[p2p-research] from Italy

Mon Apr 12 13:49:19 CEST 2010

Dear Stefano,

This is an interesting project, but beyond my capacities for the moment.

Though we have quite a few scholars, our network is very informal, and some
of our iniatives, like a p2p research cluster on facebook, do not pan out
...

But it is really worth trying of course, and we can at least help with
spreading the word,

Allessandro, Tom, and Smari, are young scientists and technologists
interested in networking, I hope they can assist you, or at least explore
and dialogue,

I post your report in the back of your letter,

If you put it online with a URL, it will be easier to spread the word, and
also, where can we 'see' anything, to make it more concrete?

Michel

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:50 AM, Stefano Serafini <metafrasis at alice.it>wrote:

> Dear Michel,
>
> I've got your email by Nikos Salingaros.
>
> I'd like to show you the attached synthesis of a conference, that I've
> presented at the international conference “Enforcing scientific and
> technical cooperation between Russian scientists and Russian research and
> formation centres, and compatriot scientists working abroad”, Tomsk State
> University, Tomsk, Russian Federation, 2-4 April 2010.
>
> Maybe, you and your colleagues can find interesting to realize the network
> I sketched out. We can offer it to the Russian Speaking Scientists
> Association (RASA), and adapt it for other countries as such, starting from
> Italy. My country has many scientists and scholars around the world, due to
> the unhappy situation of Italian research in homeland. By the way, I think
> this can contribute to a real epistemological revolution, transforming the
> global monopoly in a multi-pole glocality.
>
> Please let me know what do you think about it.
>
> All the best,
>
> Stefano Serafini
>

*Effective connections among Russian and European scientists. Steady
tendency and progress in the study of natural and technological phenomena
(biology of form, linguistics, urbanism)*

* *

Dr. Stefano Serafini*¶

** STOQ Project, Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Rome, Italy)
*

*¶ PROMETE Spin off Company of the National Institute for the Physics of
Matter - National Research Council (Naples, Italy)*

* *

*metafrasis at alice.it*

*Synthesis of the paper read at the International Conference “Enforcing
scientific and technical cooperation between Russian scientists and Russian
research and formation centres, and compatriot scientists working abroad”,
Tomsk, Russian Federation, 2-4 April 2010.*

*ABSTRACT:*  *The idea of a very effective scientific network, based upon
“biophilic” architecture principles (peer-to-peer, self-organized, scaled,
self-similar, and “small-world”-like network) is offered here. The network
should be Russian both in language and scientific tradition, offering a
paradigm for a new, hyper-connected vision of world science, based on a
multi-centric epistemology.*

In order to optimize scientific communication among Russian scholars in the
homeland and abroad, a network is proposed having the following qualities:

1)      A peer-to-peer network, generated by gradual, bottom-up unfolding,
according to principles of self-organization;

2)      Fractal, self-similar, and scaled;

3)      Connected to external networks (non-Russian and non-scientific), by
“small-world” bridges;

4)      Russian in language, culture, and epistemological background;

5)      Animating a scientific, imaginative and political multi-centrism
worldwide.

Work refers to the epistemology of complexity, and aims to unfold the same
kind of self-organization that emerges in biology, linguistics, and
urbanism.

Self-organization is characterized by connection and self-similar
integration (i.e. biological homeostasis, ecological network), or by
morpho-functional isomorphism determining an operational fitness, as shown
by René Thom’s theory of catastrophes. Self-organization is a formal
ecological invariant underling all efficient systems. It always develops
non-linear, emergent phenomena, such as observed in the human brain,
society, and the biosphere. It can be found in all par-excellence adaptive
systems, such as biological systems, linguistic systems, configurations of
adaptive artificial systems (wiring technology, power networks, telephone,
computer or road networks), and the special kinds of architecture and urban
systems called “biophilic”. Full integration and self-organization tend to
coincide. Self-organized systems generate human comfort and functionality,
and these effects can help in identifying self-organization. Culture and
techniques should be oriented towards human natural functionality.

Scaling similarity allows a fuller connection. For instance, Zipf’s Law
shows the hierarchical recurrence of the most used terms in linguistics,
flowing up to an empowerment of expressive capability, and flowing down to a
nucleus of more common terms. Several semantic universes and social groups
can connect to the same language, and thereby become reciprocally connected.
No “on/off” barrier here. The lower scales (i.e. most often used words,
shared by all the people speaking the same language) sustain the whole
system. If a scale is lacking, then all the other scales dependent upon it
get disconnected and become useless. The same scaling connectivity rules
urban morpho-functional patterns.

Watts and Strogatz’s *small-world theory* showed that a network obtains its
highest efficiency and speed when it is connected somewhere in-between
regularity and disorder. Random connections allow skipping serial elements,
and reduce the number of passages needed to reach any point inside the
network. Small-world network efficiency grows with random connections,
according to the following formula:

*n* >> *k* >> ln(*n*) >> 1

where *n* denotes the graph’s vertices, and *k* its edges. The
condition *k*>> ln(
*n*) guarantees that the graph is not disconnected. The percentage of random
connection needed to make the network whole is the natural logarithm of *n*[1n(
*n*)/*n*], and this says that this percentage diminishes according to a
power law, as the number of edges grows. A constant and scalar ratio
regulates system efficiency: below it, efficiency decreases; above it,
dispersion occurs. This is the kind of adaptive and self-organized network
we find in the real world. Proteins, food chain ecosystems, human nervous
system, languages; all of these are “small-worlds”.

A one-language monopoly in science exists not only for practical reasons.
Universal use of English also reflects a few institutions’ imperialism over
all the others. This involves: 1) uniformity to an apparently global
expressive model, hiding a monopolistic view of the world and epistemology;
2) consequent separation from one’s specific and historical culture, and
local needs; 3) the loss of schools of thought, research traditions, and a
quantity of data, no matter if they become apparently just “re-elaborated”.

The Russian Federation has enough material and human resources to enforce an
autonomous epistemological pole. The Scientific Diaspora affecting the
homeland’s universities during the ‘90s seeded an outstanding world-wide
hyper-connection. This can invert the current direction of the “brain
drain”, getting back – in an enriched form – the previously exported skills.
A Russian network will not in any way produce a soviet-fashion scientific
isolation. On the contrary, a highly complex, interconnected, multi-centric
world-wide organization will rise from it. Its positive effects would go
beyond the Russian Federation. Typical Russian love for culture and arts
would make such a scientific network hologrammatical, and produce complex
effects that go much further than in science.

As a concrete instantiation of a self-generated network, the
Italian-speaking “Salingaros Group” (“Gruppo Salingaros”) is presented. This
is a highly-efficient scientific, cultural and political lobby, rapidly
unfolded by the interest of some scholars and professionals in the urban
theories of Nikos Salingaros.

Main bibliography

Christopher Alexander, *The Nature of Order*, 4 voll., Berkeley, Ca., Center
for Environmental Structure, 2002-2005.

Adrian Bejan, *Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature*, New York,
Cambridge University Press, 2000.

*Adrian Bejan - James H. Marden, *«The constructal unification of biological
and geophysical design», *Physics of Life Reviews*, Volume 6, Issue 2, June
2009, pp. 85-102.

Johan Bollen - Francis Heylighen,  «Algorithms for the self-organisation of
distributed, multi-user networks. Possible application to the future world
wide web», In R. Trappl (ed.),  *Cybernetics and Systems ’96*, Austrian
Society for Cybernetics, 1996, pp. 911-916 (
http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Papers/AlgorithmsWeb.pdf).

Scott Camazine - Jean-Louis Deneubourg - Nigel R. Franks - James Sneyd - Guy
Theraulaz - Eric Bonabeau, *Self-Organization in Biological Systems*,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001.

Daniel J. Depew - Bruce H. Weber, *Darwinism Evolving. **Systems Dynamics
and the Genealogy of Natural Selection*, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. -
London 1995.

Ramon Ferrer i Cancho - Ricard V. Solé, «Least effort and the origins of
scaling in human language», *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
of the United States of America*, February 4, 2003 vol. 100 no. 3, pp.
788-791.

Jerry Fodor - Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, *What Darwin got wrong*, London,
Profile Books, 2010.

Carlos Gershenson, *Design and Control **of Self-organizing Systems*, PhD
Thesis, Vrije Universiteit, Brussel, 2007.

Johan Gielis, «A generic geometric transformation that unifies a wide range
of natural and abstract shapes», *American Journal of Botany*, 90 (2003),
pp. 333-338.

Antonio Lima-de-Faria, *Evolution without Selection. Form and Function by
Autoevolution*, Elsevier, Amsterdam - London - New York, 1988 (trad. Russa:
*Эволюция без отбора. Автоэволюция формы и функции*, МИР, Москва, 1991).

Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini - Juan Uriagereka, «Still a bridge too far?
Biolinguistic questions for grounding language on brains», *Physics of Life
Reviews* 5 (2008) 207–224.

Nikos A. Salingaros, *Algorithmic Sustainable Design: The Future of
Architectural Theory*, Solingen, Umbau-Verlag, 2009.
  Stefano Serafini, «L’architettura come salute psicobiologica quotidiana:
morfogenesi e biofilia», *Atti del I Convegno Internazionale su Psiche e
Architettura*, Siracusa, 2010, in stampa.

Ian Stewart, «Self-organization in evolution: a mathematical
perspective», *Phil.
Trans. R. Soc. Lond. *A (2003) 361, pp. 1101-1123.
  René Thom, *Esquisse d’une Sémiophysique*, Paris, InterEditions, 1991.   René
Thom, *Modèles mathématiques de la morphogénèse*, Paris, Christian* **
Bourgeois*, 19802.

Duncan J. Watts - Steven H. Strogatz, «Collective dynamics of “small-world”
networks», *Nature*, 393 (1998), pp. 440-442.

Geoffrey B. West - James H. Brown - Brian J. Enquist, «The fourth dimension
of life: Fractal geometry and allometric scaling of organisms», *Science* 284
(1999), pp. 1677-1679.

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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