by Stuart Kauffman

Abstract: I will discuss several approaches to the origin of life issue, mostly based on classical physics, some on recent results on the “Poised Realm”, hovering reversibly between quantum and classical behaviors. Classically, work on the origin of life follows these lines: 1) Search for template replicating RNA or RNA cousins in the RNA World. 2) The Lipid World, of self reproducing, dividing liposomes. Work combining RNA World and Lipid World is underway. 3) Collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers, achieved experimentally with RNA, with DNA, and with peptides. Peptide sets show that RNA is not needed for molecular reproduction. We can hope for evolving protocells by housing replicating polymer systems in dividing liposomes, where lipids are also synthesized by the total system. Open ended evolution involves selectable “genes”, available in the RNA world, and in peptide autocatalytic sets. In addition open ended evolution derives from Darwinian preadaptations of protoells in their abiotic worlds and with one another. Poised Realm aspects may include quantum criticality with unique electronic properties, now found in most evolved proteins.

by Stefan Turner

Abstract: Many evolutionary systems are combinatorial in the sense that the creation of new entities is based on the combination of already existing things. By formalising this kind of dynamics into mathematical models one can realise that evolutionary systems are prototypes of complex systems, where the underlying network structure — that determines the next possible steps in evolution (adjacent possible)— co-evolves with the population of phase space (which things currently exist). We show that these models are self-organised critical and therefore are able to capture several key features of evolutionary systems, such as power laws in creation and extinction statistics, punctuated equilibria, and phases of massive and rapid re-structuring. We show an example where the model can be used to explain innovation dynamics as seen in world trade data.

by Francesca Tria

Abstract: Recently, large databases witnessing human activities allowed the observation that novelties – such as the individual process of listening a song for the first time – and innovation processes – such as the fixation of new genes in a population of bacteria – share striking statistical regularities.

by Hiroki Sayama

Abstract:  In this talk, we will present a summary of our interdisciplinary research project “Evolutionary Perspective on Collective Decision Making” that was conducted through close collaboration between computational, organizational, and social scientists at Binghamton University. We redefined collective human decision making and creativity as evolution of ecologies of ideas, where populations of ideas evolve via continual applications of evolutionary operators such as reproduction, recombination, mutation, selection, and migration of ideas, each conducted by participating humans. Based on this evolutionary perspective, we generated hypotheses about collective human decision making and creativity, using agent-based computer simulations. The hypotheses were then tested through several experiments with real human subjects. Throughout this project, we utilized evolutionary computation (EC) in non-traditional ways— as a theoretical framework for reinterpreting the dynamics of idea generation and selection, as a computational simulation model of collective human decision-making processes, and as a research tool for collecting high-resolution experimental data on actual collaborative design and decision making from human subjects.

by Riccardo Di Clemente

Abstract: Few attempts have been proposed in order to describe the statistical features and historical evolution of the export bipartite matrix countries/products. An important standpoint is the introduction of a products network, namely a hierarchical forest of products that models the formation and the evolution of commodities. In the present article, we propose a simple dynamical model where countries compete with each other to acquire the ability to produce and export new products. Countries will have two possibilities to expand their export: inno- vating, i.e. introducing new goods, namely new nodes in the product networks, or copying the productive process of others, i.e. occupying a node already present in the same net- work. In this way, the topology of the products network and the country-product matrix evolve simultaneously, driven by the countries push toward innovation.

by Bernardo Monechi

Abstract: In the world of artistic production there is a constant struggle to achieve fame and popularity. This fierce competition between artistic creations results in the emergence of highly popular elements that are usually well remembered throughout the years, while many other works that did not achieve that status are long-forgotten. However, there is another level of importance that must be considered in order to have a more complete picture of the system. In fact many works that have influenced the production itself, both due to their aesthetic and cultural value, might have not been or might not be popular anymore. Due to their relevance for the whole artistic production, it is important to identify them and save their memory for obvious cultural reasons. In this talk, we focus on the duality between popularity and significance in the context of popular music, trying to understand the features of music albums belonging to one or both of these classes. By means of the user-generated data gathered on Last.fm, an on-line catalog of music albums, we define a growing conceptual space in the form of a network of tags representing the evolution of music production during the years. We use this network in order to define a set of general metrics, characterizing the features of the albums and their impact on the global music production. We then adopt these metrics to implement an automated prediction method of both the commercial success of a creation and its belonging to expert-made lists of particularly significant and important works. We show that our metrics are not only useful to asses such predictions, but can also highlight important differences between culturally relevant and simply popular products. Despite having being applied in the popular music context, our method can be easily extended to other areas of artistic creation.

by Josep Perelló

Abstract: We will explain and discuss several experiences where artistic and creative practices can drive ambitious scientific research. We will focus on topics and actions directly related to complex systems science to exemplify all their potentialities. We will describe how participatory strategies, public engagement, community processes and wide multidisciplinary teams are able to transform an ordinary research activity into a complete experience where impact and outputs are multiple, diverse and long-lasting. The list of actors involved should necessary include artists, designers, public agencies or administrations, and then must also take place in uncommon places such as museums, cultural spaces and public spaces. Working with many actors and building tailored-made research collectives have the capacity to raise shared concerns, to address societal challenges in a novel and innovative way, and to enhance the value of the results by publicly discussing and sharing the whole research cycle.

by Raffaella Burioni

Abstract: In the maintenance and development of social interactions, individuals invest heterogeneously according to diverse strategies. Firstly, not all individuals are equally socially active and they show different propensity to social interactions, resulting in a diverse number of contacts in a given observation time. Secondly, individuals may allocate social interactions in different ways, either by favouring the strengthening of a limited number of strong old ties or by the exploration of weak ties opening access to new information, new people and communities.

We propose and solve a dynamic network model with a rule of links formation that explicitly takes into account heterogeneity in social activity and new and old tie allocation. In particular, we propose a general functional form for the social allocation mechanism, able to fit empirical observations on several dataset. Interestingly, we observe, across all the datasets, that the larger the degree, the smaller is the probability of creating a new tie.

Starting from a generalized version of the Polya’s urn, we develop a dynamical model of network evolution and formulate a mechanism, based on “adjacent-possible” theory, able to catch the many features observed in real growth of the individual’s set of social contacts. We then show how our approach can be tuned to reproduce different paradigmatic real-world networks and to describe novelty exploration in different kind of human interactions.