Happy Holidays, and Next Steps for our EDU Community

[Clément Vidal]

Dear Scholars,

Clément and I wish you a wonderful Holiday season. Clément has completed work on our EDU 2008 conference publication, The Evolution and Development of the Universe. This document has now been finalized, with many excellent commentaries and author replies added to most accepted paper, and sent to the hosting journal, Foundations of Science (FoS). Thank you to everyone who submitted a paper, to everyone who commented, and to the authors for their replies to the commentaries. An electronic copy of this special issue is now available on our homepage, http://evodevouniverse.com (PDF)

Let us all give our biggest thanks to Clement Vidal of VUB, and to Dirk Aerts of FoS, for shepherding this project to completion! The planned date for our next EDU conference has been moved to 2011. We were originally hoping for 2009 or 2010, but the completion of my book has taken longer than I expected (I hope to be done this year), and Clement has been very busy with his PhD and until very recently, the commentaries section of our EDU 2008 publication.

The tentative theme of EDU 2011 is Accelerating Complexity Transitions in Big History. We wish to bring together scholars and critics of the apparently accelerating signature of complexity
transitions that we have seen over universal, biological, and now human historical scales. As you may know, this topic is rarely discussed in standard scientific communities, yet if in fact this acceleration signature is real, it may be of significant importance, and may, like entropy growth and celestial mechanics, be one element of the future that we can falsifiably predict, in a probabilistic manner.

We expect to hold this conference in Oct or Nov 2011, and we are presently looking at several low-cost, easy-access venues in Europe (if you have a venue to suggest, please let us know). For your interest, some publications relevant to this fascinating conference topic:

For Universal Acceleration:
Aunger, R. (2007) Major transitions in 'big' history, and A rigorous periodization of 'big' history. Tech. Forecasting & Social Change 74(8):1137-1178.
Chaisson, E.J. (2003) A Unifying Concept for Astrobiology, International Journal of Astrobiology, 2:91-101
Chaisson, E.J. (2000) Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in
Nature, Harvard U. Press. ISBN 067400342X
Spier, F. (2005) How Big History Works: Energy Flows (Free Energy Rate Density) and the Rise and Demise of Complexity. Social Evolution & History 4(1).
See also http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/Research_on_free_energy_rate_density

For Biological Acceleration:
Cash, R.; Chaline, J.; Nottale, L. & Grou, P. (2002). Développement humain et loi log-périodique (Human development and log-periodic laws). Comptes Rendus Biologies 325(5):585-590.
Chaline, J. (1999) Les horloges du vivant: Un nouveau stade de la théorie de l'évolution? (The clock of life: A new stage theory of evolution?), Hachette.

For Technological Acceleration:
Koh, H. and Magee, C.L. (2006) A functional approach for studying technological progress: Application to information technology. Tech. Forecasting & Social Change 73:1061-1083.
Koh, H. and Magee, C.L. (2007) A functional approach for studying technological progress: Extension to energy technology. Tech. Forecasting & Social Change 75:735-758.
Magee, C.L. (2009) Towards quantification of the role of materials innovation in overall technological development. Working Paper 2009-09, MIT Engineering Systems Division, 31pp.

Links to some (not all) of the PDFs for these papers and books are available at the EDU Bibliography page: http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/Bibliography We should recognize that the choice of the metric greatly influences whether one sees structural or functional acceleration in in big (universal) history. Chaisson's Free Energy Rate Density is one metric, for example, that shows acceleration across all of these domains. On the other hand, there is evidence that total biological
morphocomplexity on Earth (as measured by the marginal rate of new species creation, for example) has been decelerating since the Cambrian. Yet there are also apparent biological accelerations (as Chaline observes above), and cultural evolution (communication of ideas through brains, from behavioral to linguistic to now machine-aided communication) is clearly accelerating in human history. Important aspects of technological 'evolution' are also clearly accelerating, as Magee describes above in his work on technological performance curves (Moore's law, etc.).

Does each of these adaptive domains/substrates show logistic (S-curve) acceleration and then eventual deceleration in the evolutionary development of its complexity? At the same time, does the "leading edge" of complexity in universal change always accelerate by migrating across domains/substrates? If so, how may we best define the "leading edge," and why might this be important? As you can imagine, there is lots to discuss and critique in this space. Clément
and I look forward to your participation.

If you know other scholars or papers that have addressed any of these issues, or would like to work with us on the planning committee for EDU 2011, please let Clément or I know by email in coming weeks.

We wish you a wonderful Holiday and a very productive 2010!
Warm Regards,
John Smart and Clément Vidal,
Evo Devo Universe Scholarly Community.
http://evodevouniverse.com