A post arguing that we shouldn’t give bonus points to off-beat and bold theories just because they are off-beat and bold. The allure of deep, hidden connections Probably we all had moments when we were seduced by the idea that there are unknown, hidden, long-ranging connections between seemingly distant parts of reality. The examples range […]
Category: Philosophy
The road to nowhere… or explaining human cooperation
Here’s a new instance in a series of silly-dialogue blog posts (find others here, here, and here). Today, the study of the emergence of cooperation is a peculiar cocktail of applied math, behavioral economics, and theoretical population biology. I have found myself on either side of discussions about if this is the correct direction (depending on […]
Signs ‘O’ the times
A double-bill blog post with snarky comments about two trending ideas that I’m not much of an expert on. The state of disruption In a much-discussed paper from the beginning of the year, Park, Leahey, and Funk proclaimed that science is becoming decreasingly disruptive. This was somehow seen as a worrying trend, but imagine the […]
A better way of thinking about emergence
In this armchair-philosophy blog post, I’ll argue that we need to talk about emergence with scientific detachment, and one way of doing that would be to emphasize its role in explanation rather than as a phenomenon in itself. The eye of the beholder, after all The wonder of life itself is the wonder of emergence. […]
Analogies at the edge of reason
Making analogies is the engine of human intelligence, but for humanity as a whole, and our collective-intelligence enterprise called science, it is an obstacle. I’ll try to expand on that in this, maybe not sharpest of posts. Hypotheses In science and life alike, we use analogies as shortcuts to form hypotheses. Any other strategy—experimenting, making […]
The quiet revolution: When complex left networks
Soon after networks became all the rage among statistical physicists, the field turned away from the home turf of complex systems science. This blog post argues for considering network science as distinct from complexity science. All is sketchy and subjective (from the viewpoint of a statistical physicist jumping on the complex-networks bandwagon). I can think […]
Complexity science in the name of politics: a travel diary
This is a reading diary of a naïve complexity / computational social scientist’s first encounter with F. A. Hayek + Eastern Bloc tektology & cybernetics. You might have heard about project Cybersyn? In 1970s Chile, Salvador Allende’s socialist regime was betting on a systems-theoretical approach to the complex decision-making that’s an inevitable consequence of a […]
The absolutely most fundamental
I recently revisited some social network classics, and this post collects random thoughts about them. In sum, I want to cheer on research on the foundations of social network theory. Not because the house would crumble without stronger foundations but because that’s where the coolest future discoveries will be. These reflections are rough, quick, and […]
Intro video to the history and ideas of complexity science and networks
I needed a video presenting the historical development of ideas behind the complexity and network science in 20 minutes—an impossible task of course (especially since I couldn’t spend too much time on prepping it). Anyway, someone out there could be interested, so here it is: Some credits not stated in the video: The starling murmuration […]
Emergence: Profoundly trivial
This post is an echo of voices from the distant past, prompted by a tweet by Fernando Rosas. (It’s also not entirely fact-checked and somewhat tongue-in-cheek.) Emergence is trivial! Emergence is what makes it possible to have different levels of description. Biologists can discuss cells; medical scientists can talk about tissues made of millions of […]
Petter Holme 