Eco-cognitive computationalism

Review article, 2026

Lorenzo Magnani has long explored abductive reasoning and the ecology of cognition, most notably in Abductive Cognition (2009) and The Abductive Structure of Scientific Creativity (2017). Across these works, he developed the view that human reasoning is an evolving, eco-cognitive process in which knowledge emerges through interaction between minds, artefacts, and environments.
Eco-Cognitive Computationalism continues this trajectory by bringing computation into the same cultural and epistemological frame. In this book, Magnani presents computation as a human cognitive activity, and an ongoing process of cultivating “ignorant entities” into cognitive mediators through processes of abduction, representation, and material engagement. The “eco” in this framework refers to historical and cultural ecologies of meaning: the social, technological, and symbolic environments in which human reasoning unfolds. Within these evolving settings, computation appears as a human technique of world-making, growing through the continuous domestication of matter, language, and code.
The book resonates with the principles of Digital Humanism (Werthner et al. 2022), which seek to reorient digital technologies toward human and cultural values. The following review outlines Magnani’s main ideas and highlights how his concept of domestication of ignorant entities offers a timely vocabulary for understanding the human inclusion of artificial intelligence in contemporary culture.