Steven Strogatz: Sync

Steven Strogatz has been one of the leading figures in the mathematics of biological systems. While synchronization of independent elements is the thread that brings his book  Sync together, it’s all in the context of the new systems view of biology.

His process is to frame a question about complex systems and then look for answers by running computer simulations of the process. When order emerges in the simulation, he and colleagues try to discern the mathematics underlying the order. You see these connections are so complicated that one can’t predict their behavior by inspection and reason. In general, its easier to recreate aspects of them in a simple model in order to understand how they behave.

This is a very basic demonstration of emergent behavior of a system. The behavior of the larger system can’t be predicted by understanding the behavior of the components and their interconnections. Even more interesting is how small changes to the indivual units or their connection strength can radically change the emergent bahavior of the system. Once you have a simple working model, deeper understanding of the possible states of the system can be gained by looking at behavior over a wide range of assumptions and conditions. Here Strogatz is interested in how synchronous activity emerges in networks.

These simplified systems aren’t real, but are useful tools. Just as a map is not the terrain, a system model is not the system itself. The model is useful only if it predicts the behavior of the real system. Just as a map is only useful if it can predict the proper route through the landscape. This is the iterative nature of science and a reflection of William James’ Pragmatism. Truth is what works.

As a scientist, I gained a bit of insight into why it’s easy to manipulate the state of some biological systems. I spent many years in the lab studying mechanisms of cell death. I could never understand why so many investigators were able to find so many different ways to halt the process once it had been set in motion by an experimental perturbation. Surely all of these processes couldn’t be independently responsible for the cell death? If they were independent, then blocking just one wouldn’t help cells survive. Other, unaffected processes would carry out the deed.

The many interactions within a cell place some events at nodes that have broader effects. The other day, an accident on a highway here in Baltimore managed to tie up much of the traffic north of the city. There were cascading events as traffic was shunted first here and then there by blockage and congestion in one key pathway after another. Similarly, cell processes or cell state can be shifted from one state to another by strategic triggers.

Tools like network maps and simulations promise to provide a means for understanding complexity that won’t yield to simple cause and effect diagrams. Strogatz ends the book with some contemplation of how consciousness arises from the network of neural connections. It may be that syncronization across the cerebral cortex is responsible for the binding of shape and color of visual objects or the binding of object and word.

Of course, its this idea of mind and meaning as the emergent effect of complex systems that has interested me for some time now. As a neurobiologist, calling meaning an emergent quality of brain is a neat way to bridge the material with the immaterial worlds.

3 thoughts on “Steven Strogatz: Sync”

  1. Dave Rogers says:

    I find I have to resist the temptation to respond in Twitter, where I contend with 140 characters. My Tweet would be:

    Life is meaningless. We bring meaning to life. Kind of a pun, but mostly not.

    Have you ever read The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way? http://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Wisdom-Middle-Way-ulamadhyamakak/dp/0195093364/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293495835&sr=1-1

    Not sure if that’ll make it through.

    I haven’t read it again in many years, and it’s possible my recollection has become distorted, but I do recall being profoundly impressed/affected by what Nagarjuna offered.

    I’m reluctant to suggest that “contingent” and “emergent” are the same, but to my “mind” they are similar enough, at least as regards to mind and meaning.

    It might be worthwhile for you. Of course, your mileage may vary!

    Everything is connected.

  2. James Vornov says:

    Dave-

    What I’m excited about these days is how our maturing understanding of the brain is giving us ways to understand how the phenomenon of “mind” is precisely the process of putting meaning in the world. Without mind there’s no meaning, without brain there’s no mind. One can’t dwell on the physical brain processes alone because mind and meaning are just as real.

  3. dave rogers says:

    I think your excitement is understandable, but I’m a bit less sanguine.

    To the point in your later post, regarding how “mind” is an expanding notion (at least, if I understand you correctly): There are a number of currents coursing through our metaphorical cognitive landscape, and it isn’t clear that the shaping effects are necessarily good ones. Though perhaps that’s a biased judgment from the perspective of this node.

    As we acquire greater insight into the workings of “mind,” larger “emergent” entities (social organisms – corporations, chiefly) have demonstrated the ability to become learning organisms that adapt, to some degree, to changes in their competitive landscape. Perhaps more accurately, newer competitors “evolve” utilizing learned understanding.

    These organisms (Google, or Facebook for example) have goals and objectives unrelated, even abstracted, from the values (“meaning”) of the individual nodes. To the extent that the nodes may resist the efforts of the larger organism, the organism responds. Facebook and notions of privacy, for instance, though Google is a good example here as well.

    The question, to my “mind,” is whether we, the nodes, can shape the evolution of the larger, emergent organisms, so that their goals and objectives are more congruent with those of the “nodes?”

    I think the issue is very much in doubt, and the “meaning of life” for human beings a century from now, assuming we’re still around, is likely to be a very different thing from what we may wish to believe it is today.

    Granted, “meaning” being an emergent (“contingent”) property of “mind,” the issue is self-referential almost to the point of tautology. “We won’t care, because it’ll be like water to fish. What’s water?”

    Anyway, things that keep me up at night sometimes, when I forget to be present in this experience now.

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