The dynamics of correlated novelties.

F Tria,V Loreto,V D P Servedio,S H Strogatz

doi:10.1038/srep05890

F Tria, V Loreto + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep05890

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Abstract

Novelties are a familiar part of daily life. They are also fundamental to the evolution of biological systems, human society, and technology. By opening new possibilities, one novelty can pave the way for others in a process that Kauffman has called “expanding the adjacent possible”. The dynamics of correlated novelties, however, have yet to be quantified empirically or modeled mathematically. Here we propose a simple mathematical model that mimics the process of exploring a physical, biological, or conceptual space that enlarges whenever a novelty occurs. The model, a generalization of Polya's urn, predicts statistical laws for the rate at which novelties happen (Heaps' law) and for the probability distribution on the space explored (Zipf's law), as well as signatures of the process by which one novelty sets the stage for another. We test these predictions on four data sets of human activity: the edit events of Wikipedia pages, the emergence of tags in annotation systems, the sequence of words in texts, and listening to new songs in online music catalogues. By quantifying the dynamics of correlated novelties, our results provide a starting point for a deeper understanding of the adjacent possible and its role in biological, cultural, and technological evolution.

Highlights

Novelties are a familiar part of daily life
The model, a generalization of Polya’s urn, predicts statistical laws for the rate at which novelties happen (Heaps’ law) and for the probability distribution on the space explored (Zipf’s law), as well as signatures of the process by which one novelty sets the stage for another. We test these predictions on four data sets of human activity: the edit events of Wikipedia pages, the emergence of tags in annotation systems, the sequence of words in texts, and listening to new songs in online music catalogues
The larger significance of these ideas has to do with their connection to Kauffman’s theoretical concept of the ‘‘adjacent possible’’2, which he originally discussed in his investigations of molecular and biological evolution, and which has been applied to the study of innovation and technological evolution[3,4]

Summary

Introduction

Novelties are a familiar part of daily life. They are fundamental to the evolution of biological systems, human society, and technology. The model, a generalization of Polya’s urn, predicts statistical laws for the rate at which novelties happen (Heaps’ law) and for the probability distribution on the space explored (Zipf’s law), as well as signatures of the process by which one novelty sets the stage for another. We test these predictions on four data sets of human activity: the edit events of Wikipedia pages, the emergence of tags in annotation systems, the sequence of words in texts, and listening to new songs in online music catalogues. It comes with an entourage of surrounding possibilities, a cloud of other potentially new ideas or experiences that are thematically adjacent to it and can be triggered by it

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