Seminal Papers in Complexity

[Douglas Roberts-2]

I think you've planted a seed for thought, Mike.

-- Doug

Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrotfarm.net
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-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Agar <[hidden email]>
Date: Saturday, Jun 16, 2007 2:43 pm
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Seminal Papers in Complexity
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>

Last fall at the NECSI conference I was talking to an editor of a =20
complexity encyclopedia now in process by Springer http://=20
refworks.springer.com/complexity/. I asked him, is there any common =20 thread running through the conversations you've had and the sections =20 you've commissioned so far? Only anti-reductionism, he said.

So I just wrote that story and all of a sudden wondered, what the =20 hell is reductionism anyway? Cheated by looking it up in Wikipedia =20 and of course there's many different kinds. The old philosophy joke =20 is, when faced with a contradiction, make a distinction. The first =20 line of the major Wikipedia entry is, "In philosophy, reductionism is =20=

a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things is reduced to =20=

the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things."

Sums. So is nonlinearity the key to the kingdom? Are we really =20
looking for germinal papers in nonlinearity?


Mike


On Jun 16, 2007, at 1:47 PM, sbarr at clarku.edu wrote:

> Here are a few bibliographies:

> http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/complexity/bibliography.htm
 http://www.santafe.edu/~jpc/EvDynBib.html
 http://www.barn.org/FILES/eybiblio.html

> -Shawn

>> One problem with the seminal papers on complexity is that they don't
> connect.  Take the foundational works of H.T. Odum, the systems
> ecologist(1) or the cybernetic systems thinkers Ross Ashby (2) or
> Norbert Wiener(3).  It's hard to link them to other branches of =20
> complex
> systems study like Prigigene's 'Exploring Complexity' or Wolfram's =20=

>> 'New
> kind of Science' or Barabasi's 'Linked' (leaving out numerous =20
> important
> others).  As a consequence few people are aware of the general =20
> timeline
> of complexity as a subject(4), and any timeline of the field is =20
> bound to
> be missing major contributions.
>
> The problem seems is partly that the study of complex systems is
> interdisciplinary, because systems are, and what happens is each
> discipline goes off on its own tangent and acts like it is trying to
> take over the subject as a whole, each vying to erase each other =20
> rather
> than connect with each other.  My work seems to be an example of an
> attempt to link approaches, a new form of physics intended =20
> expressly for
> use by any discipline, and incorporating unique useful pieces of =20
> what's
> been developed from all the disciplines I've been exposed to.  My =20
> work
> may be 'odd' in more ways than that, but it's partly because I'm =20
> trying
> to write in a common language that makes it look 'foreign' to every
> discipline, so no one'll publish it...  Catch 22!   :-)
>
> (1) Odum: 1994 'Ecological and General Systems' (see
> http://www.eoearth.org/article/Odum,_Howard_T.)
> (2) Ross Ashby's 1947 'Ecological and General Systems' or his 1956
> "Introduction to Cybernetics" (& see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Ross_Ashby)
> (3) Weiner 1948 'Control and Communication in the Animal and the
> Machine'
> (3) complex systems thinking timeline from the cybernetics soc.
> (http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/timeline.htm),
>
>
> Phil Henshaw                       =B8=B8=B8=B8.=B7=B4 =AF `=B7.=B8=B8=B8=

=B8

> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 680 Ft. Washington Ave
> NY NY 10040
> tel: [phone]
> e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com
> explorations: www.synapse9.com
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
>> Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 7:38 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: [FRIAM] Seminal Papers in Complexity
>>
>>
>> Several of us have been attending the SFI Summer School this year.
>> One thing that has stood out for me is that there are very few
>> appropriate texts on the detailed, seminal ideas within complexity.
>> Either the books are "popular" or they are technical/formal enough,
>> but without broad view of complexity itself.  Indeed, they may be
>> *too* advanced in their speciality for the broad use complexity
>> wishes to make.
>>
>> One example today was the intersection of computational theory and
>> statistical mechanics given by Cris Moore:
>> A Tale of Two Cultures: Phase Transitions in
>> Physics and Computer Science
>> Here are the slides: http://www.santafe.edu/~moore/Oxford.pdf
>> You'd be unlikely to find a book bridging algorithms, computational
>> complexity, and statistical mechanics.
>>
>> This leads me to believe that seminal papers are likely to be a good
>> solution for bridging the various cultures, hopefully with some that
>> *do* bridge gaps between specialties.
>>
>> Sooo -- gentle reader -- this brings me to a request: I'd like to
>> start a collection of seminal papers who's goal is to bridge the gap
>> between popular books and over-specialized texts, which are formal
>> enough to be useful for multi-discipline complexity work.  This may
>> be daft, but I think not.
>>
>> As an example, I'd say Shannon's 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of
>> Communication would be good.
>>
>>      -- Owen
>>
>>
>>
>> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=

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 Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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