Newtonian Paradigm Research Articles

About the outdated Newtonian paradigm in education and complexity and a complexity science of learning: How far are we from a paradigm shift?

In their position paper entitled Towards a new, complexity science of learning and education, Jorg et al. (2007) argue that educational research is in crisis. In their opinion, the transdisciplinary and interdiscursive approach of complexity science with its orientation towards self-organization, emergence, and potentiality provides new modes of inquiry, a new lexicon and assessment practices that can be used to overcome the current crisis. In this contribution, I elaborate on how complexity science can further be developed for understanding the dynamics of intentions and the communication of meaning as these are central to the social-scientific enterprise.

El Paradigma de la Complejidad

The second half of the 20thCentury points towards a new dialogue with nature under a view that recognizes complexity and fate as constituent elements of reality. In this sense, the present article explains some of the basic principles underlying this new understanding of the world, which goes here by the name of complexity's paradigm, one that is born out of the hollows of the classical newtonian paradigm. At stake are issues like non-linearity or temporary asymmetry which distinguish living creatures as open and interactive systems, and give sense to the concept of time, even * Universidad de Barcelona (Barcelona Espanha). I rjgl O Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia I 4071 LWRPF 63 .2007 1407-426 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.64 on Fri, 22 Jul 2016 04:31:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 408 Janet Ortiz Galilea though until very recently science has not given enough attention to such concepts. But it is also shown how this new paradigm is pervasive across all the disciplines, whereby it requires new instruments to analyze the qualitative dimension of the real. Finally, the author of the article also claims that the acknowledgement of such complexity of the real presupposes an opening of the minds to interdisciplinarity and to a vision of the world in which the real is not seen as a mere addition of pieces, but in which each portion of the real is seen in connection with everything else and as being in constant transformation.

El papel del péndulo en la construcción del paradigma newtoniano

This paper shows the important role of one of the most common instruments, the pendulum, in the construction of the newtonian paradigm. From the analysis of some interesting applications carried out by the greatest scientists of that time, we conclude that the appropriate use of the pendulum in the classroom can be an easy way to introduce historical and epistemological evolution of basic physical concepts.

Geometric diffusions as a tool for harmonic analysis and structure definition of data: Multiscale methods

In the companion article, a framework for structural multiscale geometric organization of subsets of R(n) and of graphs was introduced. Here, diffusion semigroups are used to generate multiscale analyses in order to organize and represent complex structures. We emphasize the multiscale nature of these problems and build scaling functions of Markov matrices (describing local transitions) that lead to macroscopic descriptions at different scales. The process of iterating or diffusing the Markov matrix is seen as a generalization of some aspects of the Newtonian paradigm, in which local infinitesimal transitions of a system lead to global macroscopic descriptions by integration. This article deals with the construction of fast-order N algorithms for data representation and for homogenization of heterogeneous structures.

Geometric diffusions as a tool for harmonic analysis and structure definition of data: Diffusion maps

We provide a framework for structural multiscale geometric organization of graphs and subsets of R(n). We use diffusion semigroups to generate multiscale geometries in order to organize and represent complex structures. We show that appropriately selected eigenfunctions or scaling functions of Markov matrices, which describe local transitions, lead to macroscopic descriptions at different scales. The process of iterating or diffusing the Markov matrix is seen as a generalization of some aspects of the Newtonian paradigm, in which local infinitesimal transitions of a system lead to global macroscopic descriptions by integration. We provide a unified view of ideas from data analysis, machine learning, and numerical analysis.

Idealisation and Galileo’s Pendulum Discoveries: Historical, Philosophical and Pedagogical Considerations

Galileo’s discovery of the properties of pendulum motion depended on his adoption of the novel methodology of idealisation. Galileo’s laws of pendulum motion could not be accepted until the empiricist methodological constraints placed on science by Aristotle, and by common sense, were overturned. As long as scientific claims were judged by how the world was immediately seen to behave, and as long as mathematics and physics were kept separate, then Galileo’s pendulum claims could not be substantiated; the evidence was against them. Proof of the laws required not just a new science, but a new way of doing science, a new way of handling evidence, a new methodology of science. This was Galileo’s method of idealisatioin. It was the foundation of the Galilean–Newtonian Paradigm which characterised the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, and the subsequent centuries of modern science. As the pendulum was central to Galileo’s and Newton’s physics, appreciating the role of idealisation in their work is an instructive way to learn about the nature of science.

5.6.1 The Application of Complexity Theory in the Development of Large‐scale ICT Systems

AbstractThe elements of complexity theory (chaos theory) found application in many diverse disciplines, including the social and management sciences. It became a means to address some of the vexing problems that could not be solved through direct causal analysis. Complexity theory contradicts many of the existing views of conventional management and requires a cognitive change from a rational Newtonian paradigm to a non‐linear, dynamic and complex systems paradigm. This paper unites the principles of complexity theory with Information and Communications Technology (ICT) project management by considering any large‐scale ICT development project as a non‐linear, dynamic and complex system within the context of a larger complex environment. The interactions between the different complex dimensions of the project state space are discussed. ICT project‐ and risk management are described within the context of the elements of complexity theory such as sensitive variables, attractors and fractals.

Dynamical Complexity of Market Mechanism

Recent there is a new trend among physicists—the so-called econophysics as an interdisciplinary field of investigations. Chief among the current Topics is devise appropriate models to understand financial markets. The traditional theory of finance is based on the newtonian mechanical paradigm, where a representative agent facing the well defined benchmark, that the pendulum-like equilibrium around a preset center prevails. The modern financial market participants show that this view is way out-dated, that the market is collective phenomena resulting from countless inhomogeneous agents with different strategies and perceptions. This poses a serious challenge and opportunity for statistical physics community: In recent years we have been accustomed to modeling systems with many degrees of freedom, out of equilibrium, that many advanced tools have come of age. It is in this spirit we have introduced five years ago in Fribourg the so-called Minority Game. The hope is that the striped down model of financial market represented by MG game acts like an Ising-like model: simple enough to work with, both analytically and numerically, and yet the outcome can be complex and rich enough to account for diverse phenomena encountered in real financial markets. Below I recall the basic idea of modeling financial markets.

Fiction rivals science: the French novel from Balzac to Proust

In Fiction Rivals Science, Allen Thiher describes the epistemic rivalry that the major 19th-century French novelists felt in dealing with science. After brief considerations of Stendhal, Thiher focuses on the four most important novelists in France: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and, going into the 20th century, Proust. According to Thiher, each of these novelists considered himself to be in competition with science to make the novel an instrument for knowledge. The first chapter sets forth the understanding of science that dominated the early 19th century in order to make it plausible that literary minds, throughout the 19th century, thought that they could not only rival science, but even make positive contributions to knowledge. The Newtonian paradigm that had dominated the Enlightenment was slowly being challenged by new developments both in physics and in nonphysical sciences such as biology. Especially in biology the development of a scientific discourse using narrative temporality favoured the idea that novelists could also use fiction to construct discourses that advanced knowledge. Balzac wanted to construct a natural history of society and correct the chemical theory of his time. Flaubert drew upon medicine and physiology for the rhetoric of his realist fiction. Zola used unsuccessful medical paradigms for his doctrine of heredity, and models drawn from thermodynamics to describe the relation of the individual to societal forces. Finally, Proust drew upon thinkers such as Poincare to elaborate an epistemology that put an end to the rivalry novelists might feel with scientists. Proust located certain knowledge within the realm of human subjectivity while granting the power of laws to rule over the contingent realm of physical reality, in which, after Poincare, neither mathematics not Newton was any longer a source of absolute certainty. Proust's novel is thus the last great realist work of the 19th century and the first modernist work of consciousness taking itself as the object of knowledge. By demonstrating that the great French realist novelists dealt with many of the same problems as did the scientists of the 19th century, Fiction Rivals Science attempts to show how culture unites literary and scientific inquiry into knowledge. Providing a new interpretation of the development of literary realism, this important new work should be welcomed not only by literary scholars, but by historians of science and culture as well.

Law, Psychology, and the “New Sciences”: Rethinking Mental Illness and Dangerousness

Clinical and legal research on the meaning of mental illness and on definitions (and predictions) of dangerousness continue to offer the mental health law arena mostly disappointing results. In this article, the authors argue that much of this failure is linked to the prevailing Newtonian paradigm of cause-effect relationships, linear logic, and absolute order. In its place, the authors draw attention to the “new sciences”; that is, advances generated from quantum physics and chaos theory. To situate the analysis, the authors explore how psycholegal decision making unfolds. Specifically, the authors examine what contributions the new sciences offer society on the nature and meaning of psychiatric disorder and on the forecasting of violence. Along the way, the authors suggest how the new sciences advance the regard for citizen justice within the domain of mental health law.

Law, psychology, and the "new sciences": rethinking mental illness and dangerousness.

Clinical and legal research on the meaning of mental illness and on definitions (and predictions) of dangerousness continue to offer the mental health law arena mostly disappointing results. In this article, the authors argue that much of this failure is linked to the prevailing Newtonian paradigm of cause-effect relationships, linear logic, and absolute order. In its place, the authors draw attention to the "new sciences"; that is, advances generated from quantum physics and chaos theory. To situate the analysis, the authors explore how psycholegal decision making unfolds. Specifically, the authors examine what contributions the new sciences offer society on the nature and meaning of psychiatric disorder and on the forecasting of violence. Along the way, the authors suggest how the new sciences advance the regard for citizen justice within the domain of mental health law.

The Starfish and the Strange Attractor: Myth, Science, and Theatre as Laboratory in Maria Irene Fornes' ‘Mud’

Cara Gargano sees the plays of Maria Irene Fornes as reflecting ‘nucleate disorder in a system far from equilibrium’ – a theatrical response to the overturning by the new science of the Aristotelian as of the Newtonian paradigm. Comparing the wildly divergent critical interpretations of Fornes' Mud since its premiere in 1983, she suggests that in this overtly simple dramatization of a far from simple triangular relationship, Fornes ‘uses the theatrical space as her laboratory – a place to explore the interface between our society's construction of the world and our evolving artistic and scientific vision’. Cara Gargano is a writer, teacher, and choreographer who took her doctorate at the City University of New York, was on the faculty at the New York School of Ballet, and is presently Chair of the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. She has written extensively on the Quebecoise playwright Marie Laberge, and her articles on performance, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory have been published in Modern Drama, L'Annuaire Théâtrale, and Dance and Research.

Complexity, communication between cells, and identifying the functional components of living systems: some observations.

The concept of 'complexity' has become very important in theoretical biology. It is a many faceted concept and too new and ill defined to have a universally accepted meaning. This review examines the development of this concept from the point of view of its usefulness as a criteria for the study of living systems to see what it has to offer as a new approach. In particular, one definition of complexity has been put forth which has the necessary precision and rigor to be considered as a useful categorization of systems, especially as it pertains to those we call 'living'. This definition, due to Robert Rosen, has been developed in a number of works and involves some deep new concepts about the way we view systems. In particular, it focuses on the way we view the world and actually practice science through the use of the modelling relation. This mathematical object models the process by which we assign meaning to the world we perceive. By using the modelling relation, it is possible to identify the subjective nature of our practices and deal with this issue explicitly. By so doing, it becomes clear that our notion of complexity and especially its most popular manifestations, is in large part a product of the historical processes which lead to the present state of scientific epistemology. In particular, it is a reaction to the reductionist/mechanistic view of nature which can be termed the 'Newtonian Paradigm'. This approach to epistemology has dominated for so that its use as a model has become implicit in most of what we do in and out of science. The alternative to this approach is examined and related to the special definition of complexity given by Rosen. Some historical examples are used to emphasize the dependence of our view of what is complex in a popular sense on the ever changing state of our knowledge. The role of some popular concepts such as chaotic dynamics are examined in this context. The fields of artificial life and related areas are also viewed from the perspective of this rigorous view of complexity and found lacking. The notion that in some way life exists 'at the edge of chaos' is examined from the perspective of the second law of thermodynamics given by Schneider and Kay. Finally, the casual elements in complex systems are explored in relation to complexity. Rosen has shown that a clear difference in causal relations exists between complex and simple systems and that this difference leads to a uniquely useful definition of what we mean by 'living'. Rosen makes it very clear that the class of systems which are complex is a much larger class than those which we call living. For that reason, the focus of this review will be on complexity as a stepping stone towards the deeper question of what makes a system alive.

TQM, Chaos and Complexity

Management practices of this century have been greatly influenced by Frederick Taylor's concept of scientific management. Taylor's theories can be traced to the paradigm of Newtonian mechanics. In recent years a new paradigm of scientific thought, complexity, has emerged. The premise of the paper is that successful TQM initiatives must borrow perspectives and approaches from both paradigms: indeed, one of the key challenges to quality management is to simultaneously balance the objectives of control and learning. This paper elaborates on the connections between the Newtonian paradigm, scientific management, and TQM; and between chaos and complexity, the learning organization, and TQM. Finally, some normative statements are given as to how TQM can evolve as a complex adaptive system.

The Challenge to Policymaking of Large-Scale Systems

The intersecting global societal and natural-environmental systems are described in terms of evolution, instability and structural change. Systems theory, particularly a number of constructs from dissipative-structure theory and synergetics, are applied in this description. The policy meaning of dynamic, reconfigurational systems change and the need for new kinds of policies to fit such change are emphasized. The history of systems support for policymaking is reviewed. The 1990s are interpreted as representing a coalescence of several `exhausted' evolutionary cycles/structures including the Fourth Kondratiev, the Great Power hegemony, and the Newtonian paradigm of science and society. In addition, the natural environment is interpreted as being in a state approaching catastrophic collapse. Accordingly, the 1990s are considered to present an emergent window of opportunity for the development of new kinds of policies. Several recommendations for further work are made.

The form of life. I. It is possible but not necessary

However we deny naive realism, it is difficult to describe the form of life in a Newtonian paradigm. Because any formal descriptions of biological systems inevitably include the concept of “function,” they entail the problem of self-reference. The description of function can be compared to that of meaning of a word, and in philosophy we no longer understand that there exists meaning inherent in a word of a language. As well as the problem of meaning, we cannot describe the aspect resulting from the function, because we cannot identify the specific function of a shape or morphology with the relationship between the shape itself and its environment. Therefore, even if we construct a new formal language in which the self-contradiction resulting from the self-reference is alleviated, that language is just one of various possible ones. In this sense, the form of life in formal description is possible but not necessary. The phrase “not necessary” just refers to the outside of the formal description. In this paper reference to the outside of a formal system is discussed in the context of time-space complementarity, and it is strongly related to the origin of irreversible time. We have to introduce both forward and backward time, as proposed previously by the author and coworkers, even in this context.

Artificial life with autonomously emerging boundaries

The boundary conditions of biological systems are not controllable, due to the perpetual disequilibration of force. This means that the possibilities for the future are open (i.e. one-to-many mapping). However, the future is uniquely determined a posteriori. We argue that such an idea is a basic concept for biological and evolutionary systems and implies unprogrammable systems. But it cannot be described only in a forward-time description. We propose a model in which the uncontrollable boundaries can be described in introducing a backward-time dynamics ( a posteriori description). With respect to the extent of the controllability of boundary conditions, systems are classified into constant, microscopic, macroscopic, and disequilibrium systems. In the last, the local transition rule is perpetually transformed as time progresses, due to the uncontrollable microscopic boundary conditions. Our paradigm deviates from the Newtonian paradigm (i.e. the paradigm of prediction), and its purpose is not to describe the physics of being but to describe that of becoming (evolution).

Why the future is not what it was: New models of evolution

Equilibrium models deriving from the mechanistic Newtonian paradigm were unsatisfactory for anticipating the future, with its dimensions of evolution, instability and change. Structural instability and evolutionary change find legitimate expression in models of complex systems described by non-linear dynamics. This article examines such evolutionary models and assesses their application to human systems, particularly relating to environmental issues. The co-evolutionary model emphasizes how human values and actions affect future system outcomes, and how future strategies can thus be derived.

Chaotic Dynamics and the Newtonian Legacy

The legacy of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia is evident today throughout the mathematical sciences. Applications of his mechanics range from protein dynamics through macroscopic engineering and space flight, to pattern formation in galactic superclusters, and beyond mechanics the Newtonian paradigm of differential evolution has blossomed into biology, ecology, and economics. Computers have naturally had a profound impact, making long, precise time integrations a routine facility. They have, moreover, played a seminal role in the revolutionary new theory of chaotic motions. These unexpected, noisy motions arise in well-posed, deterministic systems of differential equations, a recent illustration from conservative Hamiltonian dynamics being the chaotic tumbling of the Saturnian satellite, Hyperion. They are typical responses of nonlinear dissipative models once the phase dimension exceeds two: Lorenz’s historic study of turbulent atmospheric convection, and fractal escape boundaries of a potential well, are here used to illustrate salient features. Of particular philosophical significance is the exponential divergence from adjacent starts, whose finite precision implies a definite time-horizon, beyond which prediction is impossible. Coupled with the repetitive mixing of the chaotic flows, this divergence dictates that macroscopic features (such as the occurrence of clockwise as opposed to anticlockwise convective rolling in the Lorenz model) can occur in any sequence, and in this respect the motions are as random as a coin toss.

Theprincipiaand contemporary mechanics: Chaotic dynamics and the new unpredictability

The legacy of Sir Isaac Newton’sPrincipiais evident today throughout the mathematical sciences. Applications of his mechanics range from protein dynamics, through macroscopic engineering and space flight, to pattern formation in galactic super-clusters, and beyond mechanics the Newtonian paradigm of differential evolution has blossomed into biology, ecology and economics. Computers have naturally had a profound impact, making long, precise time integrations a routine facility. They have, moreover, played a seminal role in the revolutionary new theory of chaotic motions. These unexpected, noisy motions arise in well posed, deterministic systems of differential equations, a recent illustration from conservative Hamiltonian dynamics being the chaotic tumbling of the Saturnian satellite, Hyperion. They are typical responses of nonlinear dissipative models once the phase dimension exceeds two: Lorenz’s historic study of turbulent atmospheric convection, and fractal escape boundaries of a potential well, are here used to illustrate salient features. Of particular philosophical significance is the exponential divergence from adjacent starts, whose finite precision implies a definite time-horizon, beyond which prediction is impossible. Coupled with the repetitive mixing of the chaotic flows, this divergence dictates that macroscopic features (such as the occurrence of clockwise as opposed to anticlockwise convective rolling in the Lorenz model) can occur in any sequence, and in this respect the motions are as random as a coin toss.