Doug Blank's blog

Today, one of my favorite biologist bloggers pontificates on Conway's Game of Life, agency, and the biologist's job of finding patterns. Pharyngula explores the development of complexity in Chance and regularity in the development of the fly eye. When Pharyngula (PZ Myers) argues against a magical interpretation of the unfolding of events, he is talking to the "intelligent design" proponents who would point to this development and claim that it must be the act of a designer.

A while back Laura suggested a field trip to The Fabric Workshop and Museum. Next Friday would be an excellent time to go. Shir Ly Camin, Education Coordinator, invites us to: Swarm Conversation with the Guest Curators, Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton Friday, 3 March 2006 6:00 p.m. Camin says "Miller and Lupton will convene a discussion of "swarming" as it reflects contemporary views of nature, politics, and social life that favor unplanned and decentralized modes of organization. They will be joined by Deborah Gordon, Professor of Biological Sciences, Stanford University and Eugene Thacker, Assistant Professor at the School of Literature, Culture & Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology."

On Wednesday, we will change directions a bit and head directly to computer modeling. There are two readings posted on the schedule for Wednesday: first, take a look at the first two chapters of Stephen Wolfram's "New Kind of Science." Second, look over the pages on "Python 1D CA". The "Python 1D CA" will probably be not enough detail for some of you, and too much detail for another some of you. Keep in mind that we have a very diverse group. I hope that everyone in the class will have their accounts soon, and you can try out the experiments. If you are following along our blog, all of the software that we will use in this course is freely available, so you can download it and follow along. And everyone is welcome to comment here.

In class this week, we will be discussing Paul's "From the head to the heart". Although I usually read everything on-line, you might prefer to have a hardcopy of this. In printing the paper out, I created a few versions that you may find useful, even for on-line reading or for printing---some have a larger font than others. Read more for the choices...

1. HTML, wide, no border
2. PostScript, wide, no border

Every week for the last few years, a group of people from Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, and the surrounding community, have meet over coffee and muffins to discuss ideas surrounding the concept of "emergence". These people are faculty, staff, students and others that stop by. The discussions are informal, and usually run the gamut from social structures to atoms, and everything in between. The discussions are open to all, and we encourage participation as discussers and discussion leaders. During Spring 2006, we will meet every Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. in Park Science 230, the Emergent Intelligence Laboratory. Coffee, muffins, and scones start the meeting off. Read more...

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