RSS Parrot

Science is fun, isn’t it?

https://petterhol.me/2024/11/08/science-is-fun-isnt-it/

Published: November 8, 2024 14:35

Hands up if you also read academic articles from other fields than your own just for fun. I know I’m not alone in doing that, but I also know many think academic papers are strictly business. During job interviews, an esteemed colleague of mine always asks…

Surviving the complexity winter

https://petterhol.me/2024/10/26/surviving-the-complexity-winter/

Published: October 26, 2024 11:49

Complexity science in 2024: claiming to be what it has never been, but gladly giving away its Nobel prize. This is a reflection about where the science of complex systems stands today, and where it could and should go next. Cover painting by Isaac Levitan.…

Take statistics back from the statisticians!

https://petterhol.me/2024/06/30/take-statistics-back-from-the-statisticians/

Published: June 30, 2024 12:27

(The title is as clickbait-y and tongue-in-cheek as ever. The cover illustration is by Midjourney, prompted by “I love my baby. My baby loves statistics.” . . which is, of course, a wink to that good old U/F/O track sampling Ken Nordine.) This post…

Salon des refusés: Foundational papers in complexity science

https://petterhol.me/2024/05/12/salon-des-refuses-foundational-papers-of-complexity/

Published: May 12, 2024 09:36

The Santa Fe Institute has launched an ambitious project in which leading complexity scientists comment on “foundational” papers. However, many of them are not foundational in the sense that they started a line of research that led to the complexity…

The holistic tribes

https://petterhol.me/2024/02/13/the-holistic-tribes/

Published: February 13, 2024 12:24

This blog post is hopefully the beginning of the lecture notes for an upcoming course. Ultimately, I want to rectify the story of the development of ideas around complex systems, which has neither been a steady and well-informed progression nor a…

Dissipative delusions

https://petterhol.me/2024/01/24/dissipative-delusions/

Published: January 24, 2024 18:53

Lately, I’ve been reading books and papers of, and about, Ilya Prigogine, and here’s a little report. [1] I have always been fascinated by cult leaders. The way they create wallless echo chambers—where what they say resonates with the minds of their…

What I was gonna say (Tractatus edition)

https://petterhol.me/2023/12/17/what-i-was-gonna-say-tractatus-edition/

Published: December 17, 2023 09:39

This is a post about how AI (if used to the best of our abilities) might rid science of its knowledge memes. Which are prone to become factoids, or overshadow more important results. While adding slides to my keynote talk at the inaugural Cudan conference…

Women pioneers II

https://petterhol.me/2023/11/10/women-pioneers-ii/

Published: November 10, 2023 07:42

One of my most-read blog posts is this one, where I highlighted some trailblazing women scientists—Helen Jennings, Klara von Neumann, Mary Tsingou, Helen Abby, Miriam Kretzschmar, and Fan Chung Graham—in fields related to network science and computational…

Networks of the day

https://petterhol.me/2023/11/02/networks-of-the-day/

Published: November 2, 2023 20:40

For a few years, I’ve been sharing interesting networks as I come across them. Here is a gallery.

Six tips for interdisciplinary lovers

https://petterhol.me/2023/10/06/six-tips-for-interdisciplinary-lovers/

Published: October 6, 2023 13:31

I think I know a lot about interdisciplinary collaborations, so I’ve been planning to write down some notes for a long time. Tongue in cheek, but also serious. Take time to get to know each other Yes, it will take time. It might feel like you understand…