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We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

hiranmay.xyz

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Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#11

Post by hdarshane »

surprisetalk wrote: post #9

To me, Christopher Alexander's work comes closest to describing "systems science". I recommend Notes on the Synthesis of Form , The Timeless Way of Building , and then skipping to the Nature of Order series. I'm of the opinion right now that what we call "design" and "architecture" is really just the science of finding stable habitable zones in high-dimensional problem spaces. What's cool about Alexander's work is th…

Interesting! Have heard about Christopher Alexander's work, but have never really jumped in. Maybe I should do that now.

>I'm of the opinion right now that what we call "design" and "architecture" is really just the science of finding stable habitable zones in high-dimensional problem spaces.

Wow! Yes! Agree with this view that all design and organisation is mostly just the most optimal/favorable state for the entire system to be in. What constitutes as favorability might be low free energy, high interconnect, distributedness etc.

May I suggest you to look into the work of Jeremy England in a similar light of self-assembly and optimisation in non-equilibrium states? Some really really interesting takeaways there, me sharing some of my interpretations might constitute as epistemic noise as I'm not sure if I understand each bit of it completely well at a 100%.

There was a great article about him in Quanta, and you might want to check out his talk at Karolinska Institutet.

Thanks for the recommendations, and I'll look out for your talk!

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#12

Post by Helmut10001 »

surprisetalk wrote: post #9

To me, Christopher Alexander's work comes closest to describing "systems science". I recommend Notes on the Synthesis of Form , The Timeless Way of Building , and then skipping to the Nature of Order series. I'm of the opinion right now that what we call "design" and "architecture" is really just the science of finding stable habitable zones in high-dimensional problem spaces. What's cool about Alexander's work is th…

Without knowing much about what you reference, this remembers me of the second law of thermodynamics [1], which coined entropy as a general concept for understanding many phenomena.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#13

Post by epgui »

This is an incredible perspective coming from a 16 y/o.

For what it’s worth, it took me spending 12+ years studying biochem and adjacent topics at university, to reach a very similar perspective.

The one criticism I’d make here (and tbh it’s unfair to expect more from the author) is that there has been a lot of work done towards this already. There are many systems biology textbooks, a much greater number of systems papers, and even entire journals on the subject. So I would reframe the observations slightly: there is a lot of prior work, and we need to double down on it and cross-pollinate it more.

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#14

Post by carapace »

hdarshane wrote: post #10
jprete wrote: post #7

I wonder if you're looking for cybernetics? The original meaning from the 1940s, not the corrupted science fiction shibboleth. Wikipedia - "The initial focus of cybernetics was on parallels between regulatory feedback processes in biological and technological systems...Wiener introduced the neologism cybernetics to denote the study of 'teleological mechanisms'." Wikipedia suggests it lost a lot of drive in part becau…

Yes. I'm aware. I think cybernetics has definitely drifted away from what the original scope was, also I think modern interpretations of cybernetics-ish ideas and complex system studies are slowly also incorporating social sciences and economics and so on. Interesting to note that if you look for journals on cybernetics, most papers are closer to EE, Deep Learning and some telecommunications here and there, if that c…

If you haven't already I highly recommend reading "Introduction to Cybernetics" by Ashby, it's got the nitty-gritty formalization that later "Second Generation" et. al. cybernetics drifted away from.

You can get a free PDF of the book here: http://pcp.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html

> This publication has been made possible largely through Mick Ashby, the author's grandson, who has convinced the copyright holders (the Ashby estate) that they should allow us to produce an electronic version.

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#15

Post by hdbv6 »

dav wrote: post #4

Somewhat related, I feel like the book Thinking in Systems should be taught in high school https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902

It wont make any diff cause most people dont want to think. And those who feel like thinking, love to think about very different things.

As problems get more complex this is the main headache -keeping everyone in the same boat rowing in same direction.

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#16

Post by endiangroup »

Having studied complexity from a computational perspective (via Santa Fe Institute and 1st wave Cybernetics) and a natural sciences one (via Dave Snowden and Alicia Juarrero) my preference is to stay away from modelling complex systems particularly complex adaptive ones. There is value in modelling, but heed the advice that all models are wrong. If you want to understand why, take a look at Steven Wolfram's Computational Irreducibility and Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework.

As for your interest in self-assembly and emergence I would highly recommend Alicia Juarrero's Dynamics in Action and Context Changes Everything - they are both tapping biological sciences to update and better inform our views of the world in deeply meaningful ways. The former changes our notion of cause-and-effect as the driving force in complex systems, stepping away from the Newtonian billiard ball frame. The latter expands on it talking about how constraints underpin the actions and dynamics in complex systems.

I'd agree that I'd love to see some convergence eventually in the complexity sciences world - but it is a new science relatively speaking - the divergence is a positive property in my opinion!

Keep up the energy, keep writing and keep researching! I enjoyed your post, it reminded me of the excitement I have for the field as a whole and the thirst I had for very similar questions! I wouldn't of guessed you were a 16yr old had you not stated it. Be prepared to have fundamental views changed and get comfortable with uncertainty!

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#17

Post by ysofunny »

my philosophical take is this all revolves around what constitues "one system"

on one level, something is a subsystem of a larger supersystem

on another, it's all the one and only system. but why wouldn't the components be systems in their own right?

and sure, it's all about the 'appropiate' level of abstraction. but my point is that any "science of systems" must give a working theory of levels; or at least say something on how to grapple with this. it's not sufficient to leave it as "that aspect is an art"

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#18

Post by bokoharambe »

woopwoop wrote: post #2

My PhD thesis was about the extension of smooth functions. In the 1960s, ideas in this area were studied under the umbrella of ideals of smooth functions, and had applications to catastrophe theory. So I spent some time reading about this topic. If you want a reading recommendation, the book "Differentiable Germs and Catastrophes" I remember being good, as well as "Stable Mappings and their Singularities". I bring th…

I feel like the real problem here is the way that research has to be sold in order to get funding (I assume the same was true in the 1960s). There is no inherent harm in trying to find a universalizing science, but market imperatives drive the creation of intellectual hypecycles with the associated booms and busts. That can then discredit entire fields.

Re: We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems

#20

Post by datadrivenangel »

endiangroup wrote: post #16

Having studied complexity from a computational perspective (via Santa Fe Institute and 1st wave Cybernetics) and a natural sciences one (via Dave Snowden and Alicia Juarrero) my preference is to stay away from modelling complex systems particularly complex adaptive ones. There is value in modelling, but heed the advice that all models are wrong. If you want to understand why, take a look at Steven Wolfram's Computati…

Exactly. All human systems are sociotechnical, and people within systems respond differently when they know that they're being monitored, and even more differently when they know that the monitors know that they know they're being monitored.

Exact models are somewhere between impossible and implausibly expensive for a non-trivial system. Approximate or die.

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