Methods, Models, Simulations and Approaches Towards a General Theory of Change - Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on Systems Science

Book excerpt: The book contains the Proceedings of the 2010 Conference of the Italian Systems Society. Papers deal with the interdisciplinary study of processes of changing related to a wide variety of specific disciplinary aspects. Classical attempts to deal with them, based on generalising approaches used to study the movement of bodies and environmental influence, have included ineffective reductionistic simplifications. Indeed changing also relates, for instance, to processes of acquisition and varying properties such as for software; growing and aging biological systems; learning/cognitive systems; and socio-economic systems growing and developing through innovations. Some approaches to modelling such processes are based on considering changes in structure, e.g., phase-transitions. Other approaches are based on considering (1) periodic changes in structure as for processes of self-organisation; (2) non-periodic but coherent changes in structure, as for processes of emergence; (3) the quantum level of description. Papers in the book study the problem considering its transdisciplinary nature, i.e., systemic properties studied per se and not within specific disciplinary contexts. The aim of these studies is to outline a transdisciplinary theory of change in systemic properties. Such a theory should have simultaneous, corresponding and eventually hierarchical disciplinary aspects as expected for a general theory of emergence. Within this transdisciplinary context, specific disciplinary research activities and results are assumed to be mutually represented as within a philosophical and conceptual framework based on the theoretical centrality of the observer and conceptual non-separability of context and observer, related to logically open systems and Quantum Entanglement. Contributions deal with such issues in interdisciplinary ways considering theoretical aspects and applications from Physics, Cognitive Science, Biology, Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Architecture, Philosophy, Music and Social Systems.