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As careful readers of this blog will note, I've been obsessed with Alex Ryan's visualization of the way new levels of organization come into being (e.g. atoms --> molecules --> cells, etc).  In an attempt to complement and extend his model, here's a visualization of how I think of the various concepts...

As readers of my blog posts know, I talk a lot about evolutionary systems, the formal structure of cooperation, the role of both in emergence of new levels of complexity, and I sometimes use cellular automata to make points about all these things and the reification of useful models (here's a summary of how...

This is a followup to Ben's post on Human Cultural Transformation Triggered by Dense Populations.  Too many links for this to be accepted into the comments directly... In thinking about these questions, it helps me to remind myself of the difference between evolution and emergence. Evolution happens...

The two economists that have most informed my view of the current macroeconomy are Arnold Kling and Scott Sumner. In both cases, their models and explanations make sense to me.  They use solid reasoning and evidence; I don't feel I'm getting a lot of hand waving. Unfortunately, at first glance, their views...

Heng, et al recently published a review paper that brings together and touches on many different aspects of cancer complexity.  I thought this an opportunity to selectively quote the paper and organize the quotes loosely around various complex systems concepts they relate to.  I'm curious whether this...

Kevin has a few threads regarding the effect that micro behaviors have when aggregated to macro behaviors: Society According to Kevin I May Have Been Wrong About Macroeconomics But I Was Probably Right About Climate Models It occurred to me as I was reading this Huffington Post article that there is a...

Continuation of: Focusing on "Autonomy" I've been trying to reconcile Rafe's an my views on this topic.  I actually think we agree on the broad themes related to our argument over "autonomy".  From my perspective, it seems like the only real disagreement is on the implications for humans. As a higher...

Continuation of: Superfoo Rafe and I had a great chat on the phone today about Superfoos.  I think we agreed that there will be multiple instances of agents emerging in the level immediately above humans but there is always a single top-level network in local space.  I think we also agreed that the...

Response to Superorganism as Terminology. I was actually about to post something about terminology, so I'm glad this came up. It's just so difficult to choose words to describe concepts that have little precedent, without going to the extreme of overloading on the one end (e.g. "organism") or the other...

This is a response to Kevin's post responding to my post. Rafe makes an analogy to cells within a multicellular organism. How does this support the assertion that there will only be one superorganism and that we will need to subjugate our needs to its own?  Obviously, there are many multicellular organisms....

The following is a recent paper by Henry Heng published in JAMA.  I've linked concepts mentioned in the paper to corresponding explications from this blog. JAMA. 2008;300(13):1580-1581. The Conflict Between Complex Systems and Reductionism Henry H. Q. Heng, PhD Author Affiliations: Center for...

Will Wright's demo of Spore illustrates some key concepts of complex systems, including the notion of simple rules generating complex behaviors, and also the power of recursively applied (i.e. fractal) computation at different levels.  Living systems leverage these same principles. One of the baffling...

I figured it was time for a reset and so the following is a summary of much of the foundational posting that I've done on this blog so far.  As always, a work in progress, subject to refinement and learning... I see there being at least two types of emergence, autocatalytic and cooperative. Emergence...

[ This is an edited version of a blog comment on Brandon Kein's Wired Science post here ] The question of whether we will "break through" to a superorganism or collapse through any number of spiraling cascades or catastrophic events is the subject of Ervin Laszlo's book, The Chaos Point, which I highly...

Here are some notes that I took at TED 2008.  I have a bunch more on each of the speakers individually which I may post as time permits.  Let me know if you want me to expand any of the notes below into a full post. Themes TED sessions have their own explicit themes, but I detected a few implicit themes...

Not having had any serious biological training I have to go to Wikipedia and Google to learn the basics. And I'm often surprised to find that concepts everyone uses don't have good consensus amongst scientists. When reading the Wikipedia entry for "gene", it occurs to me that if the concept didn't predate...

Stability can be thought of as a measure of agency. That is, the more stable a system is, the better we are able to recognize it as a distinct agent, a system that actively, structurally or by happenstance persists through time, space and/or other dimensions. Burton Voorhees defines a concept of virtual...

Over the years evolutionary theory has itself evolved to encompass new and more disciplines: social Darwinism, genetic algorithms, co-evolution of biology and culture, evolutionary psychology, economics, psychoanalysis, and more. Attempts to formalize evolution typically have focused on several elements or...

For me, the following metaphor really helps to envision the relationship between levels and their interactions. Imagine a clear rectangular container viewed from the side. Inside the container are various substances with various degrees of attraction to and repulsion from one another, such as sand, water,...

The following is a non-exhaustive catalog. Note that these mechanisms are in fact emergent properties of the system under study, a fact which has some fairly profound consequences when considering the lowest known levels in physical systems. Read Ervin Laszlo's chapter, Aspects of Information, in Evolution...

Talking about culture from a complex systems standpoint requires a bit of inductive leap of faith as follows. If you buy the argument that agents emerge from agents (and interactions thereof) at lower levels, then it is clear that there is some level of agency above individual humans.* What we call this...

To understand the concept of agency and emergence thereof, it helps to think about very pure systems that exhibit agency emergence. One such system is Conway's Game of Life, a kind of cellular automata system which exhibits some uncanny life-like behaviors. You should read the synopsis of Life as well as...