Mikhail's link reminds me of http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=273&index=273&domain= the IIGSS project-in-progress since 2001 or so, i believe..
(PDF on www.iigss.net/gPICT.pdf ) - Siddharth the usual lurker, up on www.emergentX.net in India ; waiting to someday attend a friam meet! On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Dear all, > > I have been trying off and on for the last year to assemble a definitive > glossary of complexity terms along with definitions that would make sense to > any English major. I am having a harder time than one might expect finding > the locus classicus of complexity talk. For those of you who don't read > beyond the first screen of an email message, I am looking for sources, > preferably available on line, that will help me explain the meanings of the > words used in complexity talk. > > OK. Now for the rest of you: When I started, I thought it was just > because I didn't know enough physics, or thermodynamics, or mathematics, but > each time I look into one of these areas I find that word usages and > meanings in complexity talk don't really line up. For instance, > "constraint" in physics-talk is just a force acting perpendicularly to the > motion of the thing we are talking about, hence a force doing no work. In > at least one version of complexity talk, a constraint is that which > transforms energy into work. One candidate for a source of the meanings of > complexity-words was Alicia Juarrero's. She relates "constraints" to > information theory but also defines them as "relational properties that > parts acquire in virtue of being unified -- not just aggregated --into > systematic wholes. Here's another example: in thermodynamics, the "system" > is just the thing you happen to be talking about. In Juarrero the system is > the set of elements and relations among elements such that the properties of > the elements depend on the state of the system in which they are located. > I like her definition better, but the point is that in fact they are > different with very different implications. > > Where can I go to find stable language? > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, > Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) > > >
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