The Generative Sciences (or Generative Science) is the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary sciences that explore the natural world and its complex behaviours as a generative process. Generative science shows how deterministic and finite rules and parameters in the natural phenomena interact with each other to generate indeterministic and infinite behaviour. // What is science? There are different theories of what science is. ... The World in plate carrée projection The World In English, world is rooted in a compound of the obsolete words were, man, and eld, age; thus, its oldest meaning is Age of Man. ...

These sciences include psychology and cognitive science, cybernetics, cellular automata, generative linguistics, natural language processing, social network analysis, process physics, connectionism, evolutionary biology, self-organization, neural network theory, communication networks, cognitive musicology, information theory, systems theory, genetic algorithms, artificial life, chaos theory, complexity theory, epistemology, systems thinking, genetics, philosophy of science, cybernetics, bioinformatics, and catastrophe theory. Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = soul and logos = study of) is the study of behaviour, mind,[action] and thought. ... Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence (e. ... Cybernetics is a theory of the communication and control of regulatory feedback. ... A cellular automaton (plural: cellular automata) is a discrete model studied in computability theory and mathematics. ... Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. ... Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of artificial intelligence and linguistics. ... A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals, indicating the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. ... Process physics is a model of reality that replaces general relativity and unifies it with quantum theory. ... Connectionism is an approach in the fields of cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy of mind. ... Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time, i. ... Self-organization refers to a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases automatically without being guided or managed by an outside source. ... Simplified view of an artificial neural network A neural network is an interconnected group of artificial or biological neurons. ... Communication is the process of exchanging information usually via a common system of symbols. ... Information theory is a branch of the mathematical theory of probability and mathematical statistics that quantifies the concept of information. ... Systems theory or systemics is an interdisciplinary field which studies relationships of systems as a whole. ... A genetic algorithm (GA) is a heuristic used in computer science to find approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. ... Artificial life, also known as alife or a-life, is the study of life through the use of human-made analogs of living systems. ... Chaos theory, in mathematics and physics, deals with the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that (under certain conditions) exhibit the phenomenon known as chaos, most famously characterised by sensitivity to initial conditions (see butterfly effect). ... Complexity theory can refer to more than one thing: Computational complexity theory: a field in theoretical computer science and mathematics dealing with the resources required during computation to solve a given problem Systems theory (or systemics or general systems theory): an interdisciplinary field including engineering, biology and philosophy that incorporates... Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. ... Systems thinking involves the use of various techniques to study systems of many kinds. ... Genetics (from the Greek genno γεννώ= give birth) is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. ... The philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy which studies the philosophical foundations, assumptions, and implications of science, including the natural sciences such as physics and biology, and the social sciences, such as psychology and economics. ... Cybernetics is a theory of the communication and control of regulatory feedback. ... Bioinformatics or computational biology is the use of techniques from applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, and computer science to solve biological problems. ... Catastrophe theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with dynamical systems and was originated with the work of the French mathematician René Thom in the 1960s. ...

Elemental perspective

Generative sciences explores the natural phenomena at several levels including physical, biological and social processes as emergent processes. It explores complex natural processes as generating through continuous interactions between elemental entities on parsimonious and simple universal rules and parameters. Antonym of psychical. ... Biology studies the variety of life (clockwise from top-left) E. coli, tree fern, gazelle, Goliath beetle Biology is the science of life (from the Greek words bios = life and logos = word). ... The term social is derived from the Latin word socius, which as a noun means an associate, ally, business partner or comrade and in the adjectival form socialis refers to a bond between people (such as marriage) or to their collective or connected existence. ... Emergence is the process of complex pattern formation from simpler rules. ...

Scientific and philosophical origins

The generative sciences originate from the monadistic philosophy of Leibniz. This was further developed by the neural model of Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch. The development of computers or Turing Machines laid a technical source for the growth of the generative sciences. However, the cornerstones of the generative sciences came from the work on cellular automaton theory by John Von Neumann, which was based on the Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch model of the neuron. Cellular automata were mathematical representations of simple entities interacting under common rules and parameters to manifest complex behaviors. The word monad comes from the Greek word μονάς (from the word μόνος, which means one, single, unique) and has had many meanings in different contexts: Among the Pythagoreans (followers of Pythagoras) the monad was the first thing that came into existence. ... Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (July 1, 1646 in Leipzig - November 14, 1716 in Hannover) was a German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer of Sorb descent. ... Walter Pitts (1923? - 1969) was a logician who worked in the field of cognitive psychology. ... Warren McCulloch (November 16, 1899 - September 24, 1969) was an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician. ... Artists conception of a universal Turing machine. ... A cellular automaton (plural: cellular automata) is a discrete model studied in computability theory, mathematics, and theoretical biology. ... John von Neumann in the 1940s. ... Walter Pitts (1923? - 1969) was a logician who worked in the field of cognitive psychology. ... Warren McCulloch (November 16, 1899 - September 24, 1969) was an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician. ... Neurons (also spelled neurones or called nerve cells) are the primary cells of the nervous system. ...

The generative sciences were further unified by the cybernetics theories of Norbert Wiener and the information theory of Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver in 1948. The mathematician Shannon gave the theory of the bit as a unit of information to make a basic decision, in his paper A mathematical theory of communication (1948). On this was further built the idea of uniting the physical, biological and social sciences into a holistic discipline of Generative Philosophy under the rubric of General Systems Theory, by Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Ralph Gerard, and Kenneth Boulding. This was further advanced by the works of Stuart Kauffman in the field of self-organization. It also has advanced through the works of Heinz von Foerster, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Gregory Bateson and Humberto Maturana in what came to be called constructivist epistemology or radical constructivism. Cybernetics is a theory of the communication and control of regulatory feedback. ... Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 - March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician, known as the founder of cybernetics. ... Information theory is a branch of the mathematical theory of probability and mathematical statistics that quantifies the concept of information. ... Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 - February 24, 2001) has been called the father of information theory, and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory. ... Warren Weaver is an author of the well-known work on communication, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (together with Claude Shannon). ... 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Information is a term with many meanings depending on context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus. ... 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (September 19, 1901, Vienna, Austria - June 12, 1972, USA) was a biologist who was a founder of general systems theory. ... Anatol Rapoport (born May 22, 1911) is a Russian-born American Jewish, mathematical psychologist. ... Kenneth Ewart Boulding (January 18, 1910 - March 18, 1993) was born in Liverpool, England, graduated from Oxford University, granted United States citizenship in 1948. ... Stuart Alan Kauffman (born September 28, 1939), originally trained as a physician, is a biologist and complex systems researcher, and is most widely known for his promotion of self-organization as a factor that is at least as important as Darwinian natural selection in producing the complexity of biological systems... Self-organization refers to a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases automatically without being guided or managed by an outside source. ... Heinz von Foerster (November 13, 1911 - October 2, 2002) was a scientist combining physics and philosophy. ... A philosopher and proponent of radical constructivism. ... Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904–4 July 1980) was a British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. ... Humberto Maturana (born 1928 in Santiago) is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. ... Constructivism is a new criticism in philosophy directed against medieval realism, classical rationalism and empiricism. ...

The most influential advance in the generative sciences came from the development of the cognitive sciences through the theory of generative grammar by the American linguist Noam Chomsky (1957). At the same time the theory of the perceptron was advanced by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert at MIT. It was also in the early 1950s that Clark and Watson gave the double helix model of the DNA, at the same time as psychologists at the MIT including Kurt Lewin, Jacob Ludwig Moreno and Fritz Heider laid the foundations for group dynamics research which later developed into Social Network Analysis. Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence (e. ... In linguistics, and especially the study of syntax, generative grammar is the study of linguistic syntax using formal grammars that can in some sense generate the well-formed expressions of a natural language. ... Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... 1957 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The perceptron is a type of artificial neural network invented in 1957 at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory by Frank Rosenblatt. ... Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (born August 9, 1927), sometimes affectionately known as Old Man Minsky, is an American scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of MITs AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy. ... Dr. Seymour Papert (born March 1, 1928 Pretoria, South Africa) is an MIT mathematician and prominent educator. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research institution and university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts along the Charles River and across from Bostons Back Bay district. ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the... Space-filling model of a section of DNA molecule Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or deoxyribose nucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions specifying the biological development of all cellular forms of life (and many viruses). ... Kurt Lewin (* September 9, 1890 in Mogilno, Posen; † February 12, 1947 in Newtonville, Massachusetts) ranks as one of the pioneers of psychology (especially social psychology), as one of the founders of group dynamics and as one of the most eminent representatives of Gestalt psychology (Gestalt theory). ... Fritz Heider (1896-1988) was a German social psychologist, responsible for developing the so-called P-O-X theory and the attribution theory in 1958. ... The term group dynamics implies that individual behaviours may differ depending on individuals current or prospective connections to a sociological group. ... A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals, indicating the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. ...

In 1996 Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell wrote the seminal work Sugarscape. In their work they expressed the idea of Generative science which would explore and simulate the world through generative processes. 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...

Prospective directions

Generative scientists are working towards further developments and new frontiers. Latest and emerging directions in the generative sciences include the computer simulations of complex social process, artificial life and Boids. The modeling of strategic decision making in cognitive organization psychology and the emergence of communication patterns in Cognitive organization theory. The research on anaphora in natural language processing is an important step towards the advancement of Artificial intelligence which is also influencing Process physics and semantic network modeling of physics and physical properties. Dynamical cognitive evolutionary psychology and dynamical psychology is the latest direction in the systematic unification of the psychological sciences. This is further expanded through the mathematical theories of the Cognitive grammar of music. A computer simulation or a computer model is a computer program which attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. ... Boids, developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, is an artificial life application simulating the flocking behaviour of birds. ... Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i. ... Evolutionary psychology (or EP) proposes that human and primate cognition and behavior could be better understood by examining them in light of human and primate evolutionary history. ... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Music Look up Music in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikicities has a wiki about Music: Music Music City : a collaborative music database All Music Guide: includes a comprehensive and flexible Genre and Style system MusicWiki: A Collaborative Music-related encyclopedia Science...

Prominent Generative Scientists

• John Von Neumann
• Noam Chomsky
• Robert Axelrod
• Walter Pitts
• Norbert Wiener
• John Holland
• Marvin Minsky
• Ray Jackendoff
• John Conway

John von Neumann in the 1940s. ... Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... This article is about a political scientist. ... Walter Pitts (1923? - 1969) was a logician who worked in the field of cognitive psychology. ... Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 - March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician, known as the founder of cybernetics. ... John Holland is the name of several notable persons in history: John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter (1352?–1400), was half-brother to Richard II of England and second husband of Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of John of Gaunt. ... Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (born August 9, 1927), sometimes affectionately known as Old Man Minsky, is an American scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of MITs AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy. ... Ray Jackendoff is an influential contemporary linguist who has always straddled the boundary between Generative linguistics and Cognitive linguistics, committed as he is both to the existence of an innate Universal Grammar (an all-important thesis of Generative Linguistics) and to giving an account of language that meshes well with... John Horton Conway (born December 26, 1937, Liverpool, England) is a prolific mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. ...

Selected bibliography

• W. Weaver and C. E. Shannon, (1948) The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
• Chomsky N (1957) Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.
• Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts,(1943) A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5:115-133.
• Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science; selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (Ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
• Weiner N (1948) Cybernetics; John Wiley, New York, 1948.
• von Neumann, Jon (1966) The Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, edited and completed by Arthur W. Burks (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press).
• Rapoport, A. (1953). Spread of information through a population with sociostructural bias: I. Assumption of transitivity. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 15, 523-533.
• James L. McClelland and David E. Rumelhart. (1987) Explorations in Parallel Distributed Processing Handbook. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1987.
• Gleick J (1987); Chaos: Making a New Science; Copyright 1987, Viking, N.Y.
• Jackendoff, Ray, and Fred Lerdahl (1981). "Generative music and its relation to psychology." Journal of Music Theory 25(1): 45-90
• Allen, T.J. (1970). Communication networks in R&D laboratories. R&D Management, 1(1), 14-21.
• Skvoretz, J. 2002. Complexity Theory and Models for Social Networks. Complexity 8: 47-55
• Seidman, Stephen B. (1985). Structural consequences of individual position in nondyadic social networks, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 29: 367-386
• Thietart, R. A., & Forgues, B. (1995). Chaos theory and organization. Organization Science, 6, 19-31.
• Holland, John H., "Genetic Algorithms", Scientific American, July 1992, pp. 66-72
• Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Eric Bonabeau, "Scale-Free Networks", Scientific American, May 2003, pp 60-69
• T. Winograd, Understanding Natural Language, Academic Press, New York, 1972.
• M. Minsky, The Society of Mind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1986.
• Reginald T. Cahill, Christopher M. Klinger and Kirsty Kitto (2000) Process Physics: Modelling Reality as Self-Organising Information; Published in The Physicist, 37(6), 191-195.
• Epstein J.M. and Axtell R. (1996) Growing Artificial Societies - Social Science from the Bottom. Cambridge MA, MIT Press.
• Epstein J.M. (1999) Agent Based Models and Generative Social Science. Complexity, IV (5)
• Kaneko K. (1998) Life as Complex System: Viewpoint from Intra-Inter Dynamics. Complexity, 6, pp.53-63.
• Robert Axtell, Robert Axelrod, Joshua Epstein, and Michael D. Cohen, (1996) Aligning Simulation Models: A Case Study and Results; Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 1, pp. 123-141 (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~axe/research/Aligning_Sim.pdf)
• McTntyre L. (1998) Complexity: A Philosopher's Reflection. Complexity, 6, pp.26-32.

See also:

• Artificial life
• Emergence
• Complex system
• Boids
• Connectionism

Artificial life, also known as alife or a-life, is the study of life through the use of human-made analogs of living systems. ... Emergence is the process of complex pattern formation from simpler rules. ... A complex system is a system whose properties are not fully explained by an understanding of its component parts. ... Boids, developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, is an artificial life application simulating the flocking behaviour of birds. ... Connectionism is an approach in the fields of cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy of mind. ...

External links

• http://www.swarthmore.edu/socsci/tburke1/artsoc.html (Artificial Societies, Virtual Worlds and the Shared Problems and Possibilities of Emergence)

• http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html (The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation)