On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 09:19:28PM -0700, Steve Smith wrote: > Russel - > > I only recently realized that *you* were the author of "Theory of > Nothing"... my wife brought home a copy (she is the consummate > hunter-gatherer of books) and I saw your name on it. I must have > read it when it was first published (6 years ago or so?) but lost > track of the copy... > > When you posted here, it made me think to follow up and surely enough! > > Very interesting work! Your use of the concepts of Syntactic and > Semantic languages applied to physics models and it's relevance to > emergence was worth the price of entry (free to me, but you get the > point) by itself! I don't remember you weighing in when Nick was > holding his weekly discussion group on Emergence, but this would > have been helpful IMO! >
I did post a few times to the emergence discussion group, but alas didn't find to time required to do the essential reading of the tomes discussing emergence, so eventually had to skip the discussion. I have come to a particular view on complexity and emergence, through using it in my studies of complex systems, rather than reading the copious literature on the subject. If I had done the latter, I'm sure I would have been lost in the mire of contradictory definitions and positions. So I'm quite sure, that what I've published is not particularly original, and quite probably reproduces what someone else said in the dim, distant past. Nevertheless, my paper "On complexity and emergence" is my second highest cited paper, with 79 cites, according to Google Scholar. I didn't expect that :). Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
