Mapping complexity/Human knowledge as a complex adaptive system

Abstract

Cartography is the art of map‐making that integrates science, technology, and visual aesthetics for the purpose of rendering the domain of interest, navigable. The science could aid the cartographer if it were to inform about the underlying process. Thus, Mendeleev's periodic table was informed by insights about the atomic mass periodicity. Likewise, Harvey's work on the circulatory system map was informed by his theoretical insights on Galen's errors. Mapping of human knowledge dates back at least to Porphyry who laid out the first tree‐of‐knowledge. Modern knowledge‐cartographers use a wide array of scientometric techniques capable of rendering appealing visuals of massive scientific corpuses. But what has perhaps been lacking is a sound theoretical basis for rendering legible the adaptive dynamics of knowledge creation and accumulation. Proposed is a theoretical framework, knowledge as a complex adaptive system (CAS) patterned on Holland's work on CAS, as well as the view that knowledge is a hierarchically heterarchic dynamical system. As a first leg in the conjoining experimental phase, we extract terms from approximately 1400 complexity science papers published at the Santa Fe Institute, deduce the topic distribution using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, capture the underlying dynamics, and show how to navigate the corpus visually. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 21: 207–234, 2016

Nature's Design's: The Biology of Survival

“…If a top-down role is problematic, is it perhaps possible to establish a bottom-up, boot-strapping role for design? Four supportive concepts [3] (Stigmergy, Complex Adaptive Systems, Knowledge Hierarchies & Emergence) need to be briefly reviewed to help shift the problem of biological design into a bottom-up approach.…”

“…The knowledge that we create helps organize human activities in myriad ways beyond the original intent. In other words, the production of human knowledge (as a β-tier aggregate) is itself a CAS process [3]. The form of human knowledge has a conical structure to it; i.e., by the very nature of abstractions, there are many more concretes than abstractions.…”

“…Epistemology is the meta-level study of our knowledge of those entities. As shown in [3], emergence may be considered either ontologically or epistemologically ( Fig. 4).…”

Social Crises: Signatures of Complexity in a Fast‐Growing Economy

“…As Bar-Yam suggests [39], this is typical of modern societies, where the simple tasks and behaviors of individuals that characterized past social organizations have been replaced by more complex tasks and behaviors. Society, as a complex adaptive system, increases the complexity of its knowledge [40].…”

Complex Adaptive Blockchain Governance

“…Fundamentally, there is no escaping the fact that all hierarchical systems lack sufficient design parameters to help resolve the problem of the top-nodes going rogue. It was founding father, James Madison who first recognized in [18] the fatal flaw in a purely hierarchical design (symbolized as |H henceforth and as in [19]). Instead he proposed the now institutionalized heterarchic governance (symbolized as |h henceforth and as in [19]) within the US federal government; i.e., a model of checks and balances along with a clear separation of powers across three coequal hierarchies in order to help make sure that the top nodes always have external oversight.…”