[FRIAM] The fractal dimension of group selection

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Interesting. Reading it gave me one of those, “OH Crap!  Why didn’t I thing of that?” moments.   I now realize that I don’t know whether “fractality” is a descriptive concept (it presents a state of affairs that requires explanation) or an explanatory concept (gives an account of a state of affairs that has been presented) or a “tethered” concept, in which an explanation and a description are bound analytically to one another.  George Williams once [wrongly] defined adaptation as “that which natural selection produces”.  Thus Adaptation and Selection became tethered and statements of the form, “natural selection produces adaptation” became analytically, not empirically, true.   

 

Is the fact of fractality tethered to an explanation of fractality? 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 6:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <Friam at redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] The fractal dimension of group selection

 

We recently discussed the concept of a fractal dimension, and today morning I had the idea that we can apply it to the concept of group selection to measure how many dimensions an evolutionary system has. If you are interested take a look at

http://blog.cas-group.net/2020/07/the-fractal-dimension-of-group-selection/

 

-J.

 

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