When we learn things by studying or doing research, we perceive understanding as coming to us in step-like a-ha moments. I will argue that these moments happen more likely when we recognize (or map our observations to) specific patterns of explanation. The snag is, of course, that reality doesn’t always follow human-preferred patterns, so they […]
The embers of collective intelligence in science
In this blog post, I’ll explore reasons to call science a product of collective intelligence. I’ll look for something more than the sum of its parts, something more than a Cartesian or Baconian view of science as an edifice built by the contributions of many individuals. Are there steps of scientific progress taken by several […]
The eureka fallacy of symmetry
This post continues the theme of how quirks of the human psyche limit our advancement of knowledge—quirks that are very much avoidable if you are aware of them, but if you aren’t, they move the goalposts for scoring that Eureka feeling. I’ll entertain the hypothesis that if we are presented with a symmetrical, neatly structured […]
Essay time: AI and science’s happy ending
I’ve been a bit disappointed with the debate about the future use of AI in science. Either it has been short-sighted: “Wow, let’s try this thing we’ve always been doing, but with chatbots instead” or pessimistic without any real arguments. So, in remedy, I wrote an essay, channeling my inner Marvin Minsky. Download! 👏🏻 It! […]
Book & music parings. Vol. 1.
The premise is simple: just six fantastic science books and their spirit animals in the zoo of music. “1” because it feels like I forgot some obvious ones. Claude Lévi-Strauss – The Raw and the Cooked (1964)Vague Imaginaires – L’île D’or (2020) Mysterious, eclectic, French, neo-exotica vs. Scientific, eclectic, French structural anthropology. Lévi-Strauss is one of […]
Science is fun, isn’t it?
Hands up if you also read academic articles from other fields than your own just for fun. I know I’m not alone in doing that, but I also know many think academic papers are strictly business. During job interviews, an esteemed colleague of mine always asks the candidates to describe a scientific article from a […]
Surviving the complexity winter
Complexity science in 2024: claiming to be what it has never been, but gladly giving away its Nobel prize. This is a reflection about where the science of complex systems stands today, and where it could and should go next. Cover painting by Isaac Levitan. I’m as excited as everyone else that Hopfield and Hinton […]
Take statistics back from the statisticians!
(The title is as clickbait-y and tongue-in-cheek as ever. The cover illustration is by Midjourney, prompted by “I love my baby. My baby loves statistics.” . . which is, of course, a wink to that good old U/F/O track sampling Ken Nordine.) This post discusses the unfortunate and detrimental division of labor between statisticians and […]
Salon des refusés: Foundational papers in complexity science
The Santa Fe Institute has launched an ambitious project in which leading complexity scientists comment on “foundational” papers. However, many of them are not foundational in the sense that they started a line of research that led to the complexity science of today; some of them are even foundational for lines of research that are rather distinct from complexity science. I […]
The holistic tribes
This blog post is hopefully the beginning of the lecture notes for an upcoming course. Ultimately, I want to rectify the story of the development of ideas around complex systems, which has neither been a steady and well-informed progression nor a succession of Kuhnian paradigm shifts, but rather something messy and disconnected: a story of […]
Petter Holme 