Evolution of
Complex Systems
Lecture 7: Society and its reproduction
Peter Andras / Bruce Charlton
[email protected]
[email protected]
Objectives
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Multi-organism systems
Human communications
Human society
Human artefacts and writing
Education system
The system of religion
The system of science
Identity violation and adaptation
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Organisms
Multi-cellular systems made up of intercellular communications
 Subsystems of specialist
communications: tissues
 E.g., muscle tissue, nervous system
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Organism actions and perceptions
Actions: sequence of patterns of inter-cellular
communications
 E.g., limb movement
 Perception: environmental actions on cells
that are part of the organism, changing their
communications, and changing in this way
the pattern of communications within the
organism
 E.g., perception of light by photoreceptors
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Inter-organism communications
Organism actions on the environment
 The changes in the environment are
perceived by another organism through
environment induced changes in its own
communications
 E.g., sound emission, transmission and
reception
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Referencing in inter-organism
communications
Each communication action / behaviour
is determined by earlier communication
behaviours, which are selected to be
referenced by the current
communication behaviour
 E.g., courtship or fighting behaviour in
animals
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Multi-organism systems – 1
Organisms act as communication units by
performing communication behaviours
 The communications are frequent and
generate a dense communication cluster
surrounded by rare communications with
other organism communication units
 E.g., a community of dogs, which
communicate more frequently with other
dogs than with other animals
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Multi-organism systems – 2
Small systems: courtship, fighting,
offspring raising
 Large systems: ant and bee colonies,
human society
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Human individuals
Organism with many subsystem
 Has information subsystem – nervous
system
 Has information subsystem of the
nervous system – memory
 Long-term memory and mind
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Mind and language
Mind = information subsystem of the
nervous system, generated by the
double contingency of ‘who am I’
 Language of mind: discussing about
itself – ‘who am I’
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Subsystems of the nervous system
Visual, auditory, motor, etc. subsystems
 Information subsystem: memory
processing – associative subsystems
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Language subsystems
Language understanding subsystem:
Wernicke area
 Language behaviour production
subsystem: Broca area (speech
production)
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Behavioural language
Animals: courtship, fighting, body
language, vocalisation
 Humans: facial gestures, body
language, vocalisation, speech
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Behavioural society
System of behavioural communications
between animals
 E.g., ants, bees, monkeys, dogs
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Memories of behaviours
Human language – long-term memory
 Memories of behaviours  long-term memory
 communications about long-term
memories  human language
 Memories of behavioural communications 
communications between such memories
 System of verbal inter-human
communications
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Human communications – 1
Words: sequences of phonemes
 Sentences: sequences of words
 Communications: set of sentences
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Human communications – 2
Rules of phoneme consecutiveness:
very sharp conditional distributions
 Rules of word consecutiveness:
grammar of the language
 Rules of large scale communications:
semantic rules of referencing between
sentences
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The system of human communications
Human communications referencing
other human communications
 Dense cluster of communications with
rare communications around (e.g.,
communications with a dog)
 Society = system of human
communications
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Actions of the society
Sequence of human communications
that induce actions of humans
(communication units) on the
environment
 E.g., calling closer another human or
executing a scientific experiment
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Perceptions of the society
Environment induced changes in
communication units (humans) induce
human communications
 Such communications may differ from
the most expected ones conveying
perceptions for the society system
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Meaningful communications
Reference other human communications
and are referenced by others following
the continuation rules of human
communications
 Contribute to the reproduction /
maintenance and expansion of the
society system
 E.g., gossiping
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Meaningless communications
Communications that lead to communications
that cannot be referenced
 Such communications are about paradoxes,
i.e. case when it is impossible to decide
whether the communication is correct or not
according to the rules of communications
 The correctness refers to the semantic
correctness not to the grammar or word
phoneme order (these are very sharply
defined)
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Faults, errors and failures
Faulty communication: ‘ratulleps’, ‘cat the ate big the
mouse’, ‘she was blonde with blue eyes, so it was
running around the table, and the cherries were
really ripe’ – senseless communications
 Error: the politician makes his big speech and the
people leave quietly the room, without responding or
commenting on his speech – communications are
correct and follow the rules, but they don’t have the
expected continuation
 Failure: lack of reliable communications lead to weak
performance and falling apart of the company
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Memory – human memories
Records of human communications
 Reproduction of earlier verbal
communications
 E.g., re-told stories about heroes,
rituals, customs
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Memory – human artefacts
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Human communications (including behaviours) lead
to the production of human artefacts
E.g. arrow, pot, clothes, painting, sculpture, earring
Production of such artefacts needs the reproduction
of human behaviours leading to them – they facilitate
the reproduction of these behaviours
Human artefacts also facilitate the reproduction of a
range of other human behaviours and
communications related to their use
Such artefacts can be considered as forms of human
society memories
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Writing
Counting of artefacts – core of human
memories about human artefacts
 Counting  Writing – accounting in
early human societies
 Writing produces records of human
communications (including behaviours)
 Writing can facilitate the reproduction
of memorized communications
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Information subsystem
Processing of memories about human
communications
 Information subsystem of the society:
human communications about the
identity of the social system
 Rely on human memories, human
artefacts, and in particular on written
text
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Identity
The identity of social systems is defined
by their information subsystem
 Identity: which rituals are correct and
which are incorrect, which forms and
reports are in the right format, who is
human who is not (see barbarians)
 E.g. tribes, companies, groups of
friends
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Reproduction of the society
Generation of new communications that
fit into the society system
 Acquiring new communication units:
reproduction of human organisms,
attracting new humans to participate in
the system of society
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Many societies
A society is defined by its
communications that are built using the
society’s language
 Each human language defines a society
 Societies may compete for
communication units
 E.g., multi-ethnic societies
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Subsystems of societies
Specialized human communications
dealing with some part of the society
 Subsystems have an apparent function
within the system of society
 E.g., political system – power
distribution, science system – scientific
knowledge production
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Education
Providing the communication rule
knowledge to humans
 Socialisation
 E.g., schools, family education
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Family education
Basic socialisation: kids learn a
language, its use and related
behaviours
 Part of education, especially in early
human societies
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Schools
Systematic education of kids about
advanced knowledge that they refer to
in their life, while deriving their
communications
 E.g., teaching math, physics, biology
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The reproduction subsystem
Education deals with reproduction of
communications that provide the foundation
for the future expansion of the society
communications
 Education forms a subsystem of the society
that deals with the reproduction of common
knowledge
 Common knowledge: usually referred by
many human communications within the
society
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Un-common knowledge
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Society communications may lead to
paradoxes in semantic terms
E.g., fire for early societies which didn’t know
the use of fire
Dealing with such problems is essential to
eliminate their damaging effect
The un-common knowledge deals with such
problems
E.g., the gods bring the fire
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Religion
The religion contains the un-common
knowledge
 It provides explanations of common
knowledge paradoxes fitting these into
the system of society
 The religion is a specialist subsystem of
the society, dealing with the uncommon knowledge
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Scientific knowledge
Communications that can be referred in
the society system, of which
correctness (i.e., whether they are part
or not of the society) is verified
experimentally
 Experimental check: action, predicted
perception, checked prediction
 E.g., physics, chemistry
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Scientific, common, and uncommon knowledge
A good part of science is not part of
common knowledge
 Science competes with the system of
un-common knowledge
 A part of science is integrated into
common knowledge by expansion of
the education system (see universities)
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The language of science
Reduced human language with more
specific rules, with sharper continuation
distributions
 The communications are about whether
a communications can be proven to be
correct or not by some experimental
validation or by referring to proven
communications
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Actions and perceptions of science
Actions: experimental check or set of
references to earlier proven
communications
 Perceptions: communications generated
after the execution of the experiment or
references that trigger new scientific
communications
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Meaningful and meaningless
Meaningful: something that fits into the
experimentally validatable / falsifiable
context
 Meaningless: communications that lead
to invalid or experimentally uncheckable communications – faulty
science communications
 E.g., religious communications
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Errors and failures in science
Error: Lysenko’s genetics – followed
general rules of science, but it was
based on wrong premises and had no
continuation
 Failure: alchemy – based on wrong
premises, using wrong rules
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Adaptation in science
Identity: scientific communications can be
validated experimentally or by logical
reasoning – anything that doesn’t fit this is
not part of science
 Identity violations  adaptation
 E.g. relativity theory, quantum theory,
importance of non-coding RNAs, object
oriented theory of computer programs
 Kuhn: revolutionary and standard science
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Education, religion and science
Education  religion, education 
science, religion  science
 Education communications also
reference science (mostly) and religious
(to much less extent) communications –
religion and science influence the
education system
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Identity and identity violation in
the education system
Identity: education communications are those
which lead to the reproduction of human
memories required for production of social
communications that reproduce and expand
the society
 Identity violations – depend on social context:
induction of within-society hatred, education
about irrelevant knowledge like leninism,
education about the uselessness and
unimportance of education – see cultural
revolution in China
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Adaptation in the education system
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New forms of education in response to lack of
expected large volume continuation of
communications – e.g. trade schools, generalised
elementary education, formal graduate schools
Review of educational textbooks in response to
changes in science – e.g. biology – recently, physics
– in the past
Reorganisation of university departments in response
to failure of them to attract students, who are
required for the reproduction of education system
communications – e.g. physics, chemistry and
philosophy departments
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Summary – 1
Multi-organism systems
 Humans: nervous system, brain, mind
 Human communications and language
 Society = system of human
communications
 Information subsystem and identity
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Summary – 2
Education – reproduction subsystem of
common knowledge
 Religion – the subsystem of uncommon
knowledge
 Science – the subsystem of scientific
knowledge
 Identity violations and adaptation
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Q&A – 1
1.
2.
3.
Is it true that a limb movement can be
considered as a sequence of communication
patterns between the cells of an organism ?
Is it true that hunting a prey is a set of
communications that constitute a
communication system ?
Is it true that the communications between
ants constitute the ant society/colony
system ?
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Q&A – 2
4. Is it true that the humans communicate within
themselves about their own identity forming
the system of the mind ?
5. Is it true that there is no specialized brain area
for production of human speech ?
6. Is it true that human language communications
constitute the human society ?
7. Is it true that the communications between a
human and its dog is part of the society ?
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Q&A – 3
8. Is it true that education deals with the
reproduction of communications making up
the un-common knowledge ?
9. Is it true that religious communications are
meaningless in the system of science ?
10. Is it true that the actions of science are
sequences of human communications
resulting in scientific experiments ?
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