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Emergence Seminar--British Emergence

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Nick Thompson

Emergence Seminar--British Emergence

All,

The emergence seminar met at Downtown Subscription this afternoon and survived a hailstorm, so I am feeling pretty perky about it. Next week, we will read The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism by Brian P. McLaughlin. British Emergentism is charming to read about. It is all so innocent, upbeat , hierarchical, and Victorian. The great and stable hierarchy of nature. You can almost think of the Queen herself as the last and greatest emergent phenomenon. In McLaughlin's essay, we learn, for instance, that the term, emergent, arose as a contrast to the term resultant ... as in the addition of vectors. When the result of the interaction of two forces was different from the resultant, you had an emergent. See: it's all so simple! I hope that others will join us from afar in reading this source. I have written the author, who teaches at Rutgers, to ask him to supply a pdf of the essay for me to make available for our discussion on the the condition that we would make that discussion available to him in some way, but he has not written back. If anybody knows him and would plead our case, I would be in their debt.

A few of you have asked that we might change the time to later. I am going to hang tough for one more week because of the Ulam lectures, but after that we might consider a later time. I am a bit reluctant to make it a beer thing, because I want people sharp, but we shall see.

Thanks all,

Nick

PS. I have a xerox copy of the article if anybody local would like it.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

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Merle Lefkoff

Re: Emergence Seminar--British Emergence

Dear Nick,

So how did it go? I had to make a decision, and I wasn't sure of the
time or place for emergence--so I spent the day at the inaugural
national organizing meeting of the Slow Money Movement at the Santa Fe
Farmers Market. It was---awesome! I have a deep interest in
transformational social movements, especially when they are likely to go
viral as this one will.

Thanks for your note. Please keep me in the loop.

Merle

Nicholas Thompson wrote:

>
> All,
>
> The emergence seminar met at Downtown Subscription this afternoon and
> survived a hailstorm, so I am feeling pretty perky about it. Next
> week, we will read The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism by Brian
> P. McLaughlin. British Emergentism is charming to read about. It
> is all so innocent, upbeat , hierarchical, and /Victorian. /The great
> and stable hierarchy of nature. You can almost think of the Queen
> herself as the last and greatest emergent
> phenomenon. In McLaughlin's essay, we learn, for instance, that the
> term, emergent, arose as a contrast to the term resultant ... as in
> the addition of vectors. When the result of the interaction of two
> forces was different from the resultant, you had an emergent. See:
> it's all so simple! I hope that others will join us from afar in
> reading this source. I have written the author, who teaches at
> Rutgers, to ask him to supply a pdf of the essay for me to make
> available for our discussion on the the condition that we would make
> that discussion available to him in some way, but he has not written
> back. If anybody knows him and would plead our case, I would be in
> their debt.
>
> A few of you have asked that we might change the time to later. I am
> going to hang tough for one more week because of the Ulam lectures,
> but after that we might consider a later time. I am a bit reluctant
> to make it a beer thing, because I want people sharp, but we shall see.
>
> Thanks all,
>
> Nick
>
> PS. I have a xerox copy of the article if anybody local would like it.
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> Clark University ([hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>)
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> <http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> 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