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The chapters in this book centre around one main theme, the concept
of the machine and its use as metaphor in a variety of contexts.
This concept is deeply rooted in western culture and is frequently
used to interpret complex systems in nature and society. With the
advent of electronic computers, the machine metaphor applied to
thinking and the brain has becOIne even more pertinent. The idea of
a machine has changed over time. In this book these transformations
are made trans parent, various aspects of the machine metaphor are
discussed and limitations and pitfalls of the metaphor are
elaborated. The chapters are written in a non-technical fashion and
are accessible to a large readership of scientists and also laymen
interested in the scientific per spectives and logical foundations
of the machine concept that has been so influential in western
thinking. The idea of the book has its origin in a workshop held at
the Sci entific Station in Abisko, Sweden, in May 1990, where
several of the present authors participated. The meeting was
organized and spon sored by the Swedish Council for Planning and
Coordination of Re search (FRN). Since 1983, the FRN has actively
promoted a series of such annual events at Abisko, all of which
have been devoted to the exploration of various aspects of complex
systems and their evolution.
In May 1984 the Swedish Council for Scientific Research convened a
small group of investigators at the scientific research station at
Abisko, Sweden, for the purpose of examining various conceptual and
mathematical views of the evolution of complex systems. The stated
theme of the meeting was deliberately kept vague, with only the
purpose of discussing alternative mathematically based approaches
to the modeling of evolving processes being given as a guideline to
the participants. In order to limit the scope to some degree, it
was decided to emphasize living rather than nonliving processes and
to invite participants from a range of disciplinary specialities
spanning the spectrum from pure and applied mathematics to
geography and analytic philosophy. The results of the meeting were
quite extraordinary; while there was no intent to focus the papers
and discussion into predefined channels, an immediate
self-organizing effect took place and the deliberations quickly
oriented themselves into three main streams: conceptual and formal
structures for characterizing sys tem complexity; evolutionary
processes in biology and ecology; the emergence of complexity
through evolution in natural lan guages. The chapters presented in
this volume are not the proceed ings of the meeting. Following the
meeting, the organizers felt that the ideas and spirit of the
gathering should be preserved in some written form, so the
participants were each requested to produce a chapter, explicating
the views they presented at Abisko, written specifically for this
volume. The results of this exercise form the volume you hold in
your hand."
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