Although such an assumption could be true for the human species, for many other species who have shorter lifespans, it’s possible to arrange laboratory settings exhibiting the evolutionary process.

Here you can see a time lapse video published by Harvard Medical School demonstrating evolution of the bacteria against antibiotics over a couple of generations.

The whole evolutionary process happened in about ten days.

Considering the distinction between the special theory of evolution and general theory of evolution, the following experiment can be regarded as a demonstration of the special version.

The experiment is administered by Tamy Lieberman and Roy Kishony.

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Darwin’s theory of evolution itself has experienced an evolutionary process. A process that started around a very sensitive topic: The origin of species.

As it always has been a long historical debate between believers and non-believers about the origin of the world and the humans, soon both camps found a new battleground for the old debate.

However, as they are just proposing two opposing models of the world which never could be proved or disproved, as we know, neither advocates of intelligent design school (or so-called creationists) nor proponents of the evolutionary theories, would never be able to push the other party out of the game.

Creationists – as they say – are talking about something beyond human sense and sensibility. Therefore, their view of the world could never be disproved scientifically.

On the other side of the battle, evolutionists are trying to collect scientific evidence and, science is inherently doubtful about itself. In the eyes of the scientists, The Science (with big S) will be forever incomplete and therefore, a real scientist would never believe in his assertions.

Scientists just consider their theories as working models of the perceived reality and nothing more.

Special theory of evolution vs. General theory of evolution

Kerkut’s distinction between the special and general theory of evolution is one of the simplest descriptions available in the literature:

There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed. This can be called the ‘Special Theory of Evolution’ and can be demonstrated in certain cases by experiments. On the other hand, there is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.

Some of the critics of the evolution theory have accepted it up to a certain level which is referred to as the special theory of evolution. However, most of them consider the general theory of evolution as an overgeneralization of the concept.

Evolution as a problem-solving tool: a lost opportunity

Although the origin of Darwin’s evolution theory goes back to his researches about the origin of the species, applications of his model have potential to go much further than the original use.

However, the puzzle of creation has been so amusing for the homo sapiens that most of them couldn’t take a look at more urgent and closer problems waiting for a workable solution.

Sure, I’m talking about the ordinary people with a common understanding of science. Because for the majority of the scientists, the evolution has already proved itself as a helpful approach for the understanding of the complex systems.

Despite all the above points, it’s still a pity that we humans have missed the opportunity to use this brilliant tool at its full potential for understanding and re-engineering our environment.

For evolution to be used as a problem-solving tool, you need the following pre-conditions:

• A solution generation process (sure every proposed solution can be partially or entirely wrong)
• Either a long timespan, for solving the problem or a fast and powerful solution processing system
• A process (or property) in the system which promotes variation in the proposed solutions
• A selection process that prefers some of the solutions to the others. Such a selection process can emerge in most of the environments with limited resources. Every environment with limited resources inevitably forces some of the solutions out of the game.
• A retention process, helping the preferred solutions to survive or transmit their experience to the next generation.

The above concept with the same or similar wording can be found in texts of Dawkins or other evolution theorists.

Although the debates between creationists and evolutionists seem to have no end – at least in the near future – the evolution as a problem-solving tool would remain the most brilliant invention or innovation or discovery of the humans ever since they have become conscious of their existence in the universe.

Genetic Algorithms, Complex Systems, Mathematical Optimization Models, A/B testings and conversion optimization (in digital marketing) are just a few samples of the species evolved in the universe that Darwin created for us.

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The story of the Ship of Theseus

Before delving into details, let’s read the original version of the ship’s story as appeared in Plutarch’s book (+/+):

“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”

The Pluratch’s story is the first known appearance of the Ship of Theseus’ Paradox or Theseus’ Boat as it is sometimes called. Let’s sum up the story:

The story of the Ship of Theseus illustrates various possibilities and paradoxes of identity over time and has attracted the attention of many great philosophers for centuries. Heraclitus, Plato, Hobbes, and Locke are among many thinkers who have discussed this story in one way or the other over the course of the last two millennia.

The second form of the Theseus Paradox

Thomas Hobbes, the great philosopher of the 17th century, posed a new paradox based on this old story. We can call it the second form or the complicated variation of the paradox:

The second form of the paradox is more helpful in discussing the concept of identity. Thus in the rest of this article, we will stick to the second variation. Just to make it easier to refer, in the rest of the text, I’ll use the term voyaging ship to denote the ship that started the voyage and has the crew on it, and the term assembled ship for the other ship, the one built with old parts.

Importance of the Theseus Paradox

Identity is one of the concepts which many metaphysical models of the world rely on it. When you believe that every human has a never-changing identity, it seems more reasonable to have a dualistic view of humans: body and spirit.

The answer to the Ship of Theseus paradox

It’s hard, even impossible, to provide an answer to this paradox. First, I will show why it is hard to provide an answer. And then, I will describe why the question itself is problematic.

To discuss the paradox, it would be easier to quantify the case. Let’s suppose the voyaging ship has 1000 pranks, and on the voyage, they are changed one by one.

After changing the first prank, what do you think about the identity of the ship? Is the ship still Theseus’s Ship? Most probably, you would say yes. It’s still the same ship. If the side mirror of your car falls down or if you injure one of your fingers and the doctors amputate it, you are still the same person. In the same way, we may lose one tooth and implant a new one, and no one would believe that we have changed our identity.

The problem arises when we change most of the parts, e.g. 900 pranks or 950 pranks, and so. In this case, the paradox seems meaningful: Is the voyaging ship still the original ship?

Now we can put forth another question: exactly from which prank did Theseus’ Paradox become meaningful and relevant? 200th? 300th? 501th? 900th?

Here’s where a person with Wittgenstein’s worldview can give you an answer: The ambiguity does not come from the ships but from the question itself. We ask whether the current voyaging ship is the same as the original ship. And we forget that sameness has not a clear meaning in our case. We have taken out the word from our daily language and put it in a philosophical context (+). So the problem lies in the question itself. And we have just to ask ourselves: is sameness a meaningful term in such a context? It seems not.

A similar paradox in another world

If the Ship of Theseus is too far from your daily experiences and you feel you do not have any intuition about it, there’s a more approachable case. This case is brought up by Shane J. Ralston in KISS and the philosophy (I use my own story and narrative, but with the same essence).

Consider a music band named X consisting of four members. One of the members leaves the band and starts a separate band with another name. The first band finds a substitute for him and continues for a few years without losing popularity. After some conflict in the band, another member separates from the band and joins the band of the old friend. Over the course of a decade, the story happens two more times. Now we have the X band without the original members and a new band with another name but the original members. Which is the real X band?

Here, each member has their own identity, so the nature of this paradox is different from Theseus’ Paradox. But still, it gives you some feeling about the challenges around the identity concept. And the answer to this paradox is similar to the original paradox. It revolves around the meaninglessness of sameness.

Theseus and Ariadne, from ‘Game of Mythology’ (The Metropolitan Museum)

Questions & Answers

Was there a real ship called the Ship of Theseus? Where is the Ship of Theseus?

We don’t know the answer. As mentioned above, what we know about the ship comes from Plutarch’s book. You can find the original text in the archive of Tufts University or MIT’s classics archive. Thus regarding the whereabout of the ship, we can say, according to Plutarch, the ship was stored in a museum in Athens, and we have not any further information about its destiny.

Which term is correct: Theseus’ Paradox or Ship of Theseus?

In most books and articles, the following terms are used interchangeably: Theseus’ Paradox, Ship of Theseus, Theseus’ Boat, Paradox of Theseus, philosophical boat, Theseus Ship paradox, etc.

But in case you are sensitive to language delicacies, it’s better to use «Theseus’ Paradox» for the general paradox of identity continuity and consider «The Ship of Theseus» as one of the physical manifestations of the case. As you have seen in the KISS case above, this paradox can have various manifestations in different realms.

Does Theseus’ Paradox have any meaning or application in the age of technology?

Unlike many old stories and paradoxes that are irrelevant today, the Ship of Theseus Paradox is even more relevant to our contemporary challenges and concerns. Nowadays, the question of identity has just gotten more complicated: How does identity relate to change, augmentation, and enhancement? What does Theseus’ story have to tell about the challenges of post-humanism and trans-humanism?

What are the other articles worth reading regarding this paradox?

With a brief search on the web, you will find different versions of the paradox and various debates over it. Here are a few articles I’d recommend checking out:

• Identity over time (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Relative Identity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• The Ship of Theseus (brain pickings)

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Written by: Ray Kurzweil

Chapter Title: Introduction

Order Information:

How to create a mind (amazon)
How to create a mind (Barnes & Noble)

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Here I’m going to list some of the common behavioral characteristics of the complex systems:

Unpredictability or limited predictability

Although it’s popular to consider complex systems as unpredictable entities, it would be more precise if we say complex systems have limited predictability. 

It goes without saying that predictability is not an absolute property of an entity and it can only be measured and evaluated after choosing another entity as the observer (The measurement reference).

Leverage and Dampening

Sometimes a minor change in part of the system leads to a very large scale dynamics in the other parts of the system. Also, other times, a major change in the system disappears over time, and the system goes back to the equilibrium or preferred state. The former property of the complex systems is referred to as leverage, and the latter is called as the dampening behavior.

Self-transcendence

A complex system can transcend itself through evolution and adaptation. It means that the current entity is emerged from an old version of itself, however, it can be distinct from its previous identity.

Complex systems reproduce and regenerate themselves but these regeneration and reproduction are absolutely different from replication.

Emergence

I have already written an article about the definition of the emergence. So we don’t need to discuss it here again.

The whole story can be summarized in the following description:

 A complex system exhibits higher orders behaviors that cannot be derived from the aggregation of the behavior of the individual agents and the principal elements. 

This so-called spontaneous behavior is absolutely different from behavior of the components and is not intended – or understood – by the components.

It would be helpful if you could take a look at the resulting features and behaviors related to the emergence phenomenon.

Policy Resistance

A higher-order complex system intends to preserve itself and its structure. This is a well-known behavior which we call it as the need for survival in humans and other living entities.

It’s very important to consider this behavior as an emerging property of a complex system. Many of the superstitious ideas about the humans, dualistic models of the world and human-centered understanding of the universe are nurtured by the people who were not able to understand this feature as an emerged property and considered it as a deliberately and externally infused feature in the system.

Policy resistance is just one the manifestations of the autonomy: This bias toward status-quo is the reason behind failures of the obvious and simple approaches to the systems. It’s a popular statement between systems analysts that many obvious solutions to problems fail to improve the situation or even worsen it.

This characteristic is sometimes referred to as the counterintuitiveness of the complex systems.

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The above story could be considered as a fantasy. But whoever knows the idea behind the complexity and the complex systems would confirm it as a plausible scenario.

Human understanding of the world can be divided into three distinct ages:

Mythologic World or Primitive Dualistic View

The mythological view of the world seems to be started with the appearance of Homo Sapiens. The Olympian Gods and Greek mythology are the best evolved and excellent examples of this view.

Here we face with two parallel and separate worlds, communicating with each other, but mostly from the divine world downward.

The whole world was ruled by the other world that was full of conflicts and wars between the Gods and Goddesses who were trying to satisfy their human desires projected by humans onto them.

I’d like to call it the dualistic view as the most people felt that their world is continually interacting with another world ruling them and moving them from the past to the future.

The Mystic World or Evolved Dualistic View

Here we are again faced with a dualistic view. But it’s evolved and transcended into a new level.

New we have a visible physical world with an invisible spirit that brings it to life.  This spirit in infused in the material and the material becomes a living entity.

So we see plants and animals with physical bodies and spirits and stones and many [other solid materials as dead objects. However, there is a broad range of speculations about the reality of this dualism.

From more mechanical views dividing the world between living entities and non-living entities to the more mystical views considering walls and stones as living things.

Why did we need to see the world through such a complicated lens? It helped us to describe the non-predictable part of the environment.

Any observer of any complex system who is not able to explain and predict its behavior will be tempted to adopt a dualistic view to justify the unpredictability of the object and autonomy of a subject.

 The complex and realistic view

Here we must distinguish between complicated systems and complex systems.

The former refers to a system that is complicated by design, and the latter refers to many simply designed components interacting with each other and showing a complex behavior.

So a complicated system has both a hard-to-understand logic and a hard-to-predict behavior, but a complex system has an easy-to-understand logic that sometimes leads to hard-to-predict behaviors.

Here the autonomy of a system finds a new meaning: our inability to predict its behavior.  It means that the autonomy is not a feature of the subjects, but a quality of the relationship between the observer and the objects. 

Complex systems and the complexity science is developed for helping us to develop and evolve and nurture this relationship. It will help us to adapt ourselves to the environment better than before and to push the whole world – including ourselves – to the next stages of the transcendence.

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What I have done is limited to reading a couple of books and software implementation of a few low-order complex systems. However, I’ve always been interested in coaching an informal study group on complexity and emergence and as I’ve never done it and might never do it, decided to publish the supposed-to-be-written lecture notes in such sessions.

Here you can find the title of these topics, and I will provide further details about each of them in the future articles.

Lecture Notes on Complexity, Emergence, and Complex systems

• Why we need to study the complexity and the complex systems
• Complex systems approach to understanding the world: A Brief History
  • Thomas Hobbes and the emergence concept
• What is a complex system (When a system is not simple anymore)
• Definition of a complex system
  • Complexity as a predictive theory
• Behavioral Characteristics of the complex systems (features like emergence and policy resistance)
• Structural Properties of complex systems
• Examples of complex systems
• Financial market as a complex system
• Human body as a complex system
• Brain as a complex system
• Different levels of complexity
• Complex systems in organizations
• Books about complex systems and complexity theory
• Modeling complex systems
  • John Conway and Game of Life
• Complex systems engineering & Complex systems architecture
• Complex systems design
• Data scientists and complex systems management
• Job opportunities and career path for a complex systems analyst
• Complex systems ecology
• Complex adaptive systems (Definition + Characteristics)
• Examples of complex adaptive systems
• Human behavior as manifestations of a complex adaptive system
• Human society as a complex adaptive system
• Complex systems in nature
  • Termite community as a robust complex system
• The whole world as a complex adaptive system: being vs. becoming
• Future of complexity theory

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I have mentioned his name in my list of leading thinkers of the technology. He is one of the few scientists you can indisputably call them a futurist.

The Author of the book Singularity is near, after discussing so many different technological trends in his previous book, here is going to show the roadmap of creating something superior to the human mind.

The most significant challenge Ray Kurzweil faces is trying to reverse engineer the mind.

In the last centuries, philosophers and metaphysic-believers have lost the brain ground in the battle with scientists and have accepted that the brain is part of the biologist’s territory. However, the mind is still considered by them and many other people with biased-scientists as something beyond an embodied cognition.

There are still many people who are not able (or willing) to accept consciousness as an emerging property of a complex system and prefer to consider it as a separate entity infused in the body of the living entities.

Therefore, you may see many objections to the book that are trying to protect their comfort zone even under the scientific cloak.

Here is the table of contents of How to create a mind:

Kurzweil states in the preface of the book that reverse engineering of the mind is the most important project in the universe.

In his book, he tries to apply pattern recognition knowledge to analyzing the brain function. He calls this process as Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind (PRTM).

Here’s the focal point of the criticisms of his book: Whether it’s the most appropriate approach to reverse engineering the mind or Kurzweil tries to see the brain as a nail just because The hammer is the only tool he has in hand?

In my opinion, the book is insightful enough to dismiss these criticisms and justify reading it and thinking about it.  Considering the fact that if we expect that every scientist approaches the problems with the tools he is not equipped with (!), then we are entering the territory of philosophy and metaphysics and all the superstitions which have been around for centuries. 

From Kurzweil’s point of view in How to create a mind, the latest evolved part of the brain (Neocortex) is functioning like a hierarchical pattern recognition system, and this is what distinguishes it from the old reptilian brain.

Here we can have the new definitions of the existing mind-related terms:

• Neocortex: a multilayer perceptron (with multiple layers of neurons) receiving sensory inputs and each layer combines the signals and passes them to the next layer (Part of them which are greater than some threshold value). Assumption: next layers can send back signals and adjust triggering threshold of the previous layers.
• Memory: a list of patterns that can be recalled with specific triggers. This lists of patterns are somehow interpolation of the past and a tool for extrapolating the future.
• Learning: Pattern recognition in different levels of the hierarchy. This model can justify why we are not able to deeply understand multi-layer concept simultaneously.
• Misunderstanding: Trying to transfer patterns stored in my mind to yours or using my pattern classification system to understand your sensory data of stored information.
• Directed Thinking: Aligning the whole pattern recognition system with the current problem on the table.
• Undirected Thinking: Leaving the patterns to interact with each other and probably re-classified to reach to a new pattern. Undirected thinking has a major contribution to the evolution of the mind.

Besides all appraisals and criticisms, how to create a mind is worth reading and thinking. It’s one of the greatest manifests of the transhumanism trying to go further than appealing inflated slogans.

Quotations from introduction of the book – How to create a mind

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John Horton Conway, a British mathematician, developed a very simple algorithm in the late 70s which got popular among computer programmers and mathematicians. The algorithm was called Game of Life.

Although it’s not so clear that why the word game is used in the title, but using the word life in the name of the game shows what he meant from developing this amazing algorithm.

Here’s a very simple description of the algorithm:

Let’s suppose that you have an infinite grid which each cell can be in two different possible states (you can call them 0/1 or on/off or whatever you like).

The grid can also be finite but closed. It means you can consider the leftmost cell as the neighbour of the rightmost cell in the same row and make the same assumption for the cells in the highest and lowest line of the grid.

You can fill the grid with some initial configuration. I have done it already and you can see my grid below:

John Conway suggests four different states for each cell:

State I – Loneliness

In this state, an active cell has zero or one active neighbour. Such an active (or live) cell will die in the next stage.

State II – Steady state

In this state, an active cell has two or three active neighbours. Nothing happens and the cell remains active (live) for the next stage.

State III – Birth

In this state, a dead cell, has exactly three active neighbours. Such a cell will become active (live) in the next stage.

State IV- Death

This state can be considered as a kind of overpopulation. If a cell has four or more active neighbours, it will die in the next stage.

I have shown one sample of each stage in the above picture.

If you run the above algorithm on a simple initial setting, you will be amazed with the complex behaviors which appear there in the grid:

Many people have made different implementations of the game (you can check this one). Also, here you can find a nice lexicon about many different species developed in the game of life.

Besides all other applications of the game of life, there’s a very clear message in this game: in order to see a complex behavior, rules shall not be necessarily complex too. Even very simple rules can lead to very complex structures and behaviors if there be enough time for evolution and growth.

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Here’s a list of books I found helpful in learning more about the basics of complexity and complex systems. I hope it helps you too:

Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos

The book written by Mitchell Wardrop provides an honest account of the founding of Santa Fe institute. One of the leading institutions with a major contribution in the development of the complexity theory.

Although the book is published on 1992, still it’s one of the best books to start with if you are going to study the field systematically.

Emergence: From chaos to order

This book is written by John Holland. One of the pioneers of the artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms. The book content is centered around life, mind and organizations. Three of the most important emerged entities in the history of evolution.

Considering the publishing date (1996), he has done a valuable effort to introduce the concept of emergence and to show us the mechanism by which complex behaviors are emerged from the repeated application of a few simple rules.

Here‘s a brief review of the book published by MIT.

Complexity: A guided tour

If you have time for reading just one book in the field of complexity, Melanie Mitchell’s guided tour would be the best choice. A fine blend of computer science, biology and information theory referring to a wide variety of cases from metabolism and genetic algorithm to the immune system and ant colonies.

You will love the book if you remember that you are invited to a guided tour and not to an official organised academic lecture on complex systems and complexity theory.

At home in the universe: The search for laws of self-organizing and complexity

Stuart Kauffman’s book on the complexity is not an easy read, but it’s one of the most vivid pictures drawn about the origins of life.

You may like to take a look at a very short summary of the book provided by the Stanford university.

Linked: How everything is connected to everything else

And as the last item on the first part of my list, if you are looking for a book to read in bed before sleeping with some flavors of complexity and emergence, Linked is one the best choices available.

The simplified non-mathematical yet precise and scientific descriptions of the networks and their emerging characteristic, makes it a good choice for an exciting tour to the world of complexity.

You will find many different examples from the AIDS proliferation to the internet traffic. You will not regret reading it.

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