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I was hoping to subscribe to the PRINCYB-L list...
Name: Nathan Lauster
Email address: tikitavi@wsunix.wsu.edu
URL of home page:
Postal address: 435 NE Howard Street, Pullman, WA 99163
Phone: 334-6186
Affiliations: Sociology Graduate Student at Washington State University
How did you hear about PCP? By stumbling across the web-page for Principia
whilst running a search for something or the other (for some reason or
another, I think it might have had to do with Prisoner's Dilemma models,
but that's just a guess)
Please take at least one page to describe your work
and how it might relate to PCP:
An interest in chaotic modelling led me to a professor who
led me to a few sources. After reading through Stuart Kauffman's
book "At Home in the Universe", I developed an interest in complexity a la
the Santa Fe Institute, and I've been trying to create my own models for a
complex sociology based on autocatalytic sets and building on historical
work done by researchers like Charles Tilly ("Coercion, Capital, and
European States").
Recently, I entered upon a course with Gerald Young (local
biologist) on Human Ecology, and now I'm attempting to regear my
models based on ecological dynamics (defined by Young as the study of
interactions). I had encountered the Principia Cybernetica before with
some interest, but on reading some Gregory Bateson recently, I realized
the significant similarity between ecological modeling and cybernetics.
Studying the restraints on systems which allow for their persistence AND
evolution in the face of entropy and disorganization is, in my opinion
what sociology should be all about.
As for my modeling, I'm trying to take into account the various
institutions which have formed and understand them in relation to how they
persist and interact. (As an institution, I am here thinking of any
form of social organization which robustly persists across time, usually
beyond a single lifespan). I would like to think of institutions as
filling up niches made possible by resources (language fills a niche
in communicative possibilities, economic companies fill niches based in
concentrative materialism, states in concentrated coercion, etc.). As
systems of organization riding seas of vast "mutational" possibilities,
what is it that allows these structures to survive?
Restraint, Cybernetics, Persistence... I'd like to learn more, and
I'd like to contribute where I can... (within the departmental constraints
of W.S.U., I'm working in the general areas of Human Ecology,
Environmental Sociology, Communities and Organization)
Thanks!
-Nathan
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