Emergent Systems: A Discussion
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The Emergence Breakfast Group is going to be taking a break. If there are people interested in giving presentations, please contact Mark Kuperberg and we will start the group up again at a more convenient morning next semester.
People in a variety of disciplines
and walks of life are in the business of trying to make sense
of the world. In so doing, all make use of conceptual frameworks,
habitual ways of thinking that influence both how one tries
to make sense of new observations and the new questions one
asks (and doesn't ask). These conceptual frameworks are themselves
reflections of the kinds of observations that have and can
be made.
Computers, like telescopes and microscopes,
have opened a whole new world of possible observations. Because
of the rapidity with which they can do well-defined calculations,
computers have made it possible to explore the consequences
of relatively simple interactions of relatively simple things
in ways never before possible (try, for example, the
Game of Life or Simple
Networks, Simple Rules).
From this new capability are emerging
in different arenas significant insights into phenomena long
believed too complex for serious analysis ... and perhaps
a new quite general conceptual framework applicable in a variety
of disciplines and practical contexts. People who are interested
the emergence of "emergent systems" as a way of thinking are
invited to join this discussion by contacting Mark Kuperberg (Swarthmore) or Paul Grobstein.
emergent.brynmawr.edu/eprg/ - a collaborative, interactive
hypertext discussion of emergent systems
Complex Systems
on Serendip - additional resources
| "If
you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times,
each time there's be a dot somewhere on the screen. You'd
never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you'd
start to see this shape, because every dot will be inside
the shape of this leaf. ... The unpredictable and the predetermined
unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how
nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the
snowstorm." Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, 1993.
|
