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I look forward to upcoming retrospective and prospective conversation. As part of this, I would like to ask again, as I did a few months back, that we consider adding the term "love" to the listing of the Evolving Systems group's focal concerns: form, meaning, and aesthetics.  In other words, I move that the word "love" be included in the box of the universe that is the project's logo (or so I take it!).  I want to warm up what is in that box, and also to insist on erotic, emotive connection as important (not sure about fundamental -- does it have to be to get into the box?) to the relations (at least some important ones) of form, meaning, and aesthetics.

In Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon, the hero, Pilate, says before she dies, "I wish I had known more people.  If I had known them, I would have loved them."  I take this as a touchstone.  To me, it has to do with Bharath's idea that "every individual is at the cutting edge of the universe."  I want to say that love enables people to grasp this fact about one another. 

If there are no "gaps in knowledge" without "eager curiosity," then eagerness, itself an emotive, erotic state, is important to thought and creativity.  Form, meaning, and aesthetics play through thought and creativity.  So love, while perhaps not as elemental as they to the patterns of thought, is a necessary (not THE necessary, and not without risk or problems) channel for those patterns.

D'ya think?