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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
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II. Pedia Sapiens: A Planetary Progeny Comes to Her/His Own Actual Factual Knowledge

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

Geiger, R. Stuart. Investigating the Role of Algorithmic Systems in Wikipedian Organizational Culture. Big Data & Society. Online September, 2017. In this new SAGE journal, a UC Berkeley Institute for Data Science researcher (Google for RSG and IDS) considers the presence and quality of these programs as they may be running through and affecting this huge, busy public encyclopedia.

Scholars and practitioners across domains are increasingly concerned with algorithmic transparency and opacity, interrogating the values and assumptions embedded in automated, black-boxed systems, particularly in user-generated content platforms. Today, the organizational culture of Wikipedia is deeply intertwined with various data-driven algorithmic systems, which Wikipedians rely on to help manage and govern the “anyone can edit” encyclopedia at a massive scale. I illustrate how cultural and organizational expertise is enacted around algorithmic agents by discussing two autoethnographic vignettes, which relate my personal experience as a veteran in Wikipedia. I use these cases of Wikipedia’s bot-supported bureaucracy to discuss several issues in the fields of critical algorithms studies; critical data studies; and fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning. (Abstract excerpts)

George, Daniel and Eliu Antonio Huerta. Deep Neural Networks to Enable Real-Time Multimessenger Astrophysics. arXiv:1701.00008. University of Illinois astronomers describe how artificial neural nets as a generic self-organizing complex system of universal application can facilitate space studies. See also in this cosmic realm Deep Learning for Studies of Galaxy Morphology (1701.05917), and Star-Galaxy Classification using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (1608.04369).

The application of DNNs in GW astrophysics, astronomy, and astroparticle physics has the potential to accelerate scientific research and unlock new opportunities by enhancing the way we use existing High Performance Computing (HPC) resources while allowing us to exploit emerging hardware architectures such as deep-learning optimized Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Working in tandem with computer scientists and industries to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that extend our prototype, and further exploring applications of deep learning for multimessenger astrophysics and fundamental sciences, may provide the means to e ectively consolidate different windows of observation into the Universe. (2)

Goerner, Sally. Integral Science: Rethinking Civilization Using the Learning Universe Lens. Systems Research and Behavioral Science. 20/4, 2003. Humanity is perceived as a collaborative learning society revising its comprehension of the universe from a mechanistic view where life is an accident to an Integral Ecological vision. This inchoate paradigm shift finds life, intelligence and evolutionary cooperation to be innate properties, which can then serve as to inspire a global, fractal-like network of symbiotic communities.

Golosovsky, Michael and Sorin Solomon. Growing Complex Network of Citations of Scientific Papers. arXiv:1607.08370. Hebrew University of Jerusalem physicists continue their project of elucidating how global research endeavors via our instant Internet are structured by the same, neural-net, scale-free interconnectivity as everywhere else. See also a cited paper Anatomy of Scientific Evolution by Jinhyuk Yun, et al in PLoS One (February 2015).

To quantify the mechanism of a complex network growth we focus on the network of citations of scientific papers and use a combination of the theoretical and experimental tools to uncover microscopic details of this network growth. Namely, we develop a stochastic model of citation dynamics based on copying/redirection/triadic closure mechanism. In a complementary and coherent way, the model accounts both for statistics of references of scientific papers and for their citation dynamics. Originating in empirical measurements, the model is cast in such a way that it can be verified quantitatively in every aspect. Such verification is performed by measuring citation dynamics of Physics papers. The measurements revealed nonlinear citation dynamics, the nonlinearity being intricately related to network topology. The nonlinearity has far-reaching consequences including non-stationary citation distributions, diverging citation trajectory of similar papers, runaways or "immortal papers" with infinite citation lifetime etc. Thus, our most important finding is nonlinearity in complex network growth. In a more specific context, our results can be a basis for quantitative probabilistic prediction of citation dynamics of individual papers and of the journal impact factor.

Gontier, Nathalie, et al. Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture: A Non-Adaptationist, Systems Theoretical Approach. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. This academic endeavor was active in the 1980s, see Franz Wuketits herein, in search of a proper Darwinian basis for psyche and society. But the project has languished for some years until its revival at a 2004 conference held at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with a salient difference that this volume reflects. Rather than external selection alone, the prior bent, a novel realm of internal, nonlinear dynamics such as self-organization, symbiogenesis, and a pervasive modularity are now seen at work. So one more example of an epic shift, a genesis evolutionary synthesis, due to our worldwide “Mary and Charles Earthwin,” that remains held back by a still life-unfriendly physical universe, and a need to translate such abstractions into a cosmic embryogeny. Notable papers by Wuketits, Gontier, Diederik Aerts, Tim Ingold, Bart de Boer, and others make a credible case.

The dynamic approach we take has not only permeated the natural sciences, but the social, behavioral and neurosciences as well. The common link is the idea that seemingly unrelated systems behave in essentially the same way and that the creation and evolution of patterned behaviour at all levels is governed by the processes of self-organization. (Annemarie Peltzer-Karpf 228)

Goodman, Alyssa, et al. New Thinking on and with Data Visualization. arXiv:1805.11300. AG, Harvard University, Michelle Borkin, Northeastern University and Thomas Robitaille, Aperio Software, UK discuss how to better use and enhance graphic Internet presentations of scientific findings by small and large research teams that collaboratively use masses of big data to study where and who we are from cosmic to cardiac phases. We add author bios to sample these worldwide exploratory frontiers.

As the complexity and volume of datasets have increased along with the capabilities of modular, open-source, easy-to-implement, visualization tools, scientists' need for, and appreciation of, data visualization has risen too. Our aim in this paper is to spark conversation amongst scientists, computer scientists, outreach professionals, educators, and graphics and perception experts about how to foster flexible data visualization practices that can facilitate discovery and communication at the same time. We present an example using the glue visualization environment to demonstrate how the border between explanatory and exploratory visualization is easily traversed. The linked-view principles as well as the actual code in glue are easily adapted to astronomy, medicine, and geographical information science - all fields where combining, visualizing, and analyzing several high-dimensional datasets yields insight. (Abstract excerpt)

In my Astronomy research, I am interested in how the gas in galaxies constantly re-arranges itself over huge time spans to form new stars. I have also had a long-standing interest in data visualization, and in improving the use of computers in all aspects of scientific research. I teach a course at Harvard called "The Art of Numbers," and I am very involved in the WorldWide Telescope Project, which brings astronomical data to everyone through an interface that demonstrates data delivery for the 21st Century of "e-Science." (A. Goodman website)

Michelle Borkin works on the development of novel visualization techniques and tools to enable new insights and discoveries in data. She works across disciplines to bring together computer scientists, doctors, and astronomers to collaborate on new analysis and visualization techniques, and cross-fertilize techniques across disciplines. Her research resulted in the development of novel computer assisted diagnostics in cardiology, scalable visualization solutions for large network data sets, and novel astrophysical visualization tools and discoveries. (M. Borkin website)

Tom Robitaille is a director and founder of Aperio Software. Following a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of St Andrews, he took a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. He then moved to the UK to become a freelance developer for scientific open source projects, and co-founded Aperio Software. Tom is an active member of the scientific open-source community - he is one of the coordinators and lead developers of the Astropy project, as well as the lead developer of the glue package for multi-dimensional linked data exploration. (A. Software website)

Goonatilake, Susantha. Towards a Global Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. A Sri Lankan policy advisor to the United Nations seeks to leaven a Western dominance and enrich science by including holistic, mindful contributions from Asian, Arabic and Indigenous cultures in mathematics, psychology, evolution and physics.

Grasswick, Heidi. Individuals-in-Communities: The Search for a Feminist Model of Epistemic Subjects. Hypatia. 19/3, 2004. As a response to the male, western emphasis of an “atomistic” view of knowing persons, feminist scholars have preferred to seek knowledge on a community scale (Nelson, Lynn. A Feminist Naturalized Philosophy of Science. Synthese. 17/3, 1995). Grasswick, philosophy chair at Middlebury College, seeks a complementary resolution via a dynamic reciprocity of distinct persons within a collectively learning society.

In short, the view of knowers as individuals-in-communities retains the idea that knowers are primarily individuals, yet rejects the generic and self-sufficient characteristics of the atomistic model, replacing them instead with the characteristics of situatedness and interactiveness. (99)

Gribben, John and Mary Gribben. Science: A History 1543-2001. London: Penguin Books, 2002. The story of how human inquiry proceeded out of the dark ages to explore and quantify a spherical planet within a vast, evolving universe. The book’s course runs from identifying the elements, especially carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, to plumbing galactic expanses, but in doing so the earth and human is seen to lose any special place or import.

Groenfeldt, D. The Future of Indigenous Values. Futures. 35/9, 2003. An essay on the importance that native animate, spiritual cosmologies survive in a perilous time when the Western rational/materialist dominance which denies any worldview of this kind.

Hakim, Joy. The Story of Science: Einstein Adds a New Dimension. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2007. The science writer and educator creates a sprightly written and vividly illustrated survey of the 20th century atomic, particle, quantum, and relativity physics revolution by way of the many personalities whom contributed to it. To inspire students it is averred that this quest and project goes on today as it may enter a novel phase of a communicative synthesis.

The understanding of information – the science of information theory – is evolving. John Wheeler explains, “I think of my lifetime in physics as divided into three periods. In the first period…I was in the grip of the idea that Everything is Particles…I call my second period Everything is Fields…Now I am in the grip of a new vision, that everything is Information." (430)

We started our scientific venture standing with Aristotle and Ptolemy on a giant Earth moored at the center of the world. Like royalty living in isolation in a huge castle, we were convinced we held the universe’s best real estate, although we didn’t have a clue as to what else was out there. Then along came Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and, in a surprising twist, as our vision expanded and our minds gained power, our place in the cosmos shrank. Now several hundred years after those giants walked this planet, science is telling us humans that we may actually be players in the universal drama. We may have a participatory role – and all because of a new science called information theory. (435)

Han, Barbara, et al. A synergistic future for AI and ecology.. PNAS Nexus. 120/38, 2023. Into the 2020s Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University and U.S. Geological Survey (Jacob Zwart) suggest it is time for a novel confluence going forward between these fields since both have affinities to neural network forms and phenomena.

Research in both ecology and AI strives for predictive understanding of complex systems, where nonlinearities arise from entity interactions and feedbacks across multiple scales. After a century of advances in computational and ecological research, we foresee a need for intentional synergies to meet many societal challenges of global change. Persistent epistemic barriers would benefit from attention in both disciplines. The implications of a successful convergence go beyond advancing ecological disciplines or achieving an artificial general intelligence are critical for both persisting and thriving in an uncertain future. (Excerpt}

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