Complexes

//Please forward to whom may be interested. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships. Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last three years and be under 36 years, both to the date of the beginning of the fellowship. In previous years, there has been a 50% acceptance rate. Candidates are evaluated mainly by their number of papers published in ISI-indexed journals. The area of interests of candidates should fall within complex systems, artificial life, information, evolution, cognition, robotics, and/or philosophy. Interested candidates should send CV and a tentative project (1 paragraph) to cgg-at-unam.mx Projects can be inspired from: http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/projects.html Postdoctoral fellowships are between one and three years (renewing each year). Spanish is not a requisite. Accepted candidates would be working at the Computer Science Department of the IIMAS ( http://turing.iimas.unam.mx...

Gershenson, C. (2011). The Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophy . C3 Report 2011.04. Abstract : Reductionism has dominated science and philosophy for centuries. Complexity has recently shown that interactions---which reductionism neglects---are relevant for understanding phenomena. When interactions are considered, reductionism becomes limited in several aspects. In this paper, I argue that interactions imply non-reductionism, non-materialism, non-predictability, non-Platonism, and non-nihilism. As alternatives to each of these, holism, informism, adaptation, contextuality, and meaningfulness are put forward, respectively. A worldview that includes interactions not only describes better our world, but can help to solve many open scientific, philosophical, and social problems caused by implications of reductionism. Full text : http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.2827