Re: <documenta X><blast> home
Morgan Garwood (mgarwood@inch.com)
Tue, 15 Jul 1997 11:33:33 -0400
yes... a large amount of theoretical into practical work is now being done
which merges "combinatorics" with Darwinism. Did I mention this at an
earlier point in this discussion? Virtual populations are created; they
could represent anything, from the simplicity of a gas molecule, to a
human-like *actor* or *agent* (mathematical golems, anyone?). These
populations are then instructed to mutate until a desired state is
achieved, ar a transition point is discovered, or some condition worth
knowing about the population is revealed. The *essential properties* of the
population members can be varied through any number of schemes, until a
good fit of stimulus and response registers. This reveals, I think, an
essential shift in thought about the relationship of the individual to the
population, or "the public", depending on the subject in question. Clearly,
macromodels based on combination and selection for fitness are moving in
the direction of thermodynamics and away from an earlier, Newtonian-like
model of human action. Ilya Prigogine should be pleased by all of this.
We'll have to content ourselves with atom-status.....