Evolution of Complex Systems

Evolution of Complex Systems Lecture 7: Society and its reproduction Peter Andras / Bruce Charlton peter.andras@ncl.ac.uk bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk

Objectives • Multi-organism systems • Human communications • Human society • Human artefacts and writing • Education system • The system of religion • The system of science • Identity violation and adaptation

Organisms • Multi-cellular systems made up of inter-cellular communications • Subsystems of specialist communications: tissues • E.g., muscle tissue, nervous system

Organism actions and perceptions • Actions: sequence of patterns of inter-cellular communications • E.g., limb movement • Perception: environmental actions on cells that are part of the organism, changing their communications, and changing in this way the pattern of communications within the organism • E.g., perception of light by photoreceptors

Inter-organism communications • Organism actions on the environment • The changes in the environment are perceived by another organism through environment induced changes in its own communications • E.g., sound emission, transmission and reception

Referencing in inter-organism communications • Each communication action / behaviour is determined by earlier communication behaviours, which are selected to be referenced by the current communication behaviour • E.g., courtship or fighting behaviour in animals

Multi-organism systems – 1 • Organisms act as communication units by performing communication behaviours • The communications are frequent and generate a dense communication cluster surrounded by rare communications with other organism communication units • E.g., a community of dogs, which communicate more frequently with other dogs than with other animals

Multi-organism systems – 2 • Small systems: courtship, fighting, offspring raising • Large systems: ant and bee colonies, human society

Human individuals • Organism with many subsystem • Has information subsystem – nervous system • Has information subsystem of the nervous system – memory • Long-term memory and mind

Mind and language • Mind = information subsystem of the nervous system, generated by the double contingency of ‘who am I’ • Language of mind: discussing about itself – ‘who am I’

Subsystems of the nervous system • Visual, auditory, motor, etc. subsystems • Information subsystem: memory processing – associative subsystems

Language subsystems • Language understanding subsystem: Wernicke area • Language behaviour production subsystem: Broca area (speech production)

Behavioural language • Animals: courtship, fighting, body language, vocalisation • Humans: facial gestures, body language, vocalisation, speech

Behavioural society • System of behavioural communications between animals • E.g., ants, bees, monkeys, dogs

Memories of behaviours • Human language – long-term memory • Memories of behaviours  long-term memory  communications about long-term memories  human language • Memories of behavioural communications  communications between such memories • System of verbal inter-human communications

Human communications – 1 • Words: sequences of phonemes • Sentences: sequences of words • Communications: set of sentences

Human communications – 2 • Rules of phoneme consecutiveness: very sharp conditional distributions • Rules of word consecutiveness: grammar of the language • Rules of large scale communications: semantic rules of referencing between sentences

The system of human communications • Human communications referencing other human communications • Dense cluster of communications with rare communications around (e.g., communications with a dog) • Society = system of human communications

Actions of the society • Sequence of human communications that induce actions of humans (communication units) on the environment • E.g., calling closer another human or executing a scientific experiment

Perceptions of the society • Environment induced changes in communication units (humans) induce human communications • Such communications may differ from the most expected ones conveying perceptions for the society system

Meaningful communications • Reference other human communications and are referenced by others following the continuation rules of human communications • Contribute to the reproduction / maintenance and expansion of the society system • E.g., gossiping

Meaningless communications • Communications that lead to communications that cannot be referenced • Such communications are about paradoxes, i.e. case when it is impossible to decide whether the communication is correct or not according to the rules of communications • The correctness refers to the semantic correctness not to the grammar or word phoneme order (these are very sharply defined)

Faults, errors and failures • Faulty communication: ‘ratulleps’, ‘cat the ate big the mouse’, ‘she was blonde with blue eyes, so it was running around the table, and the cherries were really ripe’ – senseless communications • Error: the politician makes his big speech and the people leave quietly the room, without responding or commenting on his speech – communications are correct and follow the rules, but they don’t have the expected continuation • Failure: lack of reliable communications lead to weak performance and falling apart of the company

Memory – human memories • Records of human communications • Reproduction of earlier verbal communications • E.g., re-told stories about heroes, rituals, customs

Memory – human artefacts • Human communications (including behaviours) lead to the production of human artefacts • E.g. arrow, pot, clothes, painting, sculpture, earring • Production of such artefacts needs the reproduction of human behaviours leading to them – they facilitate the reproduction of these behaviours • Human artefacts also facilitate the reproduction of a range of other human behaviours and communications related to their use • Such artefacts can be considered as forms of human society memories

Writing • Counting of artefacts – core of human memories about human artefacts • Counting  Writing – accounting in early human societies • Writing produces records of human communications (including behaviours) • Writing can facilitate the reproduction of memorized communications

Information subsystem • Processing of memories about human communications • Information subsystem of the society: human communications about the identity of the social system • Rely on human memories, human artefacts, and in particular on written text

Identity • The identity of social systems is defined by their information subsystem • Identity: which rituals are correct and which are incorrect, which forms and reports are in the right format, who is human who is not (see barbarians) • E.g. tribes, companies, groups of friends

Reproduction of the society • Generation of new communications that fit into the society system • Acquiring new communication units: reproduction of human organisms, attracting new humans to participate in the system of society

Many societies • A society is defined by its communications that are built using the society’s language • Each human language defines a society • Societies may compete for communication units • E.g., multi-ethnic societies

Subsystems of societies • Specialized human communications dealing with some part of the society • Subsystems have an apparent function within the system of society • E.g., political system – power distribution, science system – scientific knowledge production

Education • Providing the communication rule knowledge to humans • Socialisation • E.g., schools, family education

Family education • Basic socialisation: kids learn a language, its use and related behaviours • Part of education, especially in early human societies

Schools • Systematic education of kids about advanced knowledge that they refer to in their life, while deriving their communications • E.g., teaching math, physics, biology

The reproduction subsystem • Education deals with reproduction of communications that provide the foundation for the future expansion of the society communications • Education forms a subsystem of the society that deals with the reproduction of common knowledge • Common knowledge: usually referred by many human communications within the society

Un-common knowledge • Society communications may lead to paradoxes in semantic terms • E.g., fire for early societies which didn’t know the use of fire • Dealing with such problems is essential to eliminate their damaging effect • The un-common knowledge deals with such problems • E.g., the gods bring the fire

Religion • The religion contains the un-common knowledge • It provides explanations of common knowledge paradoxes fitting these into the system of society • The religion is a specialist subsystem of the society, dealing with the un-common knowledge

Scientific knowledge • Communications that can be referred in the society system, of which correctness (i.e., whether they are part or not of the society) is verified experimentally • Experimental check: action, predicted perception, checked prediction • E.g., physics, chemistry

Scientific, common, and un-common knowledge • A good part of science is not part of common knowledge • Science competes with the system of un-common knowledge • A part of science is integrated into common knowledge by expansion of the education system (see universities)

The language of science • Reduced human language with more specific rules, with sharper continuation distributions • The communications are about whether a communications can be proven to be correct or not by some experimental validation or by referring to proven communications

Actions and perceptions of science • Actions: experimental check or set of references to earlier proven communications • Perceptions: communications generated after the execution of the experiment or references that trigger new scientific communications

Meaningful and meaningless • Meaningful: something that fits into the experimentally validatable / falsifiable context • Meaningless: communications that lead to invalid or experimentally un-checkable communications – faulty science communications • E.g., religious communications

Errors and failures in science • Error: Lysenko’s genetics – followed general rules of science, but it was based on wrong premises and had no continuation • Failure: alchemy – based on wrong premises, using wrong rules

Adaptation in science • Identity: scientific communications can be validated experimentally or by logical reasoning – anything that doesn’t fit this is not part of science • Identity violations  adaptation • E.g. relativity theory, quantum theory, importance of non-coding RNAs, object oriented theory of computer programs • Kuhn: revolutionary and standard science

Education, religion and science • Education  religion, education  science, religion  science • Education communications also reference science (mostly) and religious (to much less extent) communications – religion and science influence the education system

Identity and identity violation in the education system • Identity: education communications are those which lead to the reproduction of human memories required for production of social communications that reproduce and expand the society • Identity violations – depend on social context: induction of within-society hatred, education about irrelevant knowledge like leninism, education about the uselessness and unimportance of education – see cultural revolution in China

Adaptation in the education system • New forms of education in response to lack of expected large volume continuation of communications – e.g. trade schools, generalised elementary education, formal graduate schools • Review of educational textbooks in response to changes in science – e.g. biology – recently, physics – in the past • Reorganisation of university departments in response to failure of them to attract students, who are required for the reproduction of education system communications – e.g. physics, chemistry and philosophy departments

Summary – 1 • Multi-organism systems • Humans: nervous system, brain, mind • Human communications and language • Society = system of human communications • Information subsystem and identity

Summary – 2 • Education – reproduction subsystem of common knowledge • Religion – the subsystem of uncommon knowledge • Science – the subsystem of scientific knowledge • Identity violations and adaptation

Q&A – 1 • Is it true that a limb movement can be considered as a sequence of communication patterns between the cells of an organism ? • Is it true that hunting a prey is a set of communications that constitute a communication system ? • Is it true that the communications between ants constitute the ant society/colony system ?

Evolution of Complex Systems