IV. Ecosmomics: Independent Complex Network Systems, Computational Programs, Genetic Ecode Scripts

3. Iteracy: A Rosetta Ecosmos Textuality

Heylighen, Francis. Self-Organization in Communicating Groups: The Emergence of Coordination, Shared References and Collective Intelligence. Massip-Bonet, Angels & Albert Bastardas-Boada, eds. Complexity Perspectives on Language, Communication and Society. Berlin: Springer, 2012. A pioneer complex systems theorist, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Center Leo Apostel director of its Evolution, Complexity and Cognition research team, begins with a succinct overview of the complex systems revolution. Then just as nature’s intrinsic dynamics prevail everywhere, they are equally seen bringing a cognitive acumen to human social assemblies. Thus a division of labor, via individual task choices without any central fiat, results. A proficient “workflow� ensues guided by a common alignment to an agreed objective. Consequent group intelligence is facilitated by modular aggregations, member independence, decentralization, and creative diversity. A next section takes up shared understandings of language and communicative content, i.e., everyone needs to be on the same page. The chapter is accessible in full on the author’s web publication page.

In the last few decades a new scientific paradigm has been slowly emerging: complexity. This paradigm departs from the reductionism, determinism and materialism of classical, Newtonian science by focusing on the non-linear interactions between the components of a complex system. Out of these interactions new properties or forms of organization emerge, a phenomenon termed self-organization. The present paper will sketch the basic ideas of the complexity paradigm, and then apply them to social systems, and in particular to groups of communicating individuals who together need to agree about how to tackle some problem or how to coordinate their actions. (117)

The concept of self-organization is becoming increasingly popular in various branches of science and technology. Although there is no generally accepted definition a self-organizing system may be characterized by global, coordinated activity arising spontaneously from local interactions between the system's components or “agents�. This activity is distributed over all components, without a central controller supervising or directing the behavior. For example, in a school of fish each individual fish bases its behavior on its perception of the position and speed of its immediate neighbors, rather than on the behavior of a “central fish� or that of the whole school. Self-organization establishes a relation between the behavior of the individual components and the structure and functionality of the system as a whole: simple interactions at the local level give rise to complex patterns at the global level. This phenomenon is called emergence. (119)

Holovatch, Yurij and Vasyl Palchykov. Complex Networks of Words in Fables. arXiv:1602.04853. In this chapter to appear in Maths Meets Myths (Springer, 2016), National Academy of Ukraine physicists contribute to the novel realization that these widely applicable nonlinear theories are equally appropriate to parse the structure and flow of traditional stories. Akin to other new postings in this section and elsewhere, (Kenna, Sboev, et al) a grand correspondence is achieved between an implied textual cosmos and the corpus of cultural literature. And we add all of which might be seen as the effect and version of a universal genetic code.

In this chapter to appear in Maths Meets Myths (Springer, 2016), National Academy of Ukraine physicists contribute to the novel realization that these widely applicable nonlinear theories are equally appropriate to parse the structure and flow of traditional stories. Akin to other new postings in this section and elsewhere, (Kenna, Sboev, et al) a grand correspondence is achieved between an implied textual cosmos and the corpus of cultural literature. And we add all of which might be seen as the effect and version of a universal genetic code.

Howe, Christopher and Heather Windram. Phylomemetics: Evolutionary Analysis Beyond the Gene. PLoS Biology. 9/5, 2009. Cambridge University biochemists make note that techniques used parse genomes seem to be equally appropriate for literary studies. One and the same process seems to be going on. Please see papers herein by Nichols and Tehrani for companion work.

Genes are propagated by error-prone copying, and the resulting variation provides the basis for phylogenetic reconstruction of evolutionary relationships. Horizontal gene transfer may be superimposed on a tree-like evolutionary pattern, with some relationships better depicted as networks. The copying of manuscripts by scribes is very similar to the replication of genes, and phylogenetic inference programs can be used directly for reconstructing the copying history of different versions of a manuscript text. Phylogenetic methods have also been used for some time to analyse the evolution of languages and the development of physical cultural artefacts. These studies can help to answer a range of anthropological questions. We propose the adoption of the term “phylomemetics” for phylogenetic analysis of reproducing non-genetic elements. (Abstract)

Jamaati, Maryam and Ali Mehri. Text Mining by Tsallis Entropy. Physica A. September, 2017. Iran University of Science and Technology and Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Iran, physicists contribute another way that the far removed realms of condensed matter and human corpora can yet be (necessarily) appreciated as reflections of each other. In regard, as linguistic systems become treatable by physical theories, a grand synthesis of a textual cosmos as literary narrative at last becomes comprehensible.

Long-range correlations between the elements of natural languages enable them to convey very complex information. Complex structure of human language, as a manifestation of natural languages, motivates us to apply nonextensive statistical mechanics in text mining. Tsallis entropy appropriately ranks the terms’ relevance to document subject, taking advantage of their spatial correlation length. We apply this statistical concept as a new powerful word ranking metric in order to extract keywords of a single document. We carry out an experimental evaluation, which shows capability of the presented method in keyword extraction. We find that, Tsallis entropy has reliable word ranking performance, at the same level of the best previous ranking methods. (Abstract)

Kartsaklis, Dimitrios, et al. Linguistic Matrix Theory. arXiv:1703.10252. A Queen Mary University of London, a Greek postdoctoral physicist, Sanjaye Ramgoolam, an Indian string theorist, and Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, an Iranian lady computer scientist, contribute to descriptions of a natural correspondence between geometric mathematics and language structures. As the quotes cite, the project involves and infers a cross-fertilization between these disparate fields. Along with other versions (Krioukov, Barabasi), by this witness the extant cosmos becomes (once again) a vital narrative, while our human literature gains a correlative rooting within physical reality.

Recent research in computational linguistics has developed algorithms which associate matrices with adjectives and verbs, based on the distribution of words in a corpus of text. These matrices are linear operators on a vector space of context words. They are used to construct the meaning of composite expressions from that of the elementary constituents, forming part of a compositional distributional approach to semantics. We propose a Matrix Theory approach to this data, based on permutation symmetry along with Gaussian weights and their perturbations. We characterize the cubic and quartic departures from the model, which we propose, alongside the Gaussian parameters, as signatures for comparison of linguistic corpora. We propose that perturbed Gaussian models with permutation symmetry provide a promising framework for characterizing the nature of universality in the statistical properties of word matrices. The matrix theory framework perceives language as a physical system realizing a universality class of matrix statistics characterized by permutation symmetry. (Abstract excerpts)

As a last note, we would like to emphasize that while this paper draws insights from physics for analysing natural language, this analogy can also work the other way around. Matrix models are dimensional reductions of higher dimensional quantum field theories, describing elementary particle physics, which contain matrix quantum fields. An active area of research in theoretical physics seeks to explore the information theoretic content of quantum field theories. It is reasonable to expect that the application of the common mathematical framework of matrix theories to language and particle physics will suggest many interesting analogies, for example, potentially leading to new ways to explore complexity in QFTs by developing analogs of linguistic complexity. (22)

Kenna, Ralph and Padraig Mac Carron. Maths Meets Myths: Network Investigations of Ancient Narratives. Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 681/012002, 2016. A paper presented at the International Conference on Computer Simulation in Physics and Beyond 2015 in Moscow, Russia by Coventry University and Oxford University systems physicists. They are the prime movers of this realization and project that statistical physics as nonlinear dynamics provides both an effective way to quantify historic literature, which can then connect our human corpora with the dynamic physical cosmos. A conference with this title was held in Coventry in 2014, whose proceedings are in a 2017 Springer book with this title, search Kenna.

Kenna, Ralph, et al. A Narrative Network Analysis of the Poems of Ossian. arXiv:2306.16953. RK, Padraig MacCarron, Thierry Platini, Justin Tonra, and Joseph Yose at Coventry University, the University of Limerick in collaboration with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Holovatch) have pursued for the past decade a unique 21st century integration of complexity science and classical mythic literatures. Across this widest expanse, by the 2020s it has become well evident that the Iliad, Irish epics, Les Miserables and far afield can be so parsed as to find interlinked topologies, character roles and archetypal themes which repeatedly appear as nested story motifs. For An earlier example is A Network Science Investigation in the Epic Poems of Ossian at 1610.00142. Notions such as these—aggregates, interactions and universality—remain the link between statistical physics and the social sciences.

But as I log in on July 6, the news is about a Russian air strike on an apartment house in the western ancient city of Lviv. Might an editorial view perceive a timely concurrent option, race, or challenge between this senseless calamity and myriad continental outrages and an Earthwise, phenomenal, revolutionary knowledge as a palliative dispensation which this a PediaPedia Earthica resource as a planatural genesis is trying to report and document? In lieu of a long abstract, here are select quotes.

Networks and Narratives Our objective is to compare the network structures in Ossian, the Iliad, Odyssey, Acallam na Senórach and Lady Gregory’s text. Many quantitative measures of network properties have been de-veloped since network science emerged more than twenty years ago.71 We have measured many network properties, and the results have been published by Yose et al.72 but the essential information for our purposes is contained primarily in one feature: the degree distribution. To understand this, we must firstly examine how complex networks compare to simpler structures. (23) Besides comparing structural properties of the societies under-lying the various narratives through degree distributions and net-work statistics, one may also compare two networks directly using the concept of spectral distances. This concept was originally de-veloped for dynamic biological networks, but it is quite robust and can be considered wherever a quantitative comparison between networks is desired. (32)

A purpose of our Ossianic studies thus far was to determine if this modern network-scientific method can deliver something aligned with well-established knowledge in the humanities. We found our various statistical approaches deliver the same outcome; the social network structure embedded in Ossian is measurably closer to those of the Irish corpus than to the Homeric narratives, (35) The interdisciplinary approach applied above requires a com-bination of numerical and computational skills from the scientific side with the creative and interpretative skills of the humanities. This overcomes the communicative divide as perceived by C.P. Snow in his lecture. (37)

Ossian (/ˈɒʃən, ˈɒsiən/; Irish Gaelic/Scottish Gaelic: Oisean) is the narrator and purported author of a cycle of epic poems published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, later combined under the title The Poems of Ossian. Macpherson claimed to have collected word-of-mouth material in Scottish Gaelic, said to be from ancient sources, and that the work was his translation of that material. Ossian is based on Oisín, son of Fionn mac Cumhaill),[2] a legendary bard in Irish mythology.

Kenna, Ralph, et al, eds. Maths Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient Narratives. International: Springer, 2017. As noted under Kenna 2016, these are the proceedings of a 2014 Coventry conference about how statistical physics and complex network theories can similarly parse all manner of prose from folk tales to the Iliad and Les Miserables. For example, a lead chapter, Cognitive and Network Constraints in Real Life and Literature, by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar finds parallels between storytelling and common social structures. Some other entries are Mapping Literate Networks in Early Medieval Ireland by Elva Johnston, and Peopling of the New World from Data on Distributions of Folklore Motifs by Yuri Berezkin.

Khomtchouk, Bohdan and Claes Wahlestedt. Zipf’s Law Emerges Asymptotically During Phase Transitions in Communicative Systems. arXiv:1603.03153. University of Miami School of Medicine theorists explain how natural and human linguistics can be linked with and seen to arise from fundamental physical phenomena.

Zipf's law predicts a power-law relationship between word rank and frequency in language communication systems, and is widely reported in texts yet remains enigmatic as to its origins. Computer simulations have shown that language communication systems emerge at an abrupt phase transition in the fidelity of mappings between symbols and objects. Since the phase transition approximates the Heaviside or step function, we show that Zipfian scaling emerges asymptotically at high rank based on the Laplace transform which yields (1/r)(1−e−r), where r denotes rank. We thereby demonstrate that Zipf's law gradually emerges from the moment of phase transition in communicative systems. We show that this power-law scaling behavior explains the emergence of natural languages at phase transitions.. (Abstract)

Kim, Hyunuk, et al. Deeply nested structure of mythological traditions worldwide. arXiv:2408.07300. This entry by HK, Elon University, Hyejin Youn, Northwestern University, Marcus Hamilton, UT San Antonio and Woo-Sung Jung, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea is an example of our Earthumanity retrospect as it parses a thousand prior versions so as to discern a common, persistence – one story of love and glory – which seems to recur in cultural kind everywhere. The complexity science authors then describe a deep, innate consistency by way of self-similar network topologies. How then might our planetary edition be told anew, which we muse would be about a familial procreativity, via a pediatric poetry and prose.

Many human societies have unique narratives that shape their customs and beliefs. Despite diversities, symbolic elements are common across many cultures. Here, we analyze mythological themes and traditions to reveal how global mythologies exhibit geographic and thematic nestings across a layered structure. This hierarchical frame aligns with historical migration patterns which suggests that narrative themes have been carried through deep history. At smaller scales, the correspondence with bioregions indicates that these stories are locally adapted and diffused. Our approach opens new research avenues to reconstruct historical patterns and provide insight into human cultural narratives. (Abstract excerpt)

These networks are consistent with an Africa to Eurasia, the Americas, and Oceania traverse and align with evolutionary frameworks for global traditions. The mythological record around the world today is a palimpsest of motifs agglomerated over time and space. This is reflected not only in phylogenetically ancient myths but in Paleolithic traditions of rock art, ornamentation, and statuary and the archaeological residue of belief systems. The deep structure we report is the result of these cultural evolutionary processes playing out over tens of thousands of years (21, 22).

Koplenig, Alexander, et al. Human languages trade off complexity against efficiency.. PLoS Complex Systems.. February, 2025. • Over 42 pages and 150 references. Leibniz Institute for the German Language, Mannheim system linguists demonstrate how the historic corpora of spoken and enscribed Rosetta-like cipher narratives can indeed be seen to exhibit nonlinear, systematic, network themes and schemes.

• From a cross-linguistic perspective, language models are worthwhile because they can be trained on volumes of linguistic input. In this paper, we study different versions from statistical to neural networks from a database of 3 billion words across 6,500 documents in over 2,000 languages. We use the trained models to estimate entropy rates and a complexity measure derived from information theory. To compare entropy rates we use a machine learning approach to account for both language- and document-specific traits, as well as phylogenetic and geographical relationships. We then confirm by systematic differences in entropy rates, i.e. text complexity, across many corpora. (Excerpts)

Kwan, Tze-wan. Abstract Concept Formation in Archaic Chinese Script Forms: Some Humboldtian Perspectives. Philosophy East and West. 61/3, 2011. A Chinese University of Hong Kong scholar (Doktor der Philosophie, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, 1981) surely astride Eastern and Western cultures, evokes the “father of general linguistics” Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) to build toward a 21st century synthesis. The German idealist, closer to Kant than Hegel, saw language as an “internally connected organism” with later affinities to Chomsky’s “universality” and Sapir-Whorf “relativism.” In such regard, a recapitulation occurs between the ontogeny of an individual speaker, and the phylogeny of a national dialect. A contrast is then noted between western alphabets, “a script of words,” and an eastern “script of thoughts” founded on characters. Chinese writing, to Humboldt, is an “analogy of script,” - may we now say bilateral “analog and digital” complements?

Starting from the Humboldtian characterization of Chinese writing as a “script of thoughts,” this article makes an attempt to show that notwithstanding the important role played by phonetic elements, the Chinese script also relies on visual-graphical means in its constitution of meaning. In point of structure, Chinese characters are made up predominantly of components that are sensible or even tangible in nature. Out of these sensible components, not only physical objects or empirical states of affairs can be expressed, but also the most subtle and abstract concepts, such as 萬, 它, 言, 災, 仁, 義, 思, 念, 法, 律, 善, 考, 莫, 睘, and 幾, attesting to what Humboldt says about the Chinese script as having “embraced philosophical work within itself.” Humboldt’s idea of “analogy of script” throws light on the mechanism behind this structure to stimulate new reflections on the traditional theory of the “Six Ways” (六書) of character formation to provide a productive platform for interpretation. (Abstract, 409)

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