miffed

[Nick Thompson]

All --

I am miffed that nobody rose to the bait of my question about when is a something a something.  Now if I had raised that question with respect to hurricanes and asserted, say, that a hurricane is "just" a bunch of thunderstorms, you would have all been all over me about "emergence".  A hurricane, you would say, is more than the sum of its thunderstorm parts.  But if I assert that a hurricane is "just" a node in the structure of pressure systems and air flows in the atmosphere,  no more a thing in itself than is an armpit an anatomical thing, would you have been all over me about "concretion"?   Or even "precipitation"?  Is there a sense in which higher order systems can precipitate an entity that is analogous to (but the reverse of ) the way in which lower order systems can generate an emergent???

Inquiring people want to know.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nickthompson at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
nthompson at clarku.edu
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[Russell Standish]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 07:34:33PM -0600, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> All --
>
> I am miffed that nobody rose to the bait of my question about when is a something a something.  Now if I had raised that question with respect to hurricanes and asserted, say, that a hurricane is "just" a bunch of thunderstorms, you would have all been all over me about "emergence".  A hurricane, you would say, is more than the sum of its thunderstorm parts.  But if I assert that a hurricane is "just" a node in the structure of pressure systems and air flows in the atmosphere,  no more a thing in itself than is an armpit an anatomical thing, would you have been all over me about "concretion"?   Or even "precipitation"?  Is there a sense in which higher order systems can precipitate an entity that is analogous to (but the reverse of ) the way in which lower order systems can generate an emergent???

I'm not sure why you say this is the reverse of emergence. I lost you
there.

Also as for when something is a something - it is when an observer
says there is a something. My outlook anyway, FWIW.

>
> Inquiring people want to know.
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> nickthompson at earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> nthompson at clarku.edu
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org

--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.

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Mathematics                               0425 253119 (")
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                 R.Standish at unsw.edu.au            
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[Stephen Guerin]

Nick complains:
>I am miffed that nobody rose to the bait of my question about when is a
something a something.

What's that I see...a wiggly worm...mmm, tasty... Ok, I'll bite. :-)

Something is more of a thing when it has an identifiable function.

I would say hurricanes are emergent self-organizing structures of matter that
dissipate an energy gradient (vertical difference in air temperature). As
gradient dissipators, hurricanes serve a function and are things. (I suspect you
knew I would say some such thing)

I tend to be more interested in self-organization than emergence only because I
think I can get more of a useful handle on the term. It's a working hypothesis
that all self-organizing systems do work. With hurricanes I think one might be
able to measure the amount of work performed by/on the system and ask if the
constraints in the system that allow work to be performed are context-sensitive
or context-free. The constraints of the work cycle(s) within a hurricane that
result in lost degrees of freedom on the air molecules are context-sensitive. If
you removed the nonequilibrium context driving the individual air molecules of a
hurricane, the system would lose its emergent function as a gradient dissipator
and become an inert concretion.

By contrast, if the constraints of any given system are context-free the system
might still do work (as a car engine does) but would not be of the
self-organizing or emergent type.

As for emergence and hurricanes, I think emergence lacks a universal definition
at this point. (I tend to conflate it with spontaneous symmetry breaking).

You might be interested one of Russ Abott's very readable papers on the subject:
http://abbott.calstatela.edu/PapersAndTalks/Emergence%20Explained.pdf

Or Cosma's blurb:
where he makes a distinction between emergence and self-org
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/self-organization.html
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/emergent-properties.html

Or, Jochen's: http://arxiv.org/ftp/nlin/papers/0506/0506028.pdf

Please don't stay miffed, Nick :-)

-Steve




 -----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 7:35 PM
To: Friam
Cc: Jaan Valsiner
Subject: [FRIAM] miffed


All --

I am miffed that nobody rose to the bait of my question about when is a
something a something.  Now if I had raised that question with respect to
hurricanes and asserted, say, that a hurricane is "just" a bunch of
thunderstorms, you would have all been all over me about "emergence".  A
hurricane, you would say, is more than the sum of its thunderstorm parts.  But
if I assert that a hurricane is "just" a node in the structure of pressure
systems and air flows in the atmosphere,  no more a thing in itself than is an
armpit an anatomical thing, would you have been all over me about "concretion"?
Or even "precipitation"?  Is there a sense in which higher order systems can
precipitate an entity that is analogous to (but the reverse of ) the way in
which lower order systems can generate an emergent???

Inquiring people want to know.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nickthompson at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
nthompson at clarku.edu

[Jochen Fromm-3]

Nick, I must admit I did not understand your mail completely, but
I just learned four new English words: "to miff", "bait",
"concretion" and "precipitation". Thanks :-)

It may seem inappropriate to discuss the question if hurricanes
are things in the light of the recent events, since they have
caused so much trouble, anger and suffering. Nevertheless, I
think it is interesting that hurricanes get names, although
they are non-permanent, volatile and temporary dynamic phenomena.
A hurricane is a dynamic weather phenomenon which consists of
strong winds that rotate constantly around the center of a low-pressure
area. Since hurricanes get names, they can be seen as things. Is wind
a "thing"? Is a storm a "thing"? I would say yes, because they are
persisting patterns in a dynamic system.
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:+Hurricane

You do not need agent-based modelling to describe hurricanes.
Ordinary differential equations will do. In this sense, they
are more "physical" than "social" phenomena, similar to
the critical points and avalanches in self-organized criticality
or phase transitions in physics. Every dynamic phenomena
in a dynamical system - fixed points, critical points, saddle nodes,
limit cycles and attractors - can in principle be described as a
form of simple "emergence".

The form of a hurricane resembles an attractive fixed point in
form of a whirl, vortex or spiral. It can be described by a simple
linear and two-dimensional differential equation, which has a pair
of conjugated complex eigenvalues with negative real part.

What all these phenomena have in common is some form of
stability in instability, permanence in change, or persistence in
dynamics. The critical point in self-organized criticality
is characterized by stability in instability, too: the system
evolves always automatically to a certain point (for example the
critical slope of the sandpile, which is also called
"edge of chaos" sometimes) and is therefore stable,
but at this point all kinds of avalanches and cascades can
occur, and therefore the system is at the same time instable.

By the way, hurricanes and galaxies show surprising and interesting
similarities. As Eric J. Chaisson says in his book "Cosmic Evolution"
(Harvard University Press, 2001): "Interestingly enough, the pancake
shape, the spiral-arm structure, the distribution of energy, the
differential rotation pattern, and many other morphological
characteristics of hurricanes bear an uncanny resemblance to
those of spiral galaxies [..] even the "eye" in a hurricane
conjures up the purported "hole" (black or otherwise) in the cores
of most galaxies.", see
http://www.vs.uni-kassel.de/~fromm/Hurricanes.htm

-J.

[Dede Densmore-2]

how come an armpit isn't a thing?
Dede
On Sep 26, 2005, at 7:34 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> All --
> ?
> I am miffed that nobody rose to the bait of my question about when is
> a something a something.? Now if I had raised that question with
> respect to hurricanes and asserted, say, that a hurricane is "just" a
> bunch of thunderstorms, you would have all been all over me about
> "emergence".? A hurricane, you would say, is more than the sum of its
> thunderstorm parts.? But if I assert that a hurricane is "just" a node
> in the structure of pressure systems and air flows in the atmosphere,?
> no more a thing in itself than is an armpit an anatomical thing, would
> you have been all over me about "concretion"??? Or even
> "precipitation"?? Is there a sense in which higher order systems can
> precipitate an entity that is analogous to (but the reverse of ) the
> way in which lower order systems can generate an emergent???
> ?
> Inquiring people want to know.
>  ?
> Nick
>  ?
> ?
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> nickthompson at earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> nthompson at clarku.edu
> ?
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org

[Robert Holmes-2]

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 :)

[Giles Bowkett]

Because it has feelings.

On 9/27/05, Dede Densmore <dede at backspaces.net> wrote:

> how come an armpit isn't a thing?
> Dede
> On Sep 26, 2005, at 7:34 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> > All --
> >
> > I am miffed that nobody rose to the bait of my question about when is
> > a something a something. Now if I had raised that question with
> > respect to hurricanes and asserted, say, that a hurricane is "just" a
> > bunch of thunderstorms, you would have all been all over me about
> > "emergence". A hurricane, you would say, is more than the sum of its
> > thunderstorm parts. But if I assert that a hurricane is "just" a node
> > in the structure of pressure systems and air flows in the atmosphere,
> > no more a thing in itself than is an armpit an anatomical thing, would
> > you have been all over me about "concretion"? Or even
> > "precipitation"? Is there a sense in which higher order systems can
> > precipitate an entity that is analogous to (but the reverse of ) the
> > way in which lower order systems can generate an emergent???
> >
> > Inquiring people want to know.
> >
> > Nick
> >
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> > Clark University
> > nickthompson at earthlink.net
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> > nthompson at clarku.edu
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
> > Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> > http://www.friam.org
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org
>

--
Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Not to mention; full of hot air.

On 9/27/05, Robert Holmes <rholmes62 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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 :)
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org
>

--
===============================================================
"Never pick a fight with someone who buys his ink by the
barrel."

- Mark Twain
===============================================================
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[Jochen Fromm-3]

How right you are.. This reminds me of Blaise Pascal and
his thoughts about consciousness:

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the
eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even
can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I
know nothing and which know nothing of me, I am frightened, and am
astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason
why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me
here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted
to me? The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."

"What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in
relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything."

and perhaps of Buddha, who has taught that we can find our true
self if we extinguish all thinking and finally ourselves completely
in the Nirvana (if the soul does not exist at all and the mind is
only an "emergent" dynamic phenomenon of myriads of neurons, then
he is probably right):

"All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes
and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is
in relation to everything else. "

"Everything is changeable, everything appears and disappears; there is
no blissful peace until one passes beyond the agony of life and death."

-J.

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Friam-bounces at redfish.com [mailto:Friam-bounces at redfish.com] Im Auftrag
von Robert Holmes
Gesendet: Dienstag, 27. September 2005 17:27
An: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Betreff: Re: [FRIAM] What are Hurricanes?

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 :)

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations Lecture schedule, archives,
unsubscribe, etc.:
http://www.friam.org

[Bruce Sawhill]

I think what makes a thing a thing is a profound question.  There are
many ways to see it.  One is a kind of functional emergence--when it
makes interaction and dynamics easier to describe by the people doing
the describing.  A kind of informational compression, a more complex
analogy of why statistics is useful--mean and variance are handy
compact descriptors of large amounts of data, but they are not "things"
in any objective sense, not a Ding an sich as Kant would have it.  I'm
not sure anything is a Ding an sich, but that's a much longer
conversation.

Cheers,

Bruce

On Sep 27, 2005, at 9:38 AM, Giles Bowkett wrote:

> Because it has feelings.
>
> On 9/27/05, Dede Densmore <dede at backspaces.net> wrote:
>> how come an armpit isn't a thing?
>> Dede
>> On Sep 26, 2005, at 7:34 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>
>>> All --
>>>
>>> I am miffed that nobody rose to the bait of my question about when is
>>> a something a something. Now if I had raised that question with
>>> respect to hurricanes and asserted, say, that a hurricane is "just" a
>>> bunch of thunderstorms, you would have all been all over me about
>>> "emergence". A hurricane, you would say, is more than the sum of its
>>> thunderstorm parts. But if I assert that a hurricane is "just" a node
>>> in the structure of pressure systems and air flows in the atmosphere,
>>> no more a thing in itself than is an armpit an anatomical thing,
>>> would
>>> you have been all over me about "concretion"? Or even
>>> "precipitation"? Is there a sense in which higher order systems can
>>> precipitate an entity that is analogous to (but the reverse of ) the
>>> way in which lower order systems can generate an emergent???
>>>
>>> Inquiring people want to know.
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>>> Clark University
>>> nickthompson at earthlink.net
>>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
>>> nthompson at clarku.edu
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
>>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>>> http://www.friam.org
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>> http://www.friam.org
>>
>
>
> --
> Giles Bowkett = Giles Goat Boy
> http://www.gilesgoatboy.org/
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org
>

[Robert J. Cordingley]

There was an interesting article in the NY Science Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/science/earth/27loop.html

which you might be able to see.  The article discusses the dimension of
subsea energy and the depth of warm water needed.  So it also depends on
subsea counterpart(s) - the loop - and other 'things' which should be
considered as the storm makes it's way across our oceans?

Robert Cordingley


Douglas Roberts wrote:

> Not to mention; full of hot air.
>
> On 9/27/05, Robert Holmes <rholmes62 at gmail.com
> <mailto:rholmes62 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 9/27/05, Jochen Fromm <fromm at vs.uni-kassel.de
>     <mailto: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 :)
>
>     <snipped>
>

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