strong thesis

dear FISers,

Apologies for not having continued in the discussion--but the burden has
been heavier than usual...

I am afraid that the relationship between fitness and VEMS is now old hat,
so I will directly enter into the social road to complexity. Well, there
may be some trick, in the sense that we have to go to the ADAPTIVE
LANDSCAPES idea of Stuart Kauffman and others at Santa Fe (related to Per
Bak's criticality, to Langton's and others artificial ecologies, etc.)
applied to social evolution, and at the same time this is the most
fundamental vision of fitness nowadays. These adaptive landscapes have an
intrinsically interactive, dynamic character. Species, and societies too,
would climb their particular "mount fitness", but as they climb, the mount
escapes and deforms... quite many ideas and insights applying to biological
and social and technological evolution are pouring from such
models--theoretical physicists are also quite active in this exploration
derived basically from random boolean networks.

Well, is there some sort of commonality in between the evolution of social
complexity and the biological one? In part, the matter can be understood as
just looking for analogies (weak thesis), but also in a strong acception:
the existence of underlying INFO laws that both camps abide by. I would
personally subscribe to the strong thesis, but of course have not many
arguments yet.

I have said "info laws" instead of complexity ones because there might be a
problem in the way the complexity guys have advanced these adaptive
landscapes views, with a penchant towards computer wizardry and almost
complete disregard of the structural/communicational aspects and their
subtle interconnection. For instance, the roots of the widespread
occurrence of "power laws" in bio-social-cultural phenomena are more
suggestively analyzed by Gordon Scarrott (in his own personal quest of an
info sci.) than the mere complexity insistence by most of the above
authors...

Somehow, the qualitative aspects recently discussed by Bob, Andreas and
others can be viewed from a point of view closer to natural science too.
Perhaps that meeting point would represent a mutual crossfertilization and
a firmer starting point for the socioinformation analysis --and the strong
thesis could be really discussed...

best greetings

Pedro

---------------------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuan. TEL 34 976 761927, FAX --761861 and -- 762111
Dept. Ingen. Electronica y Comunicaciones, CPS Universidad de Zaragoza,
Maria de Luna 3, Zaragoza 50015, SPAIN
email: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
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Received on Mon Nov 09 11:22:56 1998