RE: [Fis] probability versus power laws

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

> Would one not expect that the systems disturb each other in their recursive
> selections albeit perhaps at the margins? If these disturbances are also
> recursive, this would again lead to powerlaws, wouldn't it? In biological
> systems one would therefore expect powerlaws to prevail. But in social
> systems, innovations are possible that would change the shape (exponent) of
> the powerlaw? What would be the expectation in these cases (e.g.,
> discourses)?

Dear Loet et al.,

Surprising as it may seem, Wilfried Wolff and I discovered power- law
distributions in ecosystem flow magnitudes back in 1990. (We called them
Cauchy-like distributions then.) We ascribed them to both the conditional
nature of the interactions (Conditional distribution was also a label for
power laws at the time.) and to the distorting nature of autocatalytic
feedback.

Unfortunately, none of the shining stars in the physics of networks in the
late 90's ever picked up on our work.

See:

Ulanowicz, R.E. and W.F. Wolff. 1991. Ecosystem flow networks: Loaded
dice? Math. Biosci 103:45-68.

Cheers,
Bob

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert E. Ulanowicz | Tel: (410) 326-7266
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory | FAX: (410) 326-7378
P.O. Box 38 | Email <ulan@cbl.umces.edu>
1 Williams Street | Web <http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan>
Solomons, MD 20688-0038 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Wed Jul 7 16:02:11 2004