Generative science is an area of research that explores the natural

world In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

and its complex behaviours. It explores ways "to generate apparently unanticipated and infinite behaviour based on deterministic and

finite Finite is the opposite of infinite. It may refer to: * Finite number (disambiguation) * Finite set, a set whose cardinality (number of elements) is some natural number * Finite verb, a verb form that has a subject, usually being inflected or marke ...

rules and parameters reproducing or resembling the behavior of natural and social phenomena". By modelling such interactions, it can suggest that properties exist in the system that had not been noticed in the real world situation. An example field of study is how

unintended consequences In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by Ameri ...

arise in social processes. Generative sciences often explore natural phenomena at several levels of organization.J. Schmidhuber. (1997
A computer scientist's view of life, the universe, and everything
Foundations of Computer Science: Potential – Theory – Cognition, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 201–208, Springer

Self-organizing Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spon ...

natural systems are a central subject, studied both theoretically and by simulation experiments. The study of complex systems in general has been grouped under the heading of "

general systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

", particularly by

Ludwig von Bertalanffy Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (19 September 1901 – 12 June 1972) was an Austrian biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory (GST). This is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, app ...

Anatol Rapoport Anatol Rapoport ( uk, Анатолій Борисович Рапопо́рт; russian: Анато́лий Бори́сович Рапопо́рт; May 22, 1911January 20, 2007) was an American mathematical psychologist. He contributed to genera ...

, Ralph Gerard, and

Kenneth Boulding Kenneth Ewart Boulding (; January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an English-born American economist, educator, peace activist, and interdisciplinary philosopher.David LatzkoKenneth E. Boulding Commentsat personal.psu.edu. Accessed 24 April 200 ...

Scientific and philosophical origins

The development of computers and

automata theory Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science. The word ''automata'' comes from the Greek word αὐτόματο� ...

laid a technical foundation for the growth of the generative sciences. For example: *

Cellular automata A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...

are mathematical representations of simple entities interacting under deterministic rules to manifest complex behaviours. They can be used to model emergent processes of the physical universe, neural cognitive processes and social behavior. **

Conway's Game of Life The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no furthe ...

is a zero-player game based on cellular automata, meaning that the only input is in setting the initial conditions, and the game is to see how the system evolves.John Conway's Game of Life
/ref> **In 1996

Joshua M. Epstein Joshua Morris Epstein is Professor of Epidemiology at the New York University College of Global Public Health. Formerly Professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, with joint appointments in the departments of Applied Mathematic ...

and Robert Axtell wrote the book ''Growing Artificial Societies'' which proposes a set of automaton rules and a system called '' Sugarscape'' which models a population dependent on resources (called sugar). *

Artificial neural network Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...

s attempt to solve problems in the same way that the human brain would, although they are still several orders of magnitude less complex than the human brain and closer to the computing power of a worm. Advances in the understanding of the human brain often stimulate new patterns in neural networks. One of the most influential advances in the generative sciences as related to cognitive science came from

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

's (1957) development of

generative grammar Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguisti ...

, which separated language generation from semantic content, and thereby revealed important questions about human language. It was also in the early 1950s that psychologists at the MIT including

Kurt Lewin Kurt Lewin ( ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career Lewin applied hi ...

, Jacob Levy Moreno and

Fritz Heider Fritz Heider (19 February 1896 – 2 January 1988) was an Austrian psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school. In 1958 he published ''The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations'', which expanded upon his creations of balance theory ...

laid the foundations for

group dynamics Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group (''intra''group dynamics), or between social groups ( ''inter''group dynamics). The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision- ...

research which later developed into

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...

analysis.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

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) Systems theory

Scientific and philosophical origins

See also

References

External links