Complexity -> Emergence
Notes - November 2002

Computers as telescope
Iteration rather than continuity (Turing, others)
Continued playing out/acceptance of darwinian thought

Basic ideas

• simple things yield complex behavior
• "complex" behavior yields order
• no leader (Lashley et al)
• importance of feedback, positive and negative (Wiener et al)
• stability as balanced forces

Illustrations and extensions

• Game of Life - order from simple interactions, sensitive dependence, CONTEXT DEPENDENCE (no designer, no planner, no architect .... )
• Sandpile - non-equilibrium order - Bak, Prigogine
• Issue of determinism/indeterminism and its significance (Serpinski's triangle)

Generality

• solar system
• universe
• chem to bio
• bio to culture
• culture to ?

Problems - levels of organization, context dependence

Similar phenomena at different levels of org, dependence on randomness, change in conception of time, causation, "purpose"

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Got downward causation, discrete time/iteration, context-dependence, idea of non-determination by properties of elements (underdetermination, context-dependence, top-down causation, want to add indeterminacy), generality, history

Didn't get to brain, zygote as "ants" (parts behaving as wholes), determinsm/indeterminism, non-equilib thermod as "context", levels of organization problem, complete generality

From conversation with Panama

• "top down" causation from indirect interactions ("stigmergy")
• difference between cellular automata and swarms - Langton's Ant more like swarm
• levels of organization requires stigmergy, context of two kinds? second law and random, catastrophic perturbation?
• breadth of applicability - BiosGroup.