Research: Scientific Architecture
SCIENTIFIC ARCHITECTURE
Evolution and Regulation in Interdependent Biological Systems
Evolution · Regulation · Interdependence · Variability
The Rausenbach Center for Analysis and Research (CRAI) organizes its research through a scientific architecture oriented toward the study of interdependent biological systems from an evolutionary, regulatory, and contextual perspective.
This architecture is not conceived as a mere sum of disciplines, but as an integrative framework for analysing how stability, variability, and adaptation emerge from dynamic interactions between organisms, environments, and complex biological matrices.
GUIDING PRINCIPLE
CRAI is grounded in a central idea: biological profiles — including human ones — cannot be adequately explained through static or isolated models, but rather as expressions of regulatory dynamics that depend on state, environment, and evolutionary history.
From this perspective, variability is not interpreted as an anomaly, but as a functional and contextual phenomenon that can be modelled through comparative and integrative frameworks.
RESEARCH STRUCTURE
The scientific architecture of CRAI is structured around two complementary pillarsBoth share a common methodological foundation — evolutionary and regulatory — and differ in their primary object of analysis and in the types of interactions they prioritise.
HPCN Pillar: Human–Plant Coevolution and Neurobiology
The HPCN Pillar establishes the framework for studying how the evolutionary interaction between humans and plant systems — particularly through complex phytochemical matrices — may influence neurobiological, cognitive, and adaptive processes within changing ecological contexts.
HUMAN Pillar: Evolutionary Foundations of the Mind and the Human Condition
The Human Pillar develops frameworks to analyse the emergence and diversification of the human mind from a biocultural and evolutionary perspective, integrating neurobiology, cognition, culture, and environment to understand human variability as part of differentiated adaptive trajectories.
Complementarity and Internal Coherence
The relationship between the two pillars is not additive, but structural:
HPCN: addresses the human–plant dimension as a biological and regulatory interface, where complex plant matrices interact with human systems.
HUMAN analyses the mind and human variability as phenomena emerging from evolutionary and biocultural processes, with attention to cognitive and behavioural configurations within historical and environmental contexts.
Together, both pillars enable the formulation of integrated models on how complex systems are configured, maintained, or transformed when their ecological, cultural, and regulatory conditions change.
Each pillar unfolds into specific research lines that operationalise its scientific axes. These lines are not presented as isolated projects, but as coherent components within the shared architectural framework of CRAI.
Within each line, specific projects (such as flagship initiatives or experimental programs) may be developed, always aligned with the structural logic of the respective pillar and its guiding principles.
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