complexitystudies

I’m starting a new category: paper of the week. Here, I want to introduce papers important to complexity science and my research, together with related weblinks. Please note that paper of the week means neither at minimum nor at maximum a paper a week, it’s just more of a moniker with a hint to the update frequency.

First I would like to introduce

Abraham, R. H. 2002. The Genesis of Complexity.

@INCOLLECTION {Abraham2002,
title = {The Genesis of Complexity},
author = {Abraham, Ralph H. },
editor = {Montuori, Alfonso},
booktitle = {Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences},
year = {2002},
note ={verify citation: only from pdf file, not original source}
}

The article gives a nice historical overview from 1925 to early 90s.

He develops a beautiful tree metaphor regarding complex systems science - Complexity Science is described as a trunk with many branches, and three roots (in braces some important researchers):

• Cybernetics (Math: Wiener, von Neumann, Pitts; Engineer.: Bigelow, Shannon; Neuro: Rosenblueth, McCulloch, de No Anthro: Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead -> Macy Conferences 46-53),
• General Systems Theory (von Bertalanffy, Waddington -> Serbelloni meetings 66-70),
• System Dynamics (Chaos, Catastrophe Theory; Poincare, Jay Forrester -> SD Group 1968 -> Sloane School of Mgmt of MIT)

Some of the branches of complexity according to the article: Artificial Neural Networks, Cellular Automata, Cellular Dynamical Systems, Catastrophe Theory, Chaos, Theoretical Biology, Biospherics, Ecology, Synergetics, Autopoiese, General Evolution Theory, and Gaia Theory.

The website cited in the article:
VMI Complexity

The site of Ralph Abraham, where you can also download the article.

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