This collection of essays explores the different ways the insights from complexity theory can be applied to law. Complexity theory – a variant of systems theory – views law as an emergent, complex, self-organising system comprised of an interactive network of actors and systems that operate with no overall guiding hand, giving rise to complex, collective behaviour in law communications and actions. Addressing such issues as the unpredictability of legal systems, the ability of legal systems to adapt to changes in society, the importance of context, and the nature of law, the essays look to the implications of a complexity theory analysis for the study of public policy and administrative law, international law and human rights, regulatory practices in business and finance, and the practice of law and legal ethics. These are areas where law, which craves certainty, encounters unending, irresolvable complexity. This collection shows the many ways complexity theory thinking can reshape and clarify our understanding of the various problems relating to the theory and practice of law.

Source: www.amazon.com

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”

Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible.

An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it.  Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.

Source: www.amazon.com

A new collection of essays by the author of the successful volume Thinking Ahead – Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory Market Society
Examines the dangers of a world in which algorithms and social bots aim to control both the societal dynamics and individual behaviors.
Introduces novel approaches on how to redefine collective trust and build platforms to support core societal values

Towards Digital Enlightenment
Essays on the Dark and Light Sides of the Digital Revolution
Editors: Helbing, Dirk (Ed.)

Source: www.springer.com

 

Statistical relationships among the variables of a complex system reveal a lot about its physical behavior. Therefore, identification of the relevant variables and characterization of their interactions are crucial for a better understanding of a complex system. Correlation-based techniques have been widely utilized to elucidate the linear statistical dependencies in many science and engineering applications. However, for the analysis of nonlinear dependencies, information-theoretic quantities, such as Mutual Information (MI) and the Transfer Entropy (TE), have been proven to be superior. MI quantifies the amount of information obtained about one random variable, through the other random variable, and it is symmetric. As an asymmetrical measure, TE quantifies the amount of directed (time-asymmetric) transfer of information between random processes and therefore is related to the measures of causality.

 

https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-03842-920-3 Open Access
© 2018 MDPI; under CC BY-NC-ND license
Transfer Entropy
Deniz Gençağa (Ed.)
Pages: VIII, 326
Published: August 2018

Source: www.mdpi.com

This book introduces a new approach to environmental sociology, by integrating complexity-informed social science, Marxian ecological theory, and resilience-based human ecology. It argues that sociologists have largely ignored developments in ecology which move beyond functionalist approaches to systems analysis, and as a result, environmental sociology has failed to capitalise not only on the analytical promise of resilience ecology, but on complementary developments in complexity theory. By tracing the origins and discussing current developments in each of these areas, it offers several paths to interdisciplinary dialogue. Eoin Flaherty argues that complexity theory and Marxian ecology can enhance our understanding of the social aspect of social-ecological systems, whilst a resilience approach can sharpen the analytical power of environmental sociology.

 

Complexity and Resilience in the Social and Ecological Sciences
Eoin Flaherty

Springer

Source: link.springer.com