Related papers: Grasping Complexity
The molecular biology revolution of the last seventy five years has transformed our view of living systems. Scientific explanations of biological phenomena are now synonymous with the identification of the genes, proteins, and signaling…
In recent years, with the increase of social investment in scientific research, the number of research results in various fields has increased significantly. Cross-disciplinary research results have gradually become an emerging frontier…
Granulate physics has made considerable progress during the past decades in the understanding of static and dynamic properties of large ensembles of interacting macroscopic particles, including the modeling of phenomena like jamming,…
Changing institutions is an integral part of an academic life. Yet little is known about the mobility patterns of scientists at an institutional level and how these career choices affect scientific outcomes. Here, we examine over 420,000…
The world of scientific publishing is changing; the days of an old type of subscription-based earnings for publishers seem over, and we are entering a new era. It seems as if an ever-increasing number of journals from disparate publishers…
This paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter problems because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms…
The solar system has changed dramatically since its birth, and so did our understanding of it. A considerable research effort has been invested in the past decade in an attempt to reconstruct the solar system history, including the earliest…
Performance evolution of a number of complex scientific and technical systems demonstrate exponential progress with time exp(+t/C) . The speed of progress C - a measure of difficulty and complexity - is analyzed for high energy elementary…
It is a matter of debate whether a shrinking proportion of scholarly literature is getting most of the references over time. It is also less well understood how a narrowing literature usage would affect the circulation of ideas in the…
At present, there is a great deal of confusion regarding complexity and its measures (reviews on complexity measures are found in, e.g. Lloyd, 2001 and Shalizi, 2006 and more references therein). Moreover, there is also confusion regarding…
This text provides with an introduction to the modern approach of artificiality and simulation in social sciences. It presents the relationship between complexity and artificiality, before introducing the field of artificial societies which…
In 2007 an international conference engaged a reflection on the present conditions for sciences and scientific practice, to initiate a dialogue between science, philosophy, epistemology and sociology. Starting from many examples taken from…
Modern data and applications pose very different challenges from those of the 1950s or even the 1980s. Students contemplating a career in statistics or data science need to have the tools to tackle problems involving massive, heavy-tailed…
Grasp learning has become an exciting and important topic in robotics. Just a few years ago, the problem of grasping novel objects from unstructured piles of clutter was considered a serious research challenge. Now, it is a capability that…
Various research initiatives try to utilize the operational principles of organisms and brains to develop alternative, biologically inspired computing paradigms and artificial cognitive systems. This paper reviews key features of the…
This paper proposes a new definition of science based on the distinction between the activity of scientists and the product of that activity: the former is denoted (lower-case) science and the latter (upper-case) Science. These definitions…
Readability is on the cusp of a revolution. Fixed text is becoming fluid as a proliferation of digital reading devices rewrite what a document can do. As past constraints make way for more flexible opportunities, there is great need to…
Surveys of the local and distant Universe are the means to test and improve our models of galaxy formation. Substantial successes in the models are evident, while there is also considerable recent progress in identifying what remains to be…
The combination of diverse, pre-existing knowledge is a common explanation for scientific breakthroughs. However, a paradox exists: while scientific output and the potential for such recombination have grown exponentially, the rate of…
The way science is currently practiced shows conclusions but hides how they were reached. Researchers work privately, polish their results, publish a finished paper, and defend it. Errors are punished by retraction rather than corrected by…