Von Neumann and Muenster’s introduction of Game Theory, Thom’s Catastrophe Theory, and Zadeh’s Fuzzy Sets Theory - all have one thing in common. They don’t explain everything, but at one stage we thought they might. Network science and complexity theory may well follow the same trajectory. Even if they don’t, I think the following is a useful counter-excitement tool.

“A pattern can be seen in the fate of these new techniques following their introduction:

1) the application of this procedure to unresolved questions in social science;
2) a sceptical reception in the established science with claims of faddism and similar reactions;
3) the formation of a following for this mathematics;
4) the claim for a new science resolving many previous problems;
5) the diffusion into popular, non-scientific culture;
6) reaction and disillusionment;
7) the adaptation of the technique to the established model. ”

[this from : Back, K.. Chaos and complexity: Necessary myths. In R. A. Eve, S. Horsfall, & M. E. Lee (Eds.), Chaos, complexity, and sociology (pp. 39-51). Sage. p. 43-44]

Liked this quote: [via Jef’s Web Files]

“It was no less a scientist than Charles Darwin who demonstrated the consequences and the human tragedy of a purely scientific, alienated intellect. He writes in his autobiography that until his thirtieth year he had intensely enjoyed music and poetry and pictures, but that for many years afterward he lost all his taste for these interests: ‘My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of fact . . . .The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.’”

- Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be

This book has started getting really interesting - and so it’s quite hard to keep these notes short. Will do my best.

Metaphors of Memory - Overview

- The general themes of the chapter are: collective and individual memories, how technologies have helped/hindered our memories, and how those technologies give us metaphors with which to try to understand memories.
read on »

I know, I know - it’s not slick at all, and I should have stuck with the Movable Type style sheets etc. Just give me time. But meanwhile, my apologies for the fact I am artistically impaired…

Still, I suppose it offers ready proof that while all expressions of creativity are equally valid, they are not all equally talented, eh?

Grrr … I know this is pedantic, but can I make one common sense point? The exception proves the rule does NOT mean “because there is something which disobeys the rule, that means the rule must hold.”

How could it?

“Prove” in this case is used in the same way as it is in the phrase, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” or proofreading. It means test.

So …

The exception proves the rule means “Take a case which you think is exceptional [the exception], test it [proof it], if the rule [the rule] still holds then it’s probably a good rule.”

“[In the late 1000s, Taoists and Neo-Confucianists] taught that all was in flux but that everything structured itself according to inner principles that governed it. Now we’d call those laws. They said principle is one, but its manifestations are many. In other words, things in this world emerge from elements that structure themselves. The mind, they said, is not a vessel to be filled with facts or ideas. It too emerges. The mind is an emergent phenomenon.”

[Thanks Peter for this.]

Networks often (maybe always?) exhibit emergent behaviour. Emergence is another buzzword, but less flakey than memes. (It’s got a thousand year history for a start!). Anyway, I know I’ve said networks is the next sensible place to start examining for, but network science is very much a subset of complexity theory.
read on »

December 08th 2003 | Comments(1) | Notes on complexity, emergence networks

There’s an interesting piece of research being done at Harvard’s Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. Basically, they have developed a test which they think will help them work out what moral intuitions are cross-cultural, evolved etc. And anyone can do it. In fact, the more people who do, the better the results.
read on »

Nice quote found in Rose’s book:

“Research is above all the art of asking questions that are both interesting and answerable. The most exciting questions are often unapproachable … On the other hand, trivial questions can often generate a lot of trivial answers” - p.57.

Typical after the event serendipity stuff - much better put than my blurbing on about analysis and synthesis to Peter on his cup runneth over problem.

Quite enjoying this, though if am honest don’t feel 100% at home reading about phosphoproteins! First three chapters mostly seem to be stage-setting and autobiographical.

Ch.1 : The Search for the Rosetta Stone
- Rose suggests an understanding of memory can act as a Rosetta Stone for the Hieroglyphics of Mind and the Greek of Brain
- Admits there are some problems with this: it treats memory purely on an individual level (no collective conscious etc); and it doesn’t take into account the rest of the body and the hormones it produces affecting brain and mind.

Ch. 2: Reading the record
- autobiographical stuff on current day to day life of a researcher.

Ch. 3: Making Memories
- about how neuroscience came to be, and how Rose became a memory researcher in the 60’s.

Links:
Rosetta Stone - British Museum

Apparently,

Guy Claxton will be working on a book on how societies have explained the ‘odd’ aspects of human experience: dreams, creativity, madness, mysticism and possession. To be published by Little brown in 2004, the book is provisionally entitled The Brain’s Unconscious Minds: From Plato’s Chariot to the Neural Net.

Looks interesting, eh?

Links:
Claxton - writing

Was browsing David Gurteen’s site (which is excellent) and saw that he had wondered where ideas came from.

Which made me think knowledge management and running before walking.My initial reaction I’ve lifted back and put here.

Where ideas come from seems pretty much like the holy grail of KM to me.

Some miscellaneous comments

1) The Greeks had one take on it. When Hesiod outlined the family tree for the Gods, he noted that the Goddess Memory was mother of the Muses (the goddesses who were responsible for creative inspiration). Fortune favours the prepared mind etc.

2) There is definitely something about hot showers and baths! Archimedes’s eureka moment? Might be interesting to compile a list.

3) I don’t know enough about the science, but read an interesting book a while ago called “Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind”.

It’s basic idea was staring out of the window/having a shower is productive.
read on »

December 03rd 2003 | Comments(2) | Thoughts on Brains, Creativity productivity

Really interesting article on networks, being scale-free and heresy. [Thanks Technodummy for this. ]

In the 13th century, Catholic inquisitors halted the spread of heresy by exploiting insights that look remarkably similar to the science we now use to describe networks as diverse as social structures, the spread of disease and the web.

Links:

technodummy :: blog - Self Forming Knowledge Networks - heretics, disease and the spread of information

December 02nd 2003 | Comments(2) | Notes on heresy, History networks

The MIT notes -especially the bit about Lamarckian evolution - got me thinking about something I’d done a while ago. For my Masters, I wrote a paper on a new style of genetic algorithm, modelled not on the way genes evolve, but on the way human groups evolve.

Anyway, if you’re interested, I’ve put up a fuller outline and some experiment results here.
read on »

Thought it would be responsible to post this, lifted directly from the MT website

Movable Type Spam Vulnerability
11.26.2003

The “Email this to a friend” functionality in the mt-send-entry.cgi script is vulnerable to being used by spammers to send spam messages. In principle, all “email this to a friend” programs are vulnerable to being used by spammers, because they allow the user to specify a To: address and a message body. But in practice, MT’s implementation of this is not as robust as it should be, and a new version is available below.
read on »

I went off to Waterstones in Chiswick to have a browse this Saturday and found what looks like an interesting (and less vague) book.

It’s called The Making of Memory by Steven Rose. It won the Rhone-Poulenc Science prize (which I’m assuming is a good thing) and is described on the back as being:

about the biological processes by which humans - and other animals, learn and remember - and how researchers can explore these mechanisms. Since the first edition of this book won the Science Prize in 1993, research has moved forward and Steven Rose has revised the book

Anyway, I’m not a natural at biology, but I’ll try to post some summaries as I go through it.

Links:
Steven Rose - Memory Book @ Amazon

December 01st 2003 | Comments(0) | Asides on books, Brains memory