Transformative concepts in scientific convergence.
This article suggests eight high-level concepts that can promote convergence by identifying analogies across fields of science and engineering. CONSERVATION: Many properties are conserved, through symmetries, parity laws, and feedback-regulated stabilities in complex adaptive systems. INDECISION: Inconsistency, undecidability, uncertainty, chance, deterministic chaos, and similar concepts are fundamental principles in the dynamics of systems over time. CONFIGURATION: Detailed, dynamic structures of objects determine their properties, notably the unity of nature at the nanoscale. INTERACTION: Elements of a system influence each other, generating higher-level dynamics and other emergent phenomena. VARIATION: Statistical distributions of properties are caused by the combination of chance and divergent processes of interaction.


RESULTS
Marked by drift, natural selection, and a trend toward greater complexity, evolution exploits variation to develop new configurations that compete through interactions.
Scientific laws can be analyzed in terms of information content, and flow, while the doing of any science today relies heavily upon information technology. COGNITION: Mental or computational process is the dynamic aspect of information, fundamental to the human practice of science.
Bainbridge
William Sims
WS
National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA 22230, USA. wbainbri@nsf.gov
D005075:Biological Evolution; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007254:Information Science; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D036103:Nanotechnology