Models of Development

[Nick Thompson]

J-

These are great and I will chase them down;  but I was asking a more
PERSONAL question.  What models do you employ when you think about
development.  What other concrete processes is it LIKE.   If development
isnt LIKE a frisbee toss with an energetic golden retriever, what IS it
like.  

N-

Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
 [hidden email]

>
> The following books are probably a good start for developmental biology:
>
> J.M.W. Slack et al., From Egg to Embryo (1991) Cambridge University Press
> Lewis Wolpert et al., Principles of Development (2002) Oxford University
> Press
> Scott F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology (2003) Sinauer Associates
>
> I do not know if this is the kind of development you mean
> but you may find some good inspiration here.
>
> -J.
>
> ________________________________
>
> Carl and I have been struggling  off and on all year with the concept of
> epigenisis and an attempt to come up with a computer program that displays
> it.    The word is one of those that if you use it, you have, in the minds
> of others, anyway, committed yourself to an idealogy about development.

But
> it also represents a really long standing attempt to engage in some sort
of
> sane discourse about development stripped of the nature-nurture dilusion.
> It is the view that development proceeds as a dialectic between the
organism
> at any point and the environment at that point, interacting to produce the
> oroganism at the next point and the environment at that next point, and so
> forth.   We are BADLY in need of models that exhibit this property I
always
> think of chess games; Carl as another example which I will let him  tell
you

> about.  But I would really like to come up with about a dozen of them.
> Tomorrow would be nice.  I am thinking of a book entitled MODELS OF
> DEVELOPMENT.  
>  
>
>
>
>
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> End of Friam Digest, Vol 22, Issue 29
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[Jochen Fromm-2]

If you are looking for a simple multi agent model
which leads to very complex forms of development,
then it is hard to give a good answer. All scientists
are looking for simple equations and simple models
which describe very complex and rich phenomena.
To create agents is simple. To create and discover
an interesting model for them is much more difficult.
 
What form of development do you mean ?
Development is a very general and generic word, like
organization, complexity or system. There are many
meanings and models related to development.
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:+development
http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=development
The thesaurus in Microsoft Word 2003 says:
development is similar to growth, expansion,
progress, advance, increase, improvement,
training, advancement, enhancement.

In biological organisms, physical development is
possible through metabolism and growth controlled by
genetic instructions. Mental development is possible
by learning and training influenced by the environment.
Both forms of development are based on growth and
self-organization: the extraction of order and
organization out of the environment.

If I think about MAS and CAS, development
is first of all related to evolution and
evolutionary change. In _adaptive_ systems
and CAS development is of course a natural
and inherent property. It is associated with
the growth and expansion of cognitive
schemes or neural assemblies and the learning
of new strategies or rules. A favorite
form of learning in mobile robots and agents
is reinforcement learning.

Certain forms of development can be considered
as an adaptation to the environment. A major way how
nature builds complex living systems is delegation:
by constructing blueprints through evolution and
natural selection, which delegate the task of
constructing a complex system to the environment
itself. As Quartz and Sejnowski say, the representational
properties of the cortex are constructed by the
nature of the problem domain confronting it. This
one of the most flexible forms of development
one can imagine.

-J.

-----Original Message-----

..I was asking a more PERSONAL question.  
What models do you employ when you think about
development. What other concrete processes is
it LIKE.

N-

[Martin C. Martin]

Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> J-
>
> These are great and I will chase them down;  but I was asking a more
> PERSONAL question.  What models do you employ when you think about
> development.  What other concrete processes is it LIKE.

This book, which describes the recent advances in evolutionary
development for the lay reader:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0192862081

argues that the best metaphor is creating a work of art.  Just given the
starting state, it's unclear where things will go, and in fact, as
things start to take shape, they are some times revised, like painting
over a part of a scene that you didn't like.

Don't be confused by the fact that development is deterministic (at the
highest level anyway); it can still resemble a creative process.

If you're looking for the right model or metaphor, it's definitely worth
a read.

Best,
Martin