timothy morton

How do we get a handle on complex systems thinking? What are the implications of this science for philosophy, and where does philosophical tradition foreshadow findings from the scientific frontier?

Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.

In this episode we speak with Carlos Gershenson (UNAM website, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, Twitter), SFI Sabbatical Visitor and professor of computer science at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he leads the Self-organizing Systems Lab, among many other titles you can find in our show notes. For the next hour, we’ll discuss his decades of research and writing on a vast array of core complex systems concepts and their intersections with both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions — a first for this podcast.

If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.

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Or just a copy of the recently resurfaced SFI Press Archival Volume Complexity, Entropy, and The Physics of Information.

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Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

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Mentioned & Related Links:

Carlos publishes the Complexity Digest Newsletter.

His SFI Seminars to date:
A Brief History of Balance
Emergence, (Self)Organization, and Complexity
Criticality: A Balance Between Robustness and Adaptability
Festina lente (the slower-is-faster effect)
Antifragility: Dynamical Balance

W. Ross Ashby & The Law of Requisite Variety

Hyperobjects
by Timothy Morton

How can we think the complex?
by Carlos Gershenson and Francis Heylighen

The Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophy
by Carlos Gershenson

Complexity and Philosophy
by Francis Heylighen, Paul Cilliers, Carlos Gershenson

Heterogeneity extends criticality
by Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, Octavio Zapata, Omar K, Pineda, Gerardo Iñiguez, and Carlos Gershenson

When Can we Call a System Self-organizing?
by Carlos Gershenson and Francis Heylighen

Temporal, Structural, and Functional Heterogeneities Extend Criticality and Antifragility in Random Boolean Networks
by Amahury Jafet López-Díaz, Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, and Carlos Gershenson

When slower is faster
by Carlos Gershenson, Dirk Helbing

Self-organization leads to supraoptimal performance in public transportation systems
by Carlos Gershenson

Dynamics of ranking
by Gerardo Iñiguez, Carlos Pineda, Carlos Gershenson, & Albert-László Barabási

Self-Organizing Traffic Lights
by Carlos Gershenson

Dynamic competition and resource partitioning during the early life of two widespread, abundant and ecologically similar fishes
by A. D. Nunn, L. H. Vickers, K. Mazik, J. D. Bolland, G. Peirson, S. N. Axford, A. Henshaw & I. G. Cowx

Towards a general theory of balance
by Carlos Gershenson

A Calculus for Self-Reference
by Francisco Varela

On Some Mental Effects of The Earthquake
by William James

Self-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systems
by Carlos Gershenson

Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I.
Complexity Ep. 99

Simon DeDeo on Good Explanations & Diseases of Epistemology
Complexity Ep. 72

David Wolpert on The No Free Lunch Theorems and Why They Undermine The Scientific Method
Complexity Ep. 45

The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility
by Stewart Brand

Michael Lachmann

Stuart Kauffman

Andreas Wagner

Cosma Shalizi

Nassim Taleb

Does Free Will Violate The Laws of Physics?
Big Think interviews Sean Carroll

Listless in the Melbourne lockdowns two through six, Lisa Divissi became obsessed with the mystery of her adopted cat’s past life - and what it means to live with the unknown

Fabulous stories, overheard conversation and a panoply of characters? It's the sound of Planet Poetry basking in the glowing Technicolor of Martina Evans's funny, moving and brilliantly inventive new collection American Mules (Carcanet). Meanwhile a  croaky-with-Covid Robin props herself up on one elbow to re-read a favourite collection by Kei Miller. As Cop26 is in the news, Peter considers eco-poetry in the light of work by novelist Richard Powers and philosopher Timothy Morton's 'All Art is Ecological'.

But wait... Where's that self-promotional trumpet? The new website at planetpoetrypodcast.com is finally UP! (And if you could tell absolutely everyone about it, that really would be awfully decent of you.)  

Planet Poetry is a labour of love, paid for out of our own pockets.
If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support and Buy us a Coffee!

In this episode, we feature a conversation with the legendary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky about his recent film GUNDA.

I have been a fan of Kossakovsky’s work since one of his first films, THE BELOVS (1993), which is a portrait of simple village life, sometimes tender and sometimes harsh, captured mostly in a steady observational gaze until the last scene where we are shaken by the filmmaker’s camera work. In Kossakovsky’s latest film, GUNDA, again, Kossakovsky delivers simplicity, tenderness, and a last sequence that makes the ground shake. 

GUNDA is not the masterpiece within Kossakovsky’s body of work but a masterpiece of cinema. Experiential cinema in its purest form, GUNDA chronicles the unfiltered lives of a mother pig, a flock of chickens, and a herd of cows with intimacy. Using stark, transcendent black-and-white cinematography and the farm's ambient soundtrack, director Victor Kossakovsky invites audiences to slow down and experience life as his subjects do, taking in their world with magical patience and an otherworldly perspective. GUNDA asks us to meditate on the mystery of animal consciousness and reckon with the role humanity plays in it. 

Eka Tsotsoria moderates the conversation, where we reference the contemporary philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton, Story of a Horse by Leo Tolstoy, and   Paulus Potter’s painting, The Young Bull.  

For show notes, visit docsinorbit.com and be sure to follow us on social media @docsinorbit

Science has always been about improving human understanding of our universe…but scientists have not always prioritized accessibility of their hard-won results. The deeper research digs into specialized sub-fields and daunting data sets, the greater the divide a team must cross to help communicate their findings not just to the public, but to other scientists.

It is cliché: “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” But it’s the truth: strong visual communication helps readers make the choice to dig into dense manuscripts, and helps journal editors decide whose work gets published in the first place. Good dataviz can get complexity across in less time and with less effort, help public audiences grasp science better and appreciate the beauty that inspired the research to start with.

Deciding how to represent research in graphic form is both a little science and a little art: it takes developing an understanding of what information matters and what doesn’t, and how other people will absorb it. Thus it should come as no surprise that in our noisy era, the data artist rises as a hero of both fields: empowered by technology to bridge dissociated disciplines and help us all learn more and better.

This week’s episode is with Kirell Benzi, a data artist and data visualization lecturer who holds a PhD in Data Science from EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne). Kirell’s work has been shown in outlets as diverse as the Swiss National Museum, Gizmodo, VICE, and Phys.org. In this recording, we discuss his projects mapping the Montreaux Jazz Festival and the Star Wars Extended Universe, the future of neural-network assisted data visualization, and how data art helps with the technical and ethical challenges facing science communication in the 21st Century.

If you enjoy this podcast, please help us reach a wider audience by leaving a review at Apple Podcasts, or sharing the show on social media. Thank you for listening!

Kirell Benzi’s Website

Kirell’s Instagram

Kirell’s SFI seminar on Data Art (video)

“Useful Junk? The Effects of Visual Embellishment on Comprehension and Memorability of Charts” by Scott Bateman, Regan L. Mandryk, Carl Gutwin, Aaron Genest, & David McDine, University of Saskatchewan

Visit our website for more information or to support our science and communication efforts.

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Podcast Theme Music by Mitch Mignano.

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