Synergetics or life as information
Nov. 2nd, 2017 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vit_rSynergetics. Ещё один грустный пост про утеряные знания.
Слово всплыло в дискуссии и навеяло воспоминания о былых временах, когда небо было выше, трава зеленее, a люди умнее.
Тема очень интересная и проливает свет на спор![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
avlasov с ailev об искусственном интеллекте, объясняет многое из того, что пишет golos_dobra, когда он перестаёт валять дурака и играть в пророка, и, вообще, позволяет обнаружить новые грани мира. Но, как и многие озарения прошлого века, этот подход отодвинут на задворки майнстрима.
Половина поста - цитаты на английском, так что я просто перейду на него.
670 wirds, reading time: 3 minutes.
The concept of synergetics was introduced in 1969 by Prof. em. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. h.c. mult. Hermann Haken who was born in the twenty-seventh year of the previous century. He is an author of 23 textbooks and monographs on atomic and molecular physics, quantum field theory, solid state physics, principles of brainfunction, information theory, computing, synergetics. (As you can see the word "synergetics" stands behind the long list of complex scientific topics.)
Synergetics studies self-organization in dynamic open systems. I ignore the "profound mathematical basis" and try to explain its greatness in a simple way.
The word "system" means something complex which is not simple a sum of its parts but has some structural or behavioral qualities as a whole.
"Open" means that there is a energy flow through the system.
"Dynamic" means that the open system permanently changes some characteristics.
"Organization" means that within this dynamic open system exist some structures or recurring process patterns. (If you are not afraid of mathematics, you can I read about Attractors. If you do not like it, let's say that this are cyclic processes that do not repeat exactly on a graph but are drawn with an unstable child's hand.)
"Self" means that this organization of a dynamic open system appears by itself.
A computer can pass all criteria but the last one. It is a system, it consumes electrical energy, it moves information through electronic circuits and changes states of registers and external devices, it has specific structure and behavior, but they are organized by humans who design and produce hardware and software.
A computer network is also organized by people who manages the changes. But a social network is a sample of self-organization. People and organizations may change external parameters such as connections between computers or advertisement in media, or internal parameters such as censorship rules or content of individual messages but nobody can manage order a conversation to reach 1000 comments or an account to get followed by 1000 persons. Of course it is possible to fake such behavior or to change external and internal parameters in the way a social network will die or flourish but there are no ways of direct manipulation of internal processes.
Self-organization in dynamic open systems could be found in many areas from lasers till financial markets. If such open systems can reproduce themselves, we speak about life.
This systems have a lot in common. This means synergetics can share research methods, mathematical equations and control methods across many areas.
According to the second law of thermodynamics the entropy must increase but self-organization means the decrease of entropy. Synergetics says that such systems store information and the law of information increase is in this cases prevalent over the second law of thermodynamics.
This point of view demands quite tricky mathematics: you cannot simply look at registers and count bits because anything is dynamic and neither space not time of information storage are determined. On the other hand the knowledge of this principle helps to create and to control such self-organizing systems.
Here are articles on Scholarpedia written by Hermann Haken: Self-organization and Synergetics and also his article from this year What Can Synergetics Contribute to Embodied Aesthetics?.
I do not know, if it is still used in physics. The page of the Center of Synergetics says The present research activities focus on brain theory and psychology. I know some attempts to apply synergetics to research in biology. Two decades ago synergetics was a promising trend in artificial intelligence. (For instance: Neural and Synergetic Computers, Proceedings of the International Symposium at Schloss Elmau, Bavaria, June 13 – 17, 1988) This implies such things as unsupervised learning, self-repair, self-organizing neural network architectures. I have seen similar word combinations in titles of modern articles but I do not know, if they have anything to do with "ancient methods".
Synergetic is a concept that could be easily misused "philosophically". A lot of consultants use the word "synergetics" and its derivates to say that components would work as a whole without problems. If you hear this words from a manager, they mean simply "Don't worry. All problems will be solved by themselves."
Слово всплыло в дискуссии и навеяло воспоминания о былых временах, когда небо было выше, трава зеленее, a люди умнее.
Тема очень интересная и проливает свет на спор
avlasov с ailev об искусственном интеллекте, объясняет многое из того, что пишет golos_dobra, когда он перестаёт валять дурака и играть в пророка, и, вообще, позволяет обнаружить новые грани мира. Но, как и многие озарения прошлого века, этот подход отодвинут на задворки майнстрима. Половина поста - цитаты на английском, так что я просто перейду на него.
Synergetics or life as information
670 wirds, reading time: 3 minutes.
The concept of synergetics was introduced in 1969 by Prof. em. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. h.c. mult. Hermann Haken who was born in the twenty-seventh year of the previous century. He is an author of 23 textbooks and monographs on atomic and molecular physics, quantum field theory, solid state physics, principles of brainfunction, information theory, computing, synergetics. (As you can see the word "synergetics" stands behind the long list of complex scientific topics.)
Synergetics studies self-organization in dynamic open systems. I ignore the "profound mathematical basis" and try to explain its greatness in a simple way.
The word "system" means something complex which is not simple a sum of its parts but has some structural or behavioral qualities as a whole.
"Open" means that there is a energy flow through the system.
"Dynamic" means that the open system permanently changes some characteristics.
"Organization" means that within this dynamic open system exist some structures or recurring process patterns. (If you are not afraid of mathematics, you can I read about Attractors. If you do not like it, let's say that this are cyclic processes that do not repeat exactly on a graph but are drawn with an unstable child's hand.)
"Self" means that this organization of a dynamic open system appears by itself.
A computer can pass all criteria but the last one. It is a system, it consumes electrical energy, it moves information through electronic circuits and changes states of registers and external devices, it has specific structure and behavior, but they are organized by humans who design and produce hardware and software.
A computer network is also organized by people who manages the changes. But a social network is a sample of self-organization. People and organizations may change external parameters such as connections between computers or advertisement in media, or internal parameters such as censorship rules or content of individual messages but nobody can manage order a conversation to reach 1000 comments or an account to get followed by 1000 persons. Of course it is possible to fake such behavior or to change external and internal parameters in the way a social network will die or flourish but there are no ways of direct manipulation of internal processes.
Self-organization in dynamic open systems could be found in many areas from lasers till financial markets. If such open systems can reproduce themselves, we speak about life.
This systems have a lot in common. This means synergetics can share research methods, mathematical equations and control methods across many areas.
According to the second law of thermodynamics the entropy must increase but self-organization means the decrease of entropy. Synergetics says that such systems store information and the law of information increase is in this cases prevalent over the second law of thermodynamics.
This point of view demands quite tricky mathematics: you cannot simply look at registers and count bits because anything is dynamic and neither space not time of information storage are determined. On the other hand the knowledge of this principle helps to create and to control such self-organizing systems.
Here are articles on Scholarpedia written by Hermann Haken: Self-organization and Synergetics and also his article from this year What Can Synergetics Contribute to Embodied Aesthetics?.
I do not know, if it is still used in physics. The page of the Center of Synergetics says The present research activities focus on brain theory and psychology. I know some attempts to apply synergetics to research in biology. Two decades ago synergetics was a promising trend in artificial intelligence. (For instance: Neural and Synergetic Computers, Proceedings of the International Symposium at Schloss Elmau, Bavaria, June 13 – 17, 1988) This implies such things as unsupervised learning, self-repair, self-organizing neural network architectures. I have seen similar word combinations in titles of modern articles but I do not know, if they have anything to do with "ancient methods".
Synergetic is a concept that could be easily misused "philosophically". A lot of consultants use the word "synergetics" and its derivates to say that components would work as a whole without problems. If you hear this words from a manager, they mean simply "Don't worry. All problems will be solved by themselves."
