From: Anthony David Smith (tonys@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU)
Date: Fri Mar 26 1993 - 01:22:48 UTC
In article <1993Mar23.215435.13188@csustan.csustan.edu> Joe Caddell <caddell@csustan.csustan.edu> writes:
>The time for a CFV on the proposed chaos newsgroup is at hand. The only
>dissent that has appeared over the RFD period has been about the name.
>So, I would like to conduct an informal poll to see what you people think.
>The following are the names which have been proposed so far:
>
> sci.chaos
> sci.complexity
> sci.math.chaos
> sci.math.nonlinear
>
>Please send e-mail to me, caddell@GNL2.ucdavis.edu, telling which
>one of these you prefer, or if you have another name, please
>let me know. Since I want to start the CFV as soon as possible, I
>will stop counting name preferences after 00:00am 3/29/93, Mon. morning.
Without wishing to derail the process at hand, I suggest the name could
beneficially indicate the most likely future positioning of chaos as a subdiscipline and therefore propose it be called:
sci.emergence.chaos
I feel I must also suggest a couple of points as to why this might be a
more appropriate way to go. (Pls don't be offended that I have omitted to
attribute the threads behind some of these points -- I have deferred to
readability.):
A successful book title, be it Gleick's _Chaos_ or Lewin's _Complexity_,
does not (quite) a scientific discipline make.
Interest in chaos does not appear to be primarily concerned with the
nature of chaos itself but rather on the emergence of interesting
phenomena at its boundaries.
The dust jacket of Lewin's book claims _Complexity_ to be "the major new
theory that unifies all sciences". A trifle early perhaps, but some of us
who follow the work at Santa Fe et al are sympathetic.
A personal view: 'emergence' does not seem to carry the same baggage of
implications and constraints that come with 'complexity', 'nonlinearity',
'dissipative', 'general evolution' etc.
A sci.emergence heirarchy could be expected to become a home for topics
which are currently widely scattered in comp and sci such as fractals and
cellular automata, but whose commonality is coming to be seen as critical.
A couple of years back the first Australian conference on chaos was
organised by math people at UNSW who were more than surprised when they
were swamped by interest from many sides, especially the arts.
I anticipate that some unreconstructed Marxists surviving in backwaters of
academia will disclaim the rise of 'emergence' as attempted justification
for Adam Smith's "invisible hand". But, if they are ever to effectively
critique the success of capitalism, they will just have to come to terms
with it.
The rest of us are coming to know that the Net is emergent cyberspace.
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Tony Smith PO Box 256 (38 Ardoch St) Essendon Vic 3040 Australia
T:+61 3 370 3166 F:+61 3 375 2830 TonyS@Ariel.ITS.UniMelb.EDU.AU
Emergence-Interaction-Community-Collaboration-Cyberspace-Systems
-Complexity-Postmodernity-Simulation-Automata-Memetics-Evolution
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