Complexity -> Emergence
Notes - November 2002
Computers as telescope
Iteration rather than continuity (Turing, others)
Continued playing out/acceptance of darwinian thought
Basic ideas
- simple things yield complex behavior
- "complex" behavior yields order
- no leader (Lashley et al)
- importance of feedback, positive and negative (Wiener et al)
- stability as balanced forces
Illustrations and extensions
- Game of Life - order from simple interactions, sensitive dependence, CONTEXT DEPENDENCE
(no designer, no planner, no architect .... )
- Sandpile - non-equilibrium order - Bak, Prigogine
- Issue of determinism/indeterminism and its significance
(Serpinski's triangle)
Generality
- solar system
- universe
- chem to bio
- bio to culture
- culture to ?
Problems - levels of organization, context dependence
Similar phenomena at different levels of org, dependence on randomness, change in conception of time, causation, "purpose"
Got downward causation, discrete time/iteration, context-dependence, idea of non-determination by properties of elements (underdetermination, context-dependence, top-down causation, want to add indeterminacy), generality, history
Didn't get to brain, zygote as "ants" (parts behaving as wholes), determinsm/indeterminism, non-equilib thermod as "context", levels of organization problem, complete generality
From conversation with Panama
- "top down" causation from indirect interactions ("stigmergy")
- difference between cellular automata and swarms - Langton's Ant more like swarm
- levels of organization requires stigmergy, context of two kinds? second law and random, catastrophic perturbation?
- breadth of applicability - BiosGroup.