VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twindividuality

3. Planetary Physiosphere: Anatomics, Economics, Urbanomics

Lim, May, et al. Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence. Science. 317/1540, 2007. The authors are May Lim of Brandeis University, Richard Metzler of MIT, and Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute. If boundaries between ethnic, religious or social groups are not well defined or inappropriate, conflict will often result. These complex interrelations can then be found to exhibit a discernible, persistent geometry which lends itself mathematical modeling. The broader point and contribution is the quantified realization that such a deeper, ‘double’ dimension exists, amenable to analysis, which can, as the authors advise, guide palliative resolutions.

Here, we focus on an aspect of spatial population structure that has been neglected so far; we analyze the global pattern of violence and propose that many instances are consistent with the natural dynamics of type separation, a form of pattern formation also seen in physical or chemical phase separation. (1541)

Lobo, Jose, et al. Urban Science: Integrated Theory from the First Cities to Sustainable Metropolises. SSRN Electronic Journal. January, 2020. A 23 page survey by some 35 co-authors such as Marina Alberti, Marc Barthelemy, Geoffrey West and Hyejin Youn provide an initial scoping out of this new subject, which it seems to me might well be treating these concentrated, hyper-vibrant human habitations as a further stage of cellular anatomy and metabolism. See also in regard Spatial Dynamics of Complex Urban Systems within an Evolutionary Theory Frame by Raimbault, Juste and Denise Pumain at arXiv:2010.14890.

The SSRN, formerly known as Social Science Research Network, is both a repository for preprints and an international journal for the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences and humanities. (https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en)

Lu, Yongmei and Junmei Tang. Fractal Dimension of a Transportation Network and its Relationship with Urban Growth. Environment and Planning B. 31/6, 2004. A study of the Dallas-Fort Worth area reveals a self-similar geometry, which I add, much corresponds to an organism’s metabolism and circulation.

Lugo, Igor and Martha Alatriste-Contreras. Nonlinearity and Distance of Ancient Routes in the Aztec Empire. PLoS One. July 17, 2019. National Autonomous University of Mexico system scientists cast back some 500 years to reconstruct these mobile activities with 21st century complexity theories. By this vista, an intrinsic mathematical dimension is newly evident even in the topologies of these trodden highways and byways. From our late vantage, might we ask whomever is this sapiensphere persona over the continental mantle which is just now altogether able to discern, learn, and maybe mediate?

This study explores the way in which traveling paths in ancient cultures are characterized by the relationship between nonlinear shapes and path lengths in terms of distances. In particular, we analyze the case of trade routes that connected Aztec settlements around 1521 CE in central Mexico. Based on the complex systems perspective, we used the least cost path approximation to reconstruct a large-scale map of routes reproducing physical connections among ancient places. Thus, the simple pattern of traveling in the Aztec region is fairly unlikely to be straight and short. (Abstract excerpts)

Mantegna, Rosario and Janos Kertesz. Focus on Statistical Physics Modeling in Economics and Finance. New Journal of Physics. 13/025011, 2011. University of Palermo and Budapest University of Technology and Economics theorists introduce an on-going collection on this effective integration of fysics and phinance. Typical papers are “Schumpeterian Economic Dynamics as a Quantifiable Model of Evolution” By Stefan Thurner, et al, and “The Statistical Laws of Popularity: Universal Properties of the Box-Office Dynamics of Motion Pictures” by Raj Pan and Sitabhra Sinha.

This focus issue presents a collection of papers on recent results in statistical physics modeling in economics and finance, commonly known as econophysics. We touch briefly on the history of this relatively new multi-disciplinary field, summarize the motivations behind its emergence and try to characterize its specific features. We point out some research aspects that must be improved and briefly discuss the topics the research field is moving toward. Finally, we give a short account of the papers collected in this issue.

Marshall, Stephen. Cities, Design, and Evolution. London: Routledge, 2009. A University College London urban planner proposes to “Learn from Science and Nature” as a way to reinvent, reorient and vitalize human habitations. By gathering many recent studies, he achieves a deft employ of evolutionary themes together with emergent, self-organizing, multifractal complexities. A deep mathematical viability can thus be discerned whereof cities are most like an ecosystem.

May, Robert, et al. Ecology for Bankers. Nature. 451/893, 2008. With co-authors Simon Levin and George Sugihara, a common mathematical ground is identified for natural ecosystems and financial transactions. Both disparate realms are interlinked dynamical systems, which one might surmise suggests an incarnate universality is at work everywhere.

Melgarejo, Miguel and Nelson Obregon. Information Dynamics in Urban Crime. Entropy. 20/11, 2018. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, and Pontifical Xaverian University, Bogota, Columbia scientists provide a novel systems analysis for this endemic scourge, particularly in their home country, and nations in both hemispheres. Our further interest is to recognize that by such studies, as long intimated, there exists a deeper, independent, mathematical fundament to our daily lives, which our chaotic personal and communal days and nights hold to and express. See also Netto, et al below, and Matjaz Perc elsewhere for similar views.

Information production in both space and time has been highlighted as a way to record the footprint of complexity in natural and socio-technical systems. However, its relation to urban crime has barely been studied. This work uses multifractal analysis to characterize the spatial information scaling in urban crime reports and nonlinear processing tools to study temporal behavior. Our results suggest that information scaling in urban crime exhibits dynamics that evolve in low-dimensional chaotic attractors, which can be observed in several spatio-temporal scales. (Abstract excerpt)

Netto, Vincius, et al. Cities, from Information to Interaction. Entropy. 20/11, 2018. By way of the latest complexity sciences, seven urban and ecosystem theorists from Brazil, Germany, and Switzerland scope out via a tandem synthesis of relative knowledge and social pattern and process. See also Melgarejo and Obregon above for another version whence a full contribution of scientific reason might so palliate and advise.

From physics to the social sciences, information is now seen as a fundamental component of reality. However, a form of information seems underestimated, that which is encoded in the very environment we live in. This paper addresses three related problems if we are to understand the role of environmental information: (1) the physical problem: how can we preserve information in the built environment? (2) The semantic problem: how do we make this information meaningful? and (3) the pragmatic problem: how do we use it in our daily lives? We introduce a three-layered model of information in cities, namely environmental information in physical space, in semantic space, and the information enacted by interacting agents. Our results suggest that ordered spatial structures and diverse land use patterns encode information, and that aspects of physical and semantic information coordinate interaction systems. (Abstract excerpt)

Pelikan, Peter. Evolutionary Developmental Economics: How to Generalize Darwinism Fruitfully to Help Comprehend Economic Change. Journal of Evolutionary Economics. 21/2, 2011. The Prague University of Economics theorist seeks to broaden attempts to rightly situate human commerce within life’s long course that it evolved from. This somewhat contentious effort could thus benefit from an integration of original self-organizing systems via many complex, interacting agents. To gloss its scope, “Figure 1” shows a dynamical “evo-devo” procession from the “Big Bang” on to programmable molecules, single cells, organisms, animal groupings, human societies and lately global economies. Along with competitive forces, the values of cooperation, altruism and group selection need be factored in.

Darwinism is shown possible to generalize fruitfully to help comprehend economic change by drawing on evolutionary developmental biology (“evo–devo”)—its recent version, less concerned with replication of genes than with genomic instructing of development of organisms. The result is a conceptual model with multilevel applications, generalizing development as instructed self-organizing with inputs from environments, and evolution as experimental search for instructions making the development successful. Its economic interpretation suggests to unite several existing fields into evolutionary developmental economics, where economic change can be studied comprehensively as development instructed by actual institutional rules, intertwined with the evolution of these rules. (Abstract)

Philippe, P. The Scale-invariant Spatial Clustering of Leukemia in San Francisco. Journal of Theoretical Biology. 199/371, 1999. Fractal complexity and parallel distribution likewise characterize disease epidemics. As humankind becomes able to model and comprehend such dynamics, it can help alleviate outbreaks.

Piepers, Ingo. Self-Organized Characteristics of the International System. www.arxiv.org/abs/0707.0348. The Amsterdam-based scholar is able to discern a common system dynamics at work even amongst the vagarities of national policies and conflicts, often held to be chaos defined. Check her other recent papers via arXiv such as The Structure, the Dynamics, and the Survivability of Social Systems. Might humankind through such luminations heal itself in time?

Various self-organized characteristics of the international system can be identified with the help of a complexity science perspective. The perspective discussed in this article is based on various complexity science concepts and theories, and concepts related to ecology and ecosystems. It can be argued that the Great Power war dynamics of the international system in Europe during the period 1480-1945, showed self-organized critical (SOC) characteristics, resulting in a punctuated equilibrium dynamic. It seems that the SOC-characteristics of the international system and the punctuated equilibrium dynamic were - in combination with chaotic war dynamics - functional in a process of social expansion in Europe. According to a model presented in this article, population growth was a component of the driving force of the international system during this time frame. The findings of this exploratory research project contradict with generally held opinions in International Relations theory. (Abstract)

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