I mentioned it before, but it's worth mentioning again. There's a new way to reveal structures of real complex physical systems that is amenable to analysis, that is, other than the one way we've been using for the past few hundred years, i.e. assigning numbers to them. Assigning numbers to things is what I always thought of as being the 'reduction' part of reductionism. That aside, when you consider a system as a network of internal relations, as network science does, and study it as a cell with a topology, it gives you a whole new kind of analytical window on real complex systems. Real complex systems are probably not the only kind worth studying, and projecting their internal networks for analysis is still 'reductionist' in a real sense, but it's a reduction having far more depth and a true relation to the original thing than representing things as numbers does. Whether it goes fast or slow, I think NetSci forms a whole new kind of horizon for analytical methods.
Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 680 Ft. Washington Ave NY NY 10040 tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Agar Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 4:42 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Seminal Papers in Complexity Last fall at the NECSI conference I was talking to an editor of a complexity encyclopedia now in process by Springer http://refworks.springercom/complexity/ <http://refworks.springer.com/complexity/> . I asked him, is there any common thread running through the conversations you've had and the sections you've commissioned so far? Only anti-reductionism, he said. So I just wrote that story and all of a sudden wondered, what the hell is reductionism anyway? Cheated by looking it up in Wikipedia and of course there's many different kinds. The old philosophy joke is, when faced with a contradiction, make a distinction. The first line of the major Wikipedia entry is, "In <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy> philosophy, reductionism is a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduction_%28philosophy%29> reduced to the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things." Sums. So is nonlinearity the key to the kingdom? Are we really looking for germinal papers in nonlinearity? Mike On Jun 16, 2007, at 1:47 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here are a few bibliographies: http://wwwpsych.lse.ac.uk/complexity/bibliography.htm <http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/complexity/bibliography.htm> http://www.santafe.edu/~jpc/EvDynBib.html http://www.barn.org/FILES/eybiblio.html -Shawn One problem with the seminal papers on complexity is that they don't connect. Take the foundational works of H.T. Odum, the systems ecologist(1) or the cybernetic systems thinkers Ross Ashby (2) or Norbert Wiener(3). It's hard to link them to other branches of complex systems study like Prigigene's 'Exploring Complexity' or Wolfram's 'New kind of Science' or Barabasi's 'Linked' (leaving out numerous important others). As a consequence few people are aware of the general timeline of complexity as a subject(4), and any timeline of the field is bound to be missing major contributions. The problem seems is partly that the study of complex systems is interdisciplinary, because systems are, and what happens is each discipline goes off on its own tangent and acts like it is trying to take over the subject as a whole, each vying to erase each other rather than connect with each other. My work seems to be an example of an attempt to link approaches, a new form of physics intended expressly for use by any discipline, and incorporating unique useful pieces of what's been developed from all the disciplines I've been exposed to. My work may be 'odd' in more ways than that, but it's partly because I'm trying to write in a common language that makes it look 'foreign' to every discipline, so no one'll publish it... Catch 22! :-) (1) Odum: 1994 'Ecological and General Systems' (see http://www.eoearth.org/article/Odum,_Howard_T.) (2) Ross Ashby's 1947 'Ecological and General Systems' or his 1956 "Introduction to Cybernetics" (& see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Ross_Ashby) (3) Weiner 1948 'Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine' (3) complex systems thinking timeline from the cybernetics soc. (http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/timeline.htm), 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 Owen Densmore Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 7:38 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] Seminal Papers in Complexity Several of us have been attending the SFI Summer School this year. One thing that has stood out for me is that there are very few appropriate texts on the detailed, seminal ideas within complexity. Either the books are "popular" or they are technical/formal enough, but without broad view of complexity itself. Indeed, they may be *too* advanced in their speciality for the broad use complexity wishes to make. One example today was the intersection of computational theory and statistical mechanics given by Cris Moore: A Tale of Two Cultures: Phase Transitions in Physics and Computer Science Here are the slides: http://www.santafe.edu/~moore/Oxford.pdf You'd be unlikely to find a book bridging algorithms, computational complexity, and statistical mechanics. This leads me to believe that seminal papers are likely to be a good solution for bridging the various cultures, hopefully with some that *do* bridge gaps between specialties. Sooo -- gentle reader -- this brings me to a request: I'd like to start a collection of seminal papers who's goal is to bridge the gap between popular books and over-specialized texts, which are formal enough to be useful for multi-discipline complexity work. This may be daft, but I think not. As an example, I'd say Shannon's 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication would be good. -- Owen ===========================================================> 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 ============================================================ 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
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