Unified Theory

Posted by Nigel Gilbert on Jun 06, 2006; 7:04pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/FW-SFI-Seminar-Complexity-Parallel-Computation-and-Statistical-Physics-tp521927p521953.html

Incidentally, the possibility of a 'unified' social theory has been the
subject of many decades of philosophical debate since Kant under the heading
ideographic vs nomothetic.

One of the problems that early natural scientists had to contend with was
that no one knew then what the relevant, effective ontology for scientific
theories is.  Should scientific laws be about 'essences' or 'forces' or only
observables (there's about 4 centuries of debate encapsulated in that
sentence!).  I think that social science has the same problem, and it is
interesting that Mike's candidate 'assumptions for a canonical society' are
such different types of 'theory': two distributions, one selection principle
and one attribute ('telic').  Personally, I believe that the most promising
route is by identifying common processes of interaction, recognising that
the outcomes of the processes may differ from one society to another, and on
the initial conditions (e.g. there is some common logic to trading which
results in markets of very different kinds; there is some common logic to
belief and opinion diffusion which gives rise to a range of different types
of network, and so on).  An implication is that just observing distributions
or gathering ethnographies at single moments in time is an unlikely basis
for understanding what these generic processes are.

Nigel




On 6/6/06 17:27, "Michael Agar" <magar at anth.umd.edu> wrote:

> Interesting idea. In various and sundry experiments with drug ABM's
> it seemed like assumptions were being made that were candidate
> assertions for a "canonical society." For instance, we set up
> networks on a power law distribution assumption following Barabassi.
> We assumed that openness to change among agents followed the normal
> distribution shown by Rogers' work on Diffusion of Innovation. Do
> these tend to be how "normal" small societies organize themselves? If
> so, why is that? If so, in what kinds of social ecologies do they
> depart from it?
>
> Then there's an interesting connection between ABMs and the robust
> trend across many social and psychological theories that a theory has
> to be "trifocal." Agents are the centerpiece, then a level down to
> model their knowledge and rules, then a level up to observe the
> system that they create on the one hand and that effects them in
> turn. Is that a minimal requirement for a unified social theory?
>
> Then there's the natural selection principle. Some sort of co-
> evolutionary mechanisms would seem to be required, but they'll have
> to be different from the classic Darwinian. For instance, human
> agents are telic, they organize around imagined future states. If we
> consider memes--a problematic concept, I know, but one that brings
> ideas into the picture--reproduction rates can vary from extremely
> slow to extremely quick. With memes mutations occur frequently and
> sometimes dramatically. Memetic crossover occurs in all kinds of
> interesting ways. A unified social theory will have to take all this
> into account in addition to natural selection on biological variation
> if it wants to explain human social conditions.
>
> Been out of the FRIAM loop for a bit so hope all that isn't a re-run.
> A good challenge, Jochen, that phrase. Vielversprechend.
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2006, at 4:18 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
>>
>> Where is the difference between steps, "depth" and time,
>> if "the depth of a system" is simply defined in terms of the
>> number of parallel computational steps needed to simulate it ?
>> Depth seems to be just another word for (virtual) time.
>>
>> Much more interesting is the question if there is a unified
>> theory for complex systems in terms of agents and multi-agent
>> systems. In psychology and sociology we have a patchwork of
>> theories, which arises from the complexity of the research object.
>> A complex system is often described by several theories and
>> multiple models, depending on the particular perspective. We
>> have the psychology of Sigmund Freud, of C.G. Jung, of Skinner,
>> of William James, etc. In sociology we have the sociology of
>> Durkheim, of Weber, of Luhmann, a few smaller theories like role
>> theory and "rational choice theory" and a lot of vague theories
>> like Giddens "theory of structuration".
>>
>> These theories can be correlated to one another if we
>> place them in a grid or coordinate system with two axes:
>> * historical vs. regular behavior (exceptional vs. expected events)
>> * micro vs. macro behavior (low-level vs high-level patterns)
>>
>> The behavior of a complex system depends neither solely on
>> individual events and accidents nor on universal laws.
>> Both sites play an important role, historical accidents (see
>> for example the principles "sensitivity to initial conditions",
>> butterfly effect, frozen accidents, path dependence) and
>> regular laws. Likewise, the behavior of complex systems
>> depends neither solely on individual microscopic actions nor
>> on macroscopic structures, institutions and organizations.
>> Both layers are important (see for example the principles emergence,
>> swarm intelligence, self-organization).
>>
>> The most interesting behavior occurs in the center or at the
>> middle, if microscopic actions have a strong effect on macroscopic
>> behavior and vice versa, or if historical accidents become global
>> patterns. An ideal theory would combine both aspects, historical and
>> regular behavior, micro and macro behavior by defining universal
>> "laws of history" or "theories of emergence". Do you think it is
>> possible to discover or formulate such a unified theory? Or at
>> least a unifying principle, such as evolution in Biology ?
>> Probably evolution is again the unifying principle here..
>>
>> -J.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Stephen Guerin
>> Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 9:10 PM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: [FRIAM] FW: SFI Seminar: Complexity, Parallel Computation,and
>> Statistical Physics
>>
>> Has anyone seen any papers on logical depth in the context of agent-
>> based
>> modeling? I know we could talk about n agents * t steps * a rough
>> description of agent and environment complexity, but I was
>> wondering if
>> anyone's done some more formal work...
>>
>> -Steve
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>
>
>

________________________________________________________________
Professor Nigel Gilbert, ScD, FREng, AcSS, Professor of Sociology,
University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK. [phone]