It's always a great idea for someone to synthesize the diverse directions of an expanding fringe of research. It's curious, though, that the book idea was immediately preceded by a cautionary note on the contagious invasion of buzzwords. The surest way to force buzzwords to mean something useful is to connect them with the observed phenomena of the physical world, but I find the whole complexity community quite resistant to doing that. As a community we'd clearly prefer to think of complexity as theory.
No doubt it cuts both ways, that looking at physical phenomena is pointless unless you can connect them to the 'buzz' of images that people are interested in talking about. Still, I wonder that no one seems to be concerned that the branches of complexity science (in which I include much of physics along with the modeling approaches of Alife, etc.) have not yet tried to explain or document the most widespread complex process in nature, namely growth. Is it, a) comes in too many forms and is too complicated anyway, b) hidden in sight, c) a bad match for our preferred techniques? Wazzzza problem? I think there's any number of places to start. Considering that mankind has mortgaged its future to the success of a plan for perpetual business growth, isn't it sort of our job to peek under the blanket and see what kind of surprises might be in store? Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm > Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:21 AM > To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' > Subject: [FRIAM] FRIAM book > > > > The recent discussion about the advances in the field > of complexity science and Owen's question about a > sound basis for discussions about complex systems > caused me to think about the current state of the > field and its literature. Perhaps a definite book > is missing. Won't it be an interesting endeavour > to write one ? Perhaps with Stephen as an editor ? > A FRIAM book about Agent-Based Modeling, Complex Systems, > Artificial Life, Evolutionary Computation and Swarm > Intelligence ? It could cover for instance complex > networks, complex adaptive systems, basic agent-based > models, edge of chaos, frozen accidents, path dependence, > self-organization, types and forms of emergence, swarm > intelligence,.. > > -J. > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
