Robert's response reminds me of the questions I started the semester with
when I taught Chaos, Fractals, and Complexity to Honors Undergrads at UNM:
(1) What is a Forest that isn't trees?
(2) What is a Person that isn't cells?
Also, about the Hurricanes thread:
Is turbulence alive? Looking at a Von Karmen Vortex street
(
http://www.efunda.com/designstandards/sensors/flowmeters/images/vortex_KarmenStreet2.gif) one sees
a sequence of vortices shed as air goes past an obstruction. I would argue
that each vortex as is shed it creates the perturbation which assures that
the next vortex will match it in mirror image. Thus, it is reproducing.
There is an initial period as the air is starting up, where a great
diversity of turbules (bits of spinning air) arises but these quickly evolve
into a single species (until the wind changes). These vortices are throwing
up spontaneous obsticles to the air flow which allows them to gather energy
from the flowing wind -- in Stu Kauffman terms they are harnessing a
thermodynamic work cycle, harvesting energy from their environment.
Hurricanes are quite similar. They gather vastly more energy by
facilitating the flow of heat from the warm ocean to the cool high altitude
air. They exist in a more diverse environment with many other air flow
species. Where turbulence resolves it's symmetry breaking early and only
once, hurricanes must do so over and over. They are less effective (thank
God) at reproduction.
By the way, if galaxies are like hurricanes and turbulence is alive ...
-Mike Oliker
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 09:26:49 -0600
From: Robert Holmes <
[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What are Hurricanes?
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<Friam at redfish.com>
Message-ID: <8577701505092708263b0f4bd5 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On 9/27/05, Jochen Fromm <fromm at vs.uni-kassel.de> wrote:
>
> ... Nevertheless, I
> think it is interesting that hurricanes get names, although they are
> non-permanent, volatile and temporary dynamic phenomena. ....
Just like humans :)
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