Slide I A striking example of emergence in complex systems is the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. It is a gigantic whirlpool of gases in Jupiter's upper atmosphere that has persisted for a much longer time (on the order of centuries) than the average amount of time any one gas molecule has spent within it. It is an example of what Prigogine calls a "dissipative structure"; a nonequilibrium macro-structure that remains stable for long periods of time despite matter and energy continually flowing through it. One of the open (and very deep) problems driving the study of complex systems is to understand the set of general conditions under which such structures emerge. |
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Slide II The vision behind ISAAC & EINSTein (if not yet the substance) is to understand the emergence of macro-patterns of combat on the battlefield as derived from a substrate of primitive micro-rules defining the local dynamics among combatants. Is there a "universal grammar" of combat, wherein various sets of combatant characteristics and dynamics result in a universal set of macro-patterns? |
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