Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Oct 12, 2009; 4:57am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/A-question-for-the-emergentists-among-you-tp3799888p3806177.html
Doug,
you wrote ====>
"Once I've attached the 'emergent' label to a phenomenon, I now know that I can apply the following scientific methodologies to solve my problem:"
Well, the experimental method or the comparative method, depending upon the domain we are dealing with. One has to tease apart the effect of the configuration of elements from the effects of the simple presense of the elements.
Here's an example: Once upon a time, many people assumed that a set of properties possessed by groups of monkeys occured because of the manner in which groups were organized. Forty years ago, hoping to demonstrate this, I did a sseries of experiments in which the members of an artificial social group were convened dyad by dyad ... in other words the group had never met as a group but all the potential dyads of the group had met and had an opportunity to behave. Then I summed the dyadic behavior accross all the itneractions and wrote it up as if I was describing a group in the field. The variables of interest were indistinguishable. Therefore, I supposed, triadic, tetradic, n-adic etc., intereactions were not essential to the traditionally observed patterns in the variables of interest. So far as these animals were concerned and these variables being in a social group was just like meeting all the other members of the group one by one.
Now, I dont really believe this to be true, but that was the answer I got, and had I not tired of running a monkey concentration camp, I would have continued research on this subject, and it would have been a study of the emergence of social order in monkeys.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 10/11/2009 8:43:13 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
"Once I've attached the 'emergent' label to a phenomenon, I now know that I can apply the following scientific methodologies to solve my problem:"
a) ...
b) ...
c) ...
--Doug
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:
let me take a quick whack at this.
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