THE SUCCESS OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE DNA molecule, of which we humans are one of the most refined offspring, is basically due to two essential aspects: on the one hand, a very ingenious way of preserving the genetic information necessary for replication and, on the other, the ability to mix that information to achieve greater variety. Thus, these mixtures, in the light of the Darwinian filter, have gone from small organisms with a single cell to entities that intend to travel to other planets.
In other areas of human knowledge, the wealth that comes from mixing patterns has had notable success. Some algorithms for searching for optimal solutions such as the so-called Newtonian methods usually start from initial approximations proposed to get closer to the optimum through the repetition of rigid and precise rules. Another philosophy for searching for the optimum called genetic algorithms is based on creating populations of candidates for the solution and improving them through a mixing and matching procedure. The success of these latter methods has been notable in many areas of science where the former usually fail. This is related to their very nature. While Newton’s methods are dictatorships, genetic algorithms are consensual democracies.
While the relevance of an unbiased imbrication between different cultures should be beyond any doubt, in our surrounding reality the process occurs with the asymmetry between hegemonic countries and those assimilated by the former in the historical processes related to the different globalizing waves that civilization has suffered.
The most basic claim of those affronted is the preservation of their customs and culture, issues that can only be achieved through an education with an emancipatory perspective.
This issue of the journal INTER DISCIPLINA approaches the important topic of intercultural education through the work of several prominent researchers on the subject. As the Guest Editor, Ph.D. Eligio Cruz Leandro, also a specialist in complex systems, tells us, this has been done “in an interdisciplinary, contextual, local or situated manner, and as a phenomenon of increasing complexity, which involves a large number of meanings and significances”.
The issue also contains five papers in the Independent Communications section that address topics related to artificial intelligence, the psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, the analysis of a sustainable housing project, knowledge risk management, and the lag in neoliberal implementation in Ecuador and Bolivia. Two book reviews are also included. ID