Keith Farnsworth

Confusion over the terms ‘information’ and ‘causation’ in theoretical biology is a problem. Most of it results from misinterpreting cybernetic systems, or even worse, statistical metrics, for physical information phenomena. Over the past several years, our understanding of causation has developed to recognise it as the constraint on the action of physical forces by the spatiotemporal configuration of matter (or energy fields). That configuration has been identified with physically embodied information. This work begins by clarifying that. It then proceeds to demonstrate biologically relevant implications. First, by revealing the physical organisation that underlies synergistic information (an influential idea, especially in neuroscience). Then by applying a rigorous account of multi-level causation to positional information (in multicellular development) and ecological community structure. The approach presented reveals underlying physical structuring in cybernetic systems and clearly delineates the limits to their physical embodiment – e.g. showing how ecological communities can only be entities separate from their component parts in rather special circumstances. It also provides a clear argument for upward and downward causation, unveiling the mechanisms for both

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KAROLINE WIESNER, JYOTSNA PURI, and ANDREAS REUMANN

Advances in Complex SystemsVol. 27, No. 06, 2440004 (2024)

As governments and multilateral institutions launch projects and programs to support climate change mitigation and adaptation, the challenge lies in determining their effectiveness. The high complexity of climate-change programs often makes it difficult to determine their effectiveness through standard monitoring and evaluation procedures. ‘complexity-aware monitoring’ is a qualitative approach to monitoring, recently introduced by international development programs. This increasing awareness of complexity in the evaluation sector opens up a window of opportunity for complexity science to support climate change mitigation and adaptation programs. This paper’s contribution is a hands-on methodology for live monitoring and evaluation of development programs. The methodology is rooted in existing literature on social–ecological systems, as pioneered by Ostrom, and in quantitative methods from complexity science. To illustrate the methodology, an existing climate mitigation project in Madagascar, funded, monitored and evaluated by the Green Climate Fund, is discussed.

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Arke Vogell, Udo Schilcher, Jorge F. Schmidt, and Christian Bettstetter

Phys. Rev. E 110, 054214

Coupled oscillator systems can lead to states in which synchrony and chaos coexist. These states are called “chimera states.” The mechanism that explains the occurrence of chimera states is not well understood, especially in pulse-coupled oscillators. We study a variation of a pulse-coupled oscillator model that has been shown to produce chimera states, demonstrate that it reproduces several of the expected chimera properties, like the formation of multiple heads and the ability to control the natural drift that Kuramoto’s chimera states experience in a ring, and explain how chimera states emerge. Our contribution is defining the model, analyzing the mechanism leading to chimera states, and comparing it with examples from the field of Kuramoto oscillators.

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