Sunday, March 16, 2014

S Kauffman on Emergent Possibility Spaces in Evolutionary Biology, Economics, & Tech. (great lecture)

Below is a great lecture by Stuart Kauffman on the scientific and philosophical consequences of emergent possibility spaces in evolutionary biology and evolutionary economics, including technology innovation and even cyber security. This web page has the both video and lecture notes.

The lecture is very accessible anyone who reads books or watches programs on science aimed at the general public -- especially evolution, ecology, complexity, and innovation. He does mention some mathematical topics related to Newtonian physics and also Quantum Mechanics, but you don't need to know the details of any the math to follow his argument.  He gives very simple examples for all the important points he makes.


There are very important implications on epistemology (what do we know? what can be known?), scientific methods and research programs, and the causal role of cognition, conception, and creativity in economic and technological change. This last implication is an important element in my dissertation. I'll write more on that later.

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