Re: complexity science map...
Posted by
Siddharth-3 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/complexity-science-map-tp2452775p2454001.html
Mikhail's link reminds me of
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=273&index=273&domain=
the
IIGSS project-in-progress since 2001 or so, i believe..(PDF on
www.iigss.net/gPICT.pdf )- Siddharth
the usual lurker, up on
www.emergentX.net in India ; waiting to someday attend a friam meet!
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Dear all,
I have been trying off and on for the last year to assemble a definitive glossary of complexity terms along with definitions that would make sense to any English major. I am having a harder time than one might expect finding the locus classicus of complexity talk. For those of you who don't read beyond the first screen of an email message, I am looking for sources, preferably available on line, that will help me explain the meanings of the words used in complexity talk.
OK. Now for the rest of you: When I started, I thought it was just because I didn't know enough physics, or thermodynamics, or mathematics, but each time I look into one of these areas I find that word usages and meanings in complexity talk don't really line up. For instance, "constraint" in physics-talk is just a force acting perpendicularly to the motion of the thing we are talking about, hence a force doing no work. In at least one version of complexity talk, a constraint is that which transforms energy into work. One candidate for a source of the meanings of complexity-words was Alicia Juarrero's. She relates "constraints" to information theory but also defines them as "relational properties that parts acquire in virtue of being unified -- not just aggregated --into systematic wholes. Here's another example: in thermodynamics, the "system" is just the thing you happen to be talking about. In Juarrero the system is the set of elements and relations among elements such that the properties of the elements depend on the state of the system in which they are located. I like her definition better, but the point is that in fact they are different with very different implications.
Where can I go to find stable language?
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
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