Field of Science

Update: The Emerging Field of Cultural Evolution







  1. i used to do chemistry, moved into econ/finance.
    I have a question. Does the amount of chaos (entropy) within a system related to the degree of complexity of the same system.
    What I am asking is the higher degree of disorder leads to higher degree of complexity?
    Also, since the entropy of the Universe goes up, does it mean that the number, variance and probability of formation of complex structures and maybe life (since life could be viewed as a complex structure vs. simple chem reaction) goes up as well?

  2. Thank YOU, Alex! The relationship between entropy and complexity is subtle, and depends a lot on what is meant by "complexity." I touched on this issue here. According to some definitions, complexity is roughly the same as entropy/disorder/randomness. However, totally random systems cannot exhibit the kinds of "complex structure" you are referring to---the word "structure" itself connotes a certain amount of order.

    Yaneer Bar-Yam likes to say that complex systems exhibit entropy and complexity on multiple scales. I've been meaning to do a blog post on this idea for a long time; perhaps I'll bump it towards the front of my list.

  3. One of the key concepts that is often overlooked (in my mind) is that of coevolution. Namely, we can look at populations of agents as evolving within a relatively static environment, but often it's better to model the environment (or at least parts of it) as an evolutionary system itself which is coevolving with the original population. It is important to remember that the choice of which system is the evolving one and which is the environment is an arbitrary one, and the roles can always be flipped and looked at from the opposite perspective.

    There is a great diagram of a coevolutionary model of language and brain in this paper on page 12. And a less formal, but way more thorough exploration of the coevolution of genes and culture in Durham's seminal text.

    In terms of formalizing coevolutionary dynamics, while I have not yet read it, Vincent and Brown's book seems to be far-reaching and thorough.


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