Everything Touches Everything

We are all connected. Our biological existence, social world, economy, and religious traditions tell a compelling story of interrelatedness.

As the great Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges put it, "everything touches everything."

    -- p. 5 of Albert-László Barabási's Linked

Comments

[Nudecybot]

Linked was a good read, but rendered somewhat less effective by overemphasis of the authors own research. I preferred Six Degrees by Duncan Watts (a competing researcher in the same field). Watts does talk about his research, though is very humble about it, and covers a lot of others research in very flattering way. He gives a much better overall perspective on the emerging consensus that network effects underly stikingly similar non-linear dynamics found in diverse fields (marketing, economics, biology, etc...).

A lot of the chaos theory research from the 80s turned into complexity research in the 90s and in the new millienium there is a recognition that these fields all deal with network effects such that the analysis of network structure, behaviour and evolution includes much of that previous work.

As an experimental evolutionary biologist I was introduced to these concepts by Stuart Kaufman's "The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution" although I would recommend the more accessible: "At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity" for non-biologists.

Back when SK was writing this stuff he was somewhat shunned in the wet-lab biology community (especially developmental bio) due to his new perspective on analyzing developmental processes. I think that researchers like Duncan and Albert are finally unifying and making sense of the work of visionary scientists such as SK. Interesting how the Sante Fe Institute in the 80s and 90s was a refuge for interdisciplinary scientists many of whom got little respect in their own fields, SK was not unique, rather one of many researchers from all kinds of disciplines who were looking at their fields with a new perspective.

Congratulations on a diverse and interesting blogsite, keep it coming.

[Adam]

I did enjoy Six Degrees a lot; thanks for the reference to Stuart Kaufman's work, I will check that out too.

Thanks for your interesting comments, Nudecybot, please keep 'em coming, too!

[Account Deleted]

Each person clickity click clicking away at a little machine that they are sucked into like a fly to light. Sorry, but that's just entirely too open for me. This is a Brave New World turning out as prophecy of our immediate future. There are at least three things about Kevin's comment that made Rohit smile: the invocation of physics, the notion that 30 is relative, and the thought of seeing you next week.

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