No - the paper came first, by quite a number of years. Also the paper "Why Occams Razor", which also feeds into the book.
The paper "The Importance of the Observer in Science", which I presented at the peculiar "Two Cultures" conference, is indeed a summary of one of the main themes of the book. Finally, I have just succeeded in publishing a paper that came out of my book "Ants are not Conscious", which is due to appear in the Open Journal of Philosophy this month. I thought about publishing the "How soon until doom" appendix also, but I've lost the taste for publishing these sorts of thing in peer reviewed journals. The peer review system is not really ready for dealing with these ideas. Occam was written in 1999, and appeared in print in 2004, and Ant was written in 2007, and only just now has appeared in print! Cheers On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 09:03:57AM -0700, Owen Densmore wrote: > Nick: here's the paper Russell mentions below: > http://arxiv.org/pdf/nlin/0101006v1.pdf > > Russell: is the paper a summary of the book? I realize that's out of > order, the paper came first. > > Maybe we should finally chat about it here? > > -- Owen > > On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Russell Standish > <r.stand...@unsw.edu.au> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 09:19:28PM -0700, Steve Smith wrote: > >> Russel - > >> > >> I only recently realized that *you* were the author of "Theory of > >> Nothing"... my wife brought home a copy (she is the consummate > >> hunter-gatherer of books) and I saw your name on it. I must have > >> read it when it was first published (6 years ago or so?) but lost > >> track of the copy... > >> > >> When you posted here, it made me think to follow up and surely enough! > >> > >> Very interesting work! Your use of the concepts of Syntactic and > >> Semantic languages applied to physics models and it's relevance to > >> emergence was worth the price of entry (free to me, but you get the > >> point) by itself! I don't remember you weighing in when Nick was > >> holding his weekly discussion group on Emergence, but this would > >> have been helpful IMO! > >> > > > > I did post a few times to the emergence discussion group, but alas > > didn't find to time required to do the essential reading of the tomes > > discussing emergence, so eventually had to skip the discussion. > > > > I have come to a particular view on complexity and emergence, through > > using it in my studies of complex systems, rather than reading the > > copious literature on the subject. If I had done the latter, I'm sure > > I would have been lost in the mire of contradictory definitions and > > positions. So I'm quite sure, that what I've published is not > > particularly original, and quite probably reproduces what someone else > > said in the dim, distant past. Nevertheless, my paper "On complexity > > and emergence" is my second highest cited paper, with 79 cites, > > according to Google Scholar. I didn't expect that :). > > > > Cheers > > > > -- > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > > Principal, High Performance Coders > > Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au > > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
