Month: May 2021

Theory and Practice of Contrast Integrating Science, Art and Philosophy

By Mariusz Stanowski

The book Theory and Practice of Contrast completes, corrects and integrates the foundations of science and humanities, which include: theory of art, philosophy (aesthetics, epistemology, ontology, axiology), cognitive science, theory of information, theory of complexity and physics. Through the integration of these distant disciplines, many unresolved issues in contemporary science have been clarified or better understood, among others: defining impact (contrast) and using this definition in different fields of knowledge; understanding what beauty/art is and what our aesthetic preferences depend on; deeper understanding of what complexity and information are in essence, and providing their general definitions. Complexity means integration, value and goodness – concepts that seem to be neglected today.

More at: www.routledge.com

Urban Complex Systems 2021

A Workshop Satellite of the
Conference on Complex Systems 2021
October 27 – 28, 2021
Submission deadline: July 06, 2021
Acceptance notification: July 09, 2021

Cities are massive systems whose tremendous complexity requires even greater efforts to be modeled, analyzed, understood, and governed. The city is the expression of a multitude of strongly intertwined systems that vary from people sociality to transport systems, from the cultural fabric to urban planning. Each of these city facets already represents in itself a complex system but their interconnection represents what is certainly one of the systems created by human beings with the highest complexity in the world. The aim of this event is to bring together researchers and practitioners from around the world interested in urban systems from the perspective of complexity science.

More  at: urbcompsys.github.io

Quantifying collective intelligence in human groups

Christoph Riedl, Young Ji Kim, Pranav Gupta, Thomas W. Malone, and Anita Williams Woolley

PNAS May 25, 2021 118 (21) e2005737118

Collective intelligence (CI) is critical to solving many scientific, business, and other problems. We find strong support for a general factor of CI using meta-analytic methods in a dataset comprising 22 studies, including 5,279 individuals in 1,356 groups. CI can predict performance in a range of out-of-sample criterion tasks. CI, in turn, is most strongly predicted by group collaboration process, followed by individual skill and group composition. The proportion of women in a group is a significant predictor of group performance, mediated by social perceptiveness.

Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin’s Descent of Man

Peter J. Richerson, Sergey Gavrilets, Frans B. M. de Waal
Science 21 May 2021:
Vol. 372, Issue 6544, eaba3776
Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man, published 150 years ago, laid the grounds for scientific studies into human origins and evolution. Three of his insights have been reinforced by modern science. The first is that we share many characteristics (genetic, developmental, physiological, morphological, cognitive, and psychological) with our closest relatives, the anthropoid apes. The second is that humans have a talent for high-level cooperation reinforced by morality and social norms. The third is that we have greatly expanded the social learning capacity that we see already in other primates. Darwin’s emphasis on the role of culture deserves special attention because during an increasingly unstable Pleistocene environment, cultural accumulation allowed changes in life history; increased cognition; and the appearance of language, social norms, and institutions.

Read the full article at: science.sciencemag.org

Modes of Thinking (in) Complexity. Key Challenges for Theory, Research, and Practice. Satellite Meeting at CCS2021

October 22nd, 2021, ONLINE

This Satellite Meeting takes the form of a workshop aiming to stimulate the discussion and the collaborative co-construction of new ideas about the nature and state of development of the modes of thinking in and for Complexity Studies.

It aims at identifying key challenges and questions that call to be addressed, including those regarding the development of more complex modes of thinking. It will focus the discussion on the identification of key theoretical, empirical, methodological, technical and practical challenges and/or ways of addressing them.

The workshop will aim to identify and explore how these key questions and challenges relate to the development or adaptation of tools and strategies to support the practice of particular modes of thinking in research and practice and to guide real-world interventions and educational activities (formal and informal).

Through a transdisciplinary approach, this meeting aims at constructing and stimulating productive and generative dialogues for the development of more complex modes of thinking (in) Complexity.

More details at: www.complexthinking.org