living beings that supports their collective existence in the biosphere; and evolution, as the evolution of species or evolution of form of a single living being in its lifecycle. These characteristics also follow the laws of physics, though they are more commonly referred to as “biology” or “chemistry”.

A first premise: Consciousness pervades all levels of scales; with its minimum form, sentience existing as an inherent property in the fabric of spacetime at quantum scales (the quantum foam).

A second premise: Where there is consciousness (mind), there is life.

From these statements, a clear explanatory and exploratory hypothesis emerges: The universe itself, at all scales, is alive. Hence, the universe can be viewed as a singular life-form imbued with consciousness. Additionally, to answer the question posed in the beginning of this essay, “which comes first, “life” or “form” or do they co-arise simultaneously?”, we reach once more into the quantum realm and observe that the first physical entities to emerge from the quantum foam through self-assembly, arise as a result of the interactions of wave-like entities in the foam – the equivalence of “sentience”. From this observation, it can be concluded that “sentience” not only precedes, but also causes the emergence of “form”. Scaling this theory upwards following the principle of Complexity Theory - interacting elements self-organize into systems of larger size – implies: at each level of scale, it is the corresponding level of consciousness existing at that level of scale which manifests the form of the being.

This would mean, at cosmological spatiotemporal scales, there exists a cosmological-scale of consciousness that moulds the form of the universe at that scale. This, however, goes against the theory of Eternal Inflation mentioned before. In Eternal Inflation, large quantum-scale fluctuations in the inflationary field of the universe, create significant amplifications on the energy density in those regions, leading to unequal expansion in different regions of the universe; consequently, the birth of large-scale structure in the universe: mini-universes in a multiverse. Concisely, Eternal Inflation states exponentially propagated quantum-scale fluctuations in the inflationary field shapes the large-scale cosmological form of the universe. Whereas, our hypothesis implies that cosmological-scale consciousness shapes the large-scale cosmological form of the universe. Thus, there is a dichotomy in the scale of the shaping force of the universe.

Following the basis of our abductive premises, if the inflationary field is indeed a physically tangible field in the universe, this would imply the quantum fluctuations in this field is driven by consciousness at this level of scale, which would be comparable to the minimum level of mind, sentience. For sake of ease, let us name this level of consciousness, inflationary quantum consciousness, and cosmological-scale consciousness as cosmological consciousness. Assuming the existence of both levels of consciousness, this suggests that the large-scale cosmological structure of the universe is moulded, by both, a more primeval inflationary quantum consciousness and a more complex (or “intelligent”) cosmological consciousness.

This proposition begets a host of philosophical questions: do different levels of consciousness co-operate or work independently from one another? Do different levels of consciousness communicate with each other? Can life forms with their associated levels of consciousness transcend their level of consciousness? If consciousness shapes the universe of physical form, should the investigation of consciousness be the aim of physics instead of the investigations of physical laws? These are interesting questions to think about, and answering them will require thorough investigation and substantiation. However, with the evidence we have at hand and the logical steps undertaken, we have arrived at the refreshing and insightful conclusion, that the universe, at all scales, is alive and imbued with consciousness. Consequently, the universe as a whole can be viewed as a singular life-form of cosmological consciousness. Thus, the question “What is Life?” does not have meaning anymore, because the underlying substrate of our universe, from which all forms of life emerge, is sentient and alive. Which means that there is nothing in our universe which is not life.

The conclusion we arrived at should be understood with the aforementioned caveat that consciousness at is lower levels of scales is defined as creative intra-activity and inter-activity between units, and is thus different from consciousness (sentience) observed at the human scale. Though the terms intra-activity and inter-activity seem more mechanical than sentience - they highlight the stochastic activity of interacting units which self-assemble to create stochastically-driven structures, whereas sentience typically implies a controlled form of awareness (sensing) and generation of a more controlled response – the influence and existence of controlled awareness and response should not be precluded from these lower scales without further study. In fact, the famous Young’s Double Slit experiment shows evidence of controlled awareness (an observer) dictating whether or not a beam of quantum-scale photons behaves as particles or waves (Theise & Kafatos, 2016). It elucidates that quantum-scale behaviour is not entirely stochastic, and is a response controlled by controlled awareness.

The significance of our conclusion is that we have eliminated all observational biases by basing it on the premise, “Where there is consciousness (mind), there is life”, which encapsulates the whole universe by the premise, “Consciousness pervades the universe at all scales”. Unfortunately, spatio-temporal cosmological scales and Planck scales are hard for humans to penetrate as we exist on a different (human) scale. Therefore, much effort must be undertaken to prove both premises with certainty. However, if proven, our conclusion is inherently more truthful than the current, mainstream definitions of life - and truth is the goal of science (I hope) and knowledge. Indeed, the mainstream definitions of life are important for human-scale pursuits, such as deciding whether to treat a broken rock or an injured bird, or looking for intelligent life beyond Earth. In contrast, our understanding of life, “that the universe, at all scales, is alive and imbued with consciousness”, serves a distinguishable purpose: of stretching human perspective to consider that consciousness is inherent to life and the universe, and exists as a continuum – which enables the appreciation of life and the universe in a different way.

?References

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?Mingers, J. (2012). “Abduction: The Missing Link Between Deduction and Induction. A Comment on Ormerod’s ‘Rational Inference: Deductive, Inductive and Probabilistic Thinking.”?Journal of the Operational Research Society, 63(6), 860-861.

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