In my closest scientific surrounding, The Limits to Growth is surprisingly unknown, so at its 50th anniversary, this blog post is an intro + my reflections. For short, it’s a fascinating story of what happens when computational social science makes a splash. If we interpret computational social science literally—not just meaning social media data mining—its […]
That ole Illustrator magic
After making a figure with your favorite software—matplotlib, R, Matlab, gnuplot, etc.—there are usually many details that could need a touch-up. In collaborations, somehow that’s usually my job. Maybe partly because I’ve been using Illustrator since I-forgot-when, so I acquired some speed. I also love graphic design and am teaching scientific visualization (two areas with […]
The ability to unfocus
(I’m sure there are tonnes of literature and science on this topic that I don’t know of, so the purpose of this blog post is to reveal my ignorance by thinking out loud 😊.) The ability to focus is such a universally esteemed virtue that there must be some catch. I came to believe it […]
For the love of hens
In the first few years of the last century, during his summer breaks at a farm, Norwegian schoolboy Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe spent time observing chicken. He noticed that when hens peck on each other—as they do when they fight, typically about food—they follow specific patterns. If hen A pecked on hen B, B would not peck […]
How the names of quantities influence their interpretations
In my and adjacent research fields, measures and methods and their names have complex and sometimes detrimental relationships. This is especially true when the names have a clear and relevant meaning in the vernacular. There are several related mechanisms for which I have only scanty evidence (hopefully to be supported further in the future): The […]
What complexity science is, and why
I also posted this post on arXiv, in a more reader-friendly layout and somewhat shaped-up writing. This is a post/essay about understanding complexity science, via some peculiarities of the field, as a meeting place for a special kind of scientist. It is the result of my nostalgia-driven hobby of reading popular-science complex systems books, and […]
The network scientist’s survival kit
Throughout the scientific disciplines, core values, methodologies, and worldviews vary to a frustrating degree. Network scientists are interdisciplinary. Through years of catching up with our disciplinary colleagues, we have learned to understand other disciplines better than many scientists of those disciplines understand us. Such a fundamental thing as who a scientific result should benefit, and […]
Beauty contest or masonry
A lighthearted post about whether or not it is right to market your scientific output—a topic I am neutral about because there are great arguments on both sides, canceling each other. So, my inner dialogue could go like: Hey! Did you see César Hidalgo tweeting that storytelling is an American thing? Isn’t it anthropology 101 […]
Using networks to design an Indian village
Notes on the Synthesis of Form by maverick architect/mathematician Christopher Alexander belongs to the canon of design theory. In 150 pages of youthful enthusiasm, Alexander brings together D’Arcy Thompson, cosmology, modernist architecture, anthropology, and his own algorithm to hierarchically decompose a graph. In 1962, two years before the publication of Notes on the Synthesis of Form, […]
Faraway, so close! Nobel prize to complex systems
Yesterday, it was announced that Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi get to share the 2021 Nobel prize in physics. Woo hoo! I had a smile on my lips running through the night streets of Tokyo (my usual exercise). The best part is the motivation: “For groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical […]
Petter Holme 