Although the conference was started much too late for such an ambitious
program, in the end it managed to appear well-organized. Of course, many
contributing speakers did not turn up (only one of the invited speakers, J.
Jaynes was absent, but got replaced by R. Petrella), mostly because they
did not manage to arrange the funding or the journey in the short time that
was left between the acceptance of their abstract and/or scholarship
request and the start of the conference. But this was not felt as a great
problem because of the large number of speakers (some 200 in total). A
greater annoyance, for me at least, was the lack of time: 20 minutes per
lecturer is really too little for a good presentation and discussion.
The "Evolution of Complexity" symposium was kept tighter in hand by me than
the other "streams" (except the "Quantum Structures"), which lacked a
chairman responsible for the whole. Thus, it seems I managed to have less
delays and to better fill up the holes from the people who were
unexpectedly absent (Robert Glueck, A. W. Raifu, S. Norvaisas, P. Stokes)
by extending discussions or coffee pauses, by adding new speakers (R.
Cottam appeared a little bit out of the blue at the last possible moment),
and by letting one speaker lecture twice (thanks for the additional effort,
Richard Coren!). The final programme, with all abstracts (and full papers
if submitted) is available at http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/einmagsy.html.
The most frustrating part of the chairman role was that I had to
continuously look at my watch and remind speakers when they had only 5
minutes left (usually after they had just introduced the subject domain),
in order to ensure that the next speaker could start in time. Thus, I was
not really in the best position to concentrate on the content of the
lectures. Yet, I got the impression that the general quality of the
research and the presentations was quite high. I heard from others who had
also been in different streams that our Symposium had generally a higher
quality.
The attendance was quite satisfactory too. I estimate that on average some
50-60 people were present, with a high point of 80-90 during the final
panel discussion. The discussions concluding each of the 3 sessions were
clearly a good idea, and engendered many enthusiastic debates. Again, it
was a pity that we had to stop in order to leave enough time for people to
get a lunch, because it seemed as though we might have continued for at
least an hour each time.
Especially the final panel discussion was quite lively. The panel members
were F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn, F. Geyer, B. Edmonds and John D. Collier.
Chris Langton, from Alife fame, had originally agreed to participate, but
he afterwards apologized for not getting out of his bed in time after a
long night discussion ;-) After each panel member had given his own
impression of the general "Evolution of Complexity" domain in 5 minutes,
and replied to the others' comments, someone in the room got so eager to
widen the discussion that he nervously interrupted us with the plea to
allow the public to participate (which was supposed to happen anyway at
that time). Perhaps 20 or 30 people intervened in the subsequent hour, and
it was again lunch time which forced us to cut short the debate.
As any insider would have predicted, there were no clear conclusions,
except that the topic is very interesting but needs a lot of additional
research. Most obviously lacking is a general definition of complexity.
Yet, there seemed to be at least an implicit consensus on what are the most
important issues to be resolved: definitions, mechanisms underlying
metasystem transitions and growth of complexity... That is something which
is rarely achieved in wide-ranging domains such as cybernetics and systems
theory. As such, the symposium seems a good starting point for an on-going
collaborative effort, which would involve most of the partipating
lecturers.
After the conference, I had some long discussions with my colleague
Principia Cybernetica editor, Cliff Joslyn (the third editor, Val Turchin,
unfortunately was unable to join us). We agreed about several practical
issues concerning the further organization of the project. One of these was
to create a new medium for people wishing to keep in touch with the
project's activities: an announcements mailing list. This list would
complement our existing email discussion list PRNCYB-L, by only
broadcasting the most important news items, without on-going discussions.
Thus, it would carry much less messages than PRNCYB-L (which fluctuates
around 1-2 messages per day on average), which would make life easier for
people with limited time or email capabilities, who don't wish to get lots
of messages in their mailbox. On the other hand, all messages sent to the
new announcements list would be automatically broadcasted to PRNCYB-L, so
that there would be no need for double subscription, and so that people who
wish to discuss announcements can still do so.
I checked with the VUB computer center, and they told me there is no
problem in creating such a list. I expect to have it running in a few
weeks, and will make all practical details about subscription available by
then. In the meantime, symposium participants are invited to subscribe to
PRNCYB-L (see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/mail.html) if they wish to
participate in on-going discussions, and/or read the Principia Cybernetica
Web (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/) if they wish to get information in their
own tempo.
Another way to build on the work done at the symposium is to publish a
Proceedings with papers by the symposium contributors. The conference
organizers are presently discussing possibilities with some international
publishers (Kluwer in the first place). I cannot say anything more concrete
as yet, but I hope there will be one or more proceedings volumes for the
conference. Ideally, I would like to have a separate volume for the
"Evolution of Complexity" symposium, though we might also include some
contributions from other conference streams. In the meantime, I am
collecting the texts of the presented papers ( I have already 5 or 6), and
making them available electronically over the web
(http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/einmagsy.html). I would welcome any further
submissions.
Note however, that these texts are likely to be quite different from the
eventual published papers, in the sense that the final versions will need
to follow as yet unspecified guidelines about length, format, etc. and may
undergo further refereeing. For the published volume, quality of the papers
and coherence of the whole are for me the most important criteria. This
means I would not mind including papers from people who were not present at
the symposium, but whose abstract was selected and fits into the theme. I
would also appreciate it if different contributors would read each other's
papers, and use the ideas they get from other to try to develop a more
coherent whole. That is why I would like to get draft versions available
over the Web now, as a first stage for the final publication.
The "Einstein meets Magritte" conference was meant to introduce the
transdisciplinary Center "Leo Apostel" (CLEA), which was responsible for
the overall organization, on the international scene and to a wider
audience within the Free University of Brussels (VUB). It seems to have
succeeded very well on both counts. Several people (including K. Diller and
B. Martens) have asked me about possibilities to spend a sabbatical or a
visit at CLEA, and people from other research centers (e.g. the Center for
Theoretical Studies in Prague led by I. Havel) have expressed their
interest in starting a formal collaboration. I will discuss these
possibilities at the next board meeting of CLEA (of which I have now
officially become an "associate director").
The very positive response within the VUB seems to indicate that CLEA will
be able to rely on a lot of good-will created by the conference, making it
likely we will get sufficient funding and administrative support for such
collaborative projects. The most pressing practical problem at the moment
is lack of office space, but there are promises to arrange a complete
building for CLEA. I will also propose a formal association between CLEA
and the Principia Cybernetica Project, and perhaps suggest individual
associations between CLEA and the PCP editors Cliff Joslyn and Val Turchin.
Let me conclude by reiterating my wish that the symposium contributors who
felt really involved with the subject would keep in touch with us at the
Principia Cybernetica Project, either through one of the mentioned mailing
lists or at least through the Principia Cybernetica Web.
Francis
________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Francis Heylighen, Systems Researcher fheyligh@vnet3.vub.ac.be
PESP, Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
Tel +32-2-6292525; Fax +32-2-6292489; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html