II. Pedia Sapiens: A Planetary Progeny Comes to Her/His Own Twintelligent Gaiable Knowledge

B. The Spiral of Science: Manican to American to Earthicana Phases

Mattiussi, Claudio, et al. The Age of Analog Networks. AI Magazine. Fall, 2008. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology engineers propose to improve a broad class of computational systems of service to society by their reinvention via guidance by natural creative principles. A key aspect is the employ of “evolutionary algorithms,” such as the second quote explains. And one may wonder whether a whole genesis universe might be running a stochastic program so as to self-select the fittest bioplanet, whereof increasing efforts such as this augur for its passage into sentient human furtherance.

A large class of systems of biological and technological relevance can be described as analog networks, that is, collections of dynamical devices interconnected by links of varying strength. Some examples of analog networks are genetic regulatory networks, metabolic networks, neural networks, analog electronic circuits, and control systems. Analog networks are typically complex systems which include nonlinear feedback loops and possess temporal dynamics at different time scales. (63)

Evolutionary algorithms are a class of population-based stochastic search algorithms inspired by the process of Darwinian evolution. An evolutionary algorithm maintains a collection (population) of tentative solutions called individuals. The goal of the search is defined via a user-defined measure of the quality of the individuals. The algorithm is required to find in the search space an individual with maximum quality… (72) Typically, an initial population is generated by randomly sampling the search space. At each step of the algorithm the quality of the individuals that form the population is evaluated and a subset of the population (the parents) is selected for reproduction. (72)

Mazioumian, Amin, et al. Global Multi-Level Analysis of the Scientific Food Web. Nature Scientific Reports. 3/1167, 2013. Systems sociologists Amin Mazioumian, Dirk Helbing and Sergi Lozano, ETH Zurich, with Katy Borner and Robert Light, Indiana University, draw an analogy between ecological networks and worldwide scientific pursuits and external repositories, since the same fluid topologies appear in each case. However, what might a more appropriate metaphor be? By any illumination, it would seem that an actual cerebral, neural net brain, humankind’s bilateral noosphere, is much in evolutionary formation. So put could our EarthKinder be imagined to be coming to her/his own salutary knowledge?

We introduce a network-based index analyzing excess scientific production and consumption to perform a comprehensive global analysis of scholarly knowledge production and diffusion on the level of continents, countries, and cities. Compared to measures of scientific production and consumption such as number of publications or citation rates, our network-based citation analysis offers a more differentiated picture of the ‘ecosystem of science’. Quantifying knowledge flows between 2000 and 2009, we identify global sources and sinks of knowledge production. Our knowledge flow index reveals, where ideas are born and consumed, thereby defining a global ‘scientific food web’. While Asia is quickly catching up in terms of publications and citation rates, we find that its dependence on knowledge consumption has further increased. (Abstract)

Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. A much-cited work that laments the takeover of an organic, pastoral society by partiarchical authority. A more feminine, communal harmony suffused this original agrarian age. With the male scientific revolution, the world came to be regarded more as a machine, which sanctioned technology and “progress.” Merchant provides an important historical grounding which augurs for, as articulated further in her later works, its potential resolve in an ecologically wise and humane Earth community.

Meyer, Eric and Ralph Schroeder. Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023. As science spirals in these 2020s from homo individuals and anthropic groups to an interactive Earthuman sapience, Oxford Internet Institute scholars provide a first book length treatment of this historic global transition. As this section, Earthificial Intelligence, Earth Learns and elsewhere record, by midsummer many subject such as astronomics, genetics, economics, social studies are shifting to this broadly conceived neural net machine method. Some chapters are A Digital Research Revolution?, Aggregating People and Machines: Collaborative Computation, Digital Research across the Disciplines: The Sciences and Social Sciences, and Open Science. But a salient difference is that while under human guidance (supposedly) these studies are meant to proceed on their own quest.

In Knowledge Machines, Eric Meyer and Ralph Schroeder argue that digital technologies have fundamentally changed research practices in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. They show that digital tools and data, used collectively and in distributed mode - which they term e-research — are now achieving new understandings from astronomy to literary analysis. They consider such topics as the challenges of sharing research data and of big data approaches, new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration and the ways that digital tools promote openness in science. (Publisher excerpt)

Miglio, Andrea, et al. PLATO as it is: a legacy mission for Galactic Archaeology. arXiv:1706.04319. We cite this entry by a 106 member team with postings in the UK, Denmark, Germany, France, Australia, Italy, Chile, the USA, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Portugal, and Romania as a 2017 example of the wholly worldwide nature of scientific progress. Its significance is a phenomenal achievement by a cooperative sapient species of cosmic self-quantification. Yet at the same moments nations and civilizations led by barbaric warlords seem bent on its destruction.

Deciphering the assembly history of the Milky Way is a formidable task, which becomes possible only if one can produce high-resolution chrono-chemo-kinematical maps of the Galaxy. Data from large-scale astrometric and spectroscopic surveys will soon provide us with a well-defined view of the current chemo-kinematical structure of the Milky Way, but will only enable a blurred view on the temporal sequence that led to the present-day Galaxy. As demonstrated by the (ongoing) exploitation of data from the pioneering photometric missions CoRoT, Kepler, and K2, asteroseismology provides the way forward: solar-like oscillating giants are excellent evolutionary clocks thanks to the availability of seismic constraints on their mass and to the tight age-initial-mass relation they adhere to. (Abstract)

PLATO is a space observatory under development by the European Space Agency for launch in 2025. The mission goals are to search for planetary transits of up to one million stars, to discover and characterize rocky extrasolar planets around yellow dwarf stars like our sun, subgiant stars, and red dwarf stars. The emphasis of the mission is on earth like planets in the habitable zone around sun-like stars where water can exist in liquid state.[2] It is the third medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme and named after the influential Greek philosopher Plato the founding figure of Western philosophy, science and mathematics. (Wikipedia)

Miller, Pamela and Ellin Scholnick, eds.. Toward a Feminist Developmental Psychology. New York: Routledge, 2000. A collection that articulates how science is deeply based on masculine metaphors such as argument, linear thinking and combative strategies which need to be rescued by feminine modes of collaborative friendship, relational systems and integral narrative. As opposed to the male penchant to isolate and reduce, a feminist epistemology would emphasize web, fugue, tapestry and dialogue.

Mitchell, Sandra. Unsimple Truths. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. The University of Pittsburgh philosopher of science clears thickets of a deterministic, reductive, Newtonian phase so as to advance novel approaches more suitable for an actual complex, evolutionarily emergent, natural fluidity. Her resolve going forward is dubbed “integrative pluralism” to express at once a modicum of consistency with a recognition of pervasive contingency. But the academic mindset of her field seems to parry any attempt to imagine or broach an intrinsic creation. Compare with Alisa Bokulich who engages the same issue, endorsing Mitchell’s phrase, but with an opening to a greater, discernible reality.

This book is designed to begin the discussion of an expansion and revision of the traditional views of science and knowledge, codified in the nineteenth century by English philosophers, trying to make all scientists into new-age Isaac Newtons. These perspectives have dominated philosophical reflections on science. In what follows, I target three areas of human thought and practice where complexity requires us to revise old conceptions of how to reason and act rationally. I will explore how the complexity and contingency of natural processes changes: how we conceptualize the workd, how we investigate the world, and how we act in the world. (18)

Mryglod, Olesya. Scientometric Analysis of Condensed Matter Physics Journal. arXiv:1806.09989. We cite this posting by a National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv, information researcher about this Ukrainian scientific publication as an example of how human sapience will pursue natural knowledge whenever and wherever it can. As the quotes and article conveys, over these years this project of cosmic quantification has from an individual, local phase to an instant global collaboration. See also Data Mining in Scientometrics by the author with Yurij Holovatch and Ralph Kenna at arXiv:1807.03353. One might further note that while the western Ukraine can continue such works, the eastern part of the country is beset by and trapped in violent ethnic conflict, a capsule of our civilizational race between palliative discovery and apocalypse.

The paper is dedicated to 25th anniversary of Condensed Matter Physics journal (CMP). It contains the results of comprehensive analysis of different journal-related data. CMP co-authorship relationships are studied analysing the collaboration network. Its cumulative statical and dynamical properties as well as the structure are discussed. The international contribution to the journal is assessed using the authors' affiliation data. The network of the countries collaborating within CMP is considered. Another kind of network is used to investigate the topical spectrum: two PACS indices assigned to one paper are connected by link here. The structure of the most significant interdisciplinary connections is analysed. Finally, the download statistics and the corresponding records of the papers' citations are used to discuss the journal's impact. (Abstract)

25 years ago, in 1993, the first issue of Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) journal was printed. Established as three-lingual institutional edition aimed at publishing the results of the research primarily in condensed matter theory representing mainly west Ukrainian authorship, it developed into an authoritative international journal with a powerful expert pool and wide geography. Modern CMP journal not only exhaustively covers the primarily chosen topical directions but also publishes the results in adjacent areas. Today it is recognized by leading scientometric services and covered by information resources and database. (1)

Munch, Vera. The Cradle of E-Research. Online. March/April, 2011. A report on this virtual revolution from Japan to the Max Planck Institute to advance science from older parochial domains to an instant worldwide collaboration.

The transition from scientific publishing in print into a world interconnected working environment is critical to scientists’ global future. The term e-science does not refer to electronic science, but rather “enhanced science.” It describes an integrated digital infrastructure for scientific publication, collaboration, and information exchange. (30)

Naumis, Gerardo and J. C. Phillips. Diffusion of Knowledge and Globalization in the Web of Twentieth Century Science. Physica A. 391/3995, 2012. National Autonomous University of Mexico and Rutgers University physicists consider the shift in the pursuit of scientific research from individuals or small teams to a worldwide collaboration. The transition began around 1960 but only took off in the 1990s. The basis of this site is its 21st century emergent shift from human to humankind, whom can be rightly seen as now learning on her/his own.

Scientific communication is an essential part of modern science: whereas Archimedes worked alone, Newton (correspondence with Hooke, 1676) acknowledged that “If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” How is scientific communication reflected in the patterns of citations in scientific papers? How have these patterns changed in the 20th century, as both means of communication and individual transportation changed rapidly, compared to the earlier post-Newton 18th and 19th centuries? Here we discuss a diffusive model for scientific communications, based on a unique 2009 scientometric study of 25 million papers and 600 million citations that encapsulates the epistemology of modern science. The diffusive model predicts and explains, using no adjustable parameters, a surprisingly universal internal structure in the development of scientific research, which is essentially constant across the natural sciences, but which because of globalization changed qualitatively around 1960. Globalization corresponds physically to anomalous diffusion, which has been observed near the molecular glass transition, and can enhance molecular diffusion by factors as large as 100. (Abstract)

Neilsen, Michael. Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. The University of Queensland physicist, later at Perimeter Institute, and presently author, blogger, and speaker, here announces, documents, and advocates an epochal transition in our global midst from centuries to individual research to a sudden new age of instant worldwide collaboration.

In Reinventing Discovery, Michael Nielsen argues that we are living at the dawn of the most dramatic change in science in more than 300 years. This change is being driven by powerful new cognitive tools, enabled by the internet, which are greatly accelerating scientific discovery. There are many books about how the internet is changing business or the workplace or government. But this is the first book about something much more fundamental: how the internet is transforming the nature of our collective intelligence and how we understand the world. (Publisher)

A similar pattern of discovery is being used across science. Scientists in many fields are collaborating online to create enormous databases that map out the structure of the universe, the world’s climate, the world’s oceans, human languages, and even all the species of life. By integrating the work of hundreds or thousands of scientists, we are collectively mapping out the entire world. (4)

Newman, Michael. Coauthorship Networks and Patterns of Scientific Collaboration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 101/Supplement 1, 2004. From the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, a contribution to quantify how science is increasingly a worldwide communal enterprise.

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