Structures of Complexity

What will be discussed in this book - an introduction.- About the subject.- About the methods.- World and cognition as a problem.- What we consider reasonable.- How to gain cognition.- What kind of cognition have we gained?.- The Systems of cognition.- Prerequisites for cognition.- Accounting for succedaneous coincidences.- Accounting for simultaneous coincidences.- About structures and class hierarchies.- The Structures of recognition.- A Theory of the world.- The order of things.- The principles of morphology.- The principles of systematics.- The systems of explanation and comprehension.- The preconditions and their assets.- The change of cultural history.- The conditions of explanation.- The ways of comprehension.- The structuring of the things explained and comprehended.- The way of a dynamic order of the world.- The order of the reasons.- The principles of explanation.- The principles of comprehension.- Overview and outlook.

Rupert Riedl (1925-2005) was an Austrian zoologist renowned for his work in the field of marine research (biology of marine caves, fauna and flora of the Mediterranean Sea) as well as for his contributions to the systems theory of evolution and evolutionary epistemology. Films such as "Das Leben im Riff" ("Life in the Reef", 1951), "Lichter unter Wasser" ("Lights under Water", 1952), and others also made him well known to a wider audience. He conducted his research at the University of Vienna.  In 1967 he was appointed full professor and research professor of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, USA.

Later in life he also dealt with social and environmental issues. Among other activities, he was founder of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research and the founding president of the Club of Vienna.

Even after his retirement in 1995, he continued to hold lectures at the University of Vienna, with evolution being the main topic during that time. He criticized Darwin's determining factors as insufficient; he described mutation as a "blind constructor", selection as a "short-sighted opportunist". He already suspected some type of preselection in the realm of genes - a theory that he also expounded upon in his books.