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94-1029: Social network analysis Small-world networks Centrality Motifs Graph theory Scaling Robustness Systems biology Dynamic networks Evolutionary computation Genetic algorithms Genetic programming Artificial life Machine learning Evolutionary developmental biology Artificial intelligence Evolutionary robotics Reaction–diffusion systems Partial differential equations Dissipative structures Percolation Cellular automata Spatial ecology Self-replication Conversation theory Entropy Feedback Goal-oriented Homeostasis Information theory Operationalization Second-order cybernetics Self-reference System dynamics Systems science Systems thinking Sensemaking Variety Ordinary differential equations Phase space Attractors Population dynamics Chaos Multistability Bifurcation Rational choice theory Bounded rationality A complex system

188-449: A biological process. Token ontological reductionism is the idea that every item that exists is a sum item. For perceivable items, it affirms that every perceivable item is a sum of items with a lesser degree of complexity. Token ontological reduction of biological things to chemical things is generally accepted. Type ontological reductionism is the idea that every type of item is a sum type of item, and that every perceivable type of item

282-438: A common foundation, which for modern mathematics is usually axiomatic set theory . Ernst Zermelo was one of the major advocates of such an opinion; he also developed much of axiomatic set theory. It has been argued that the generally accepted method of justifying mathematical axioms by their usefulness in common practice can potentially weaken Zermelo's reductionist claim. Jouko Väänänen has argued for second-order logic as

376-469: A cross-discipline that applies statistical physics methodologies which are mostly based on the complex systems theory and the chaos theory for economics analysis. The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Syukuro Manabe , Klaus Hasselmann , and Giorgio Parisi for their work to understand complex systems. Their work was used to create more accurate computer models of the effect of global warming on

470-727: A dynamic and interconnected network of processes—problem identification, knowledge creation, synthesis, implementation, and evaluation—rather than a linear or cyclical sequence. Such approaches emphasize the importance of understanding and leveraging the interactions within and between these processes and stakeholders to optimize the creation and movement of knowledge. By acknowledging the complex, adaptive nature of healthcare systems, complexity science advocates for continuous stakeholder engagement, transdisciplinary collaboration, and flexible strategies to effectively translate research into practice. Complexity science has been applied to living organisms, and in particular to biological systems. Within

564-603: A form of personal construct psychology and an alternative to what he considered "accumulative fragmentalism". For this theory, knowledge is seen as the construction of successful mental models of the exterior world, rather than the accumulation of independent "nuggets of truth". Others argue that inappropriate use of reductionism limits our understanding of complex systems. In particular, ecologist Robert Ulanowicz says that science must develop techniques to study ways in which larger scales of organization influence smaller ones, and also ways in which feedback loops create structure at

658-406: A foundation for mathematics instead of set theory, whereas others have argued for category theory as a foundation for certain aspects of mathematics. The incompleteness theorems of Kurt Gödel , published in 1931, caused doubt about the attainability of an axiomatic foundation for all of mathematics. Any such foundation would have to include axioms powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of

752-434: A given network. Homophily : The extent to which actors form ties with similar versus dissimilar others. Similarity can be defined by gender, race, age, occupation, educational achievement, status, values or any other salient characteristic. Homophily is also referred to as assortativity . Multiplexity: The number of content-forms contained in a tie. For example, two people who are friends and also work together would have

846-419: A group of people who are unlikely to change their opinions of the other people in the group. Unbalanced graphs represent a group of people who are very likely to change their opinions of the people in their group. For example, a group of 3 people (A, B, and C) where A and B have a positive relationship, B and C have a positive relationship, but C and A have a negative relationship is an unbalanced cycle. This group

940-401: A hierarchy of "levels" of understanding] does not change the fact that different levels of organization in reality do have different 'properties'." Reductionism does not preclude the existence of what might be termed emergent phenomena , but it does imply the ability to understand those phenomena completely in terms of the processes from which they are composed. This reductionist understanding

1034-627: A means of qualitatively assessing networks by varying the visual representation of their nodes and edges to reflect attributes of interest. Social network analysis has emerged as a key technique in modern sociology . It has also gained significant popularity in the following: anthropology , biology , demography , communication studies , economics , geography , history , information science , organizational studies , physics , political science , public health, social psychology , development studies , sociolinguistics , and computer science , education and distance education research, and

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1128-463: A more accurate picture of collaborative learning experiences. A number of research studies have combined other types of analysis with SNA in the study of CSCL. This can be referred to as a multi-method approach or data triangulation , which will lead to an increase of evaluation reliability in CSCL studies. Reductionism Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding

1222-428: A multiplexity of 2. Multiplexity has been associated with relationship strength and can also comprise overlap of positive and negative network ties. Mutuality/Reciprocity: The extent to which two actors reciprocate each other's friendship or other interaction. Network Closure : A measure of the completeness of relational triads. An individual's assumption of network closure (i.e. that their friends are also friends)

1316-420: A network relative to the total number possible. Distance: The minimum number of ties required to connect two particular actors, as popularized by Stanley Milgram 's small world experiment and the idea of 'six degrees of separation'. Structural holes: The absence of ties between two parts of a network. Finding and exploiting a structural hole can give an entrepreneur a competitive advantage. This concept

1410-586: A network, and the relatively small role played by an instructor in an asynchronous learning network. Although many studies have demonstrated the value of social network analysis within the computer-supported collaborative learning field, researchers have suggested that SNA by itself is not enough for achieving a full understanding of CSCL. The complexity of the interaction processes and the myriad sources of data make it difficult for SNA to provide an in-depth analysis of CSCL. Researchers indicate that SNA needs to be complemented with other methods of analysis to form

1504-464: A positive relationship (friendship, alliance, dating) and a negative edge between two nodes denotes a negative relationship (hatred, anger). Signed social network graphs can be used to predict the future evolution of the graph. In signed social networks , there is the concept of "balanced" and "unbalanced" cycles. A balanced cycle is defined as a cycle where the product of all the signs are positive. According to balance theory , balanced graphs represent

1598-408: A problem in simplicity by replacing organized complexity with simple and predictable spaces, such as Le Corbusier's "Radiant City" and Ebenezer Howard's "Garden City". Since then, others have written at length on the complexity of cities. Over the last decades, within the emerging field of complexity economics , new predictive tools have been developed to explain economic growth. Such is the case with

1692-607: A relationship between them. Richard Jones distinguishes ontological and epistemological reductionism, arguing that many ontological and epistemological reductionists affirm the need for different concepts for different degrees of complexity while affirming a reduction of theories. The idea of reductionism can be expressed by "levels" of explanation, with higher levels reducible if need be to lower levels. This use of levels of understanding in part expresses our human limitations in remembering detail. However, "most philosophers would insist that our role in conceptualizing reality [our need for

1786-442: A research approach to problems in many diverse disciplines, including statistical physics , information theory , nonlinear dynamics , anthropology , computer science , meteorology , sociology , economics , psychology , and biology . Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems that are adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience. Examples of complex adaptive systems include

1880-673: A sample signal and then investigated the application to business time series. The said index has been proven to detect hidden changes in time series. Further, Orlando et al., over an extensive dataset, shown that recurrence quantification analysis may help in anticipating transitions from laminar (i.e. regular) to turbulent (i.e. chaotic) phases such as USA GDP in 1949, 1953, etc. Last but not least, it has been demonstrated that recurrence quantification analysis can detect differences between macroeconomic variables and highlight hidden features of economic dynamics. Focusing on issues of student persistence with their studies, Forsman, Moll and Linder explore

1974-434: A sense chaotic systems can be regarded as a subset of complex systems distinguished precisely by this absence of historical dependence. Many real complex systems are, in practice and over long but finite periods, robust. However, they do possess the potential for radical qualitative change of kind whilst retaining systemic integrity. Metamorphosis serves as perhaps more than a metaphor for such transformations. A complex system

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2068-411: A system's parts give rise to its collective behaviors and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment. The study of complex systems regards collective, or system-wide, behaviors as the fundamental object of study; for this reason, complex systems can be understood as an alternative paradigm to reductionism , which attempts to explain systems in terms of their constituent parts and

2162-412: A tool to understand behavior between individuals or organizations through their linkages on social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook . One of the most current methods of the application of SNA is to the study of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). When applied to CSCL, SNA is used to help understand how learners collaborate in terms of amount, frequency, and length, as well as

2256-429: A very simplified and sometimes contested form, reductionism is said to imply that a system is nothing but the sum of its parts. However, a more nuanced opinion is that a system is composed entirely of its parts, but the system will have features that none of the parts have (which, in essence is the basis of emergentism ). "The point of mechanistic explanations is usually showing how the higher level features arise from

2350-418: A wide range of applications and disciplines. Some common network analysis applications include data aggregation and mining , network propagation modeling, network modeling and sampling, user attribute and behavior analysis, community-maintained resource support, location-based interaction analysis, social sharing and filtering, recommender systems development, and link prediction and entity resolution. In

2444-408: A wide variety of fields, the commonalities among them have become the topic of their independent area of research. In many cases, it is useful to represent such a system as a network where the nodes represent the components and links to their interactions. The term complex systems often refers to the study of complex systems, which is an approach to science that investigates how relationships between

2538-405: Is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate , organisms , the human brain , infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication systems, complex software and electronic systems, social and economic organizations (like cities ), an ecosystem , a living cell , and, ultimately, for some authors,

2632-562: Is a sum of types of items with a lesser degree of complexity. Type ontological reduction of biological things to chemical things is often rejected. Michael Ruse has criticized ontological reductionism as an improper argument against vitalism . In a biological context, methodological reductionism means attempting to explain all biological phenomena in terms of their underlying biochemical and molecular processes. Anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer employed some religious reductionist arguments . Theory reduction

2726-399: Is called transitivity. Transitivity is an outcome of the individual or situational trait of Need for Cognitive Closure . Propinquity : The tendency for actors to have more ties with geographically close others. Bridge : An individual whose weak ties fill a structural hole , providing the only link between two individuals or clusters. It also includes the shortest route when a longer one

2820-502: Is carried out considering the network of words co-occurring in a text. In these networks, nodes are words and links among them are weighted based on their frequency of co-occurrence (within a specific maximum range). Social network analysis has also been applied to understanding online behavior by individuals, organizations, and between websites. Hyperlink analysis can be used to analyze the connections between websites or webpages to examine how information flows as individuals navigate

2914-428: Is collected. Social Networking Potential (SNP) is a numeric coefficient , derived through algorithms to represent both the size of an individual's social network and their ability to influence that network. SNP coefficients were first defined and used by Bob Gerstley in 2002. A closely related term is Alpha User , defined as a person with a high SNP. SNP coefficients have two primary functions: By calculating

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3008-479: Is completely determined by chains of causality. The most influential formulation was by Immanuel Kant , who distinguished between the causal deterministic framework the mind imposes on the world—the phenomenal realm—and the world as it exists for itself, the noumenal realm, which, as he believed, included free will. To insulate theology from reductionism, 19th century post-Enlightenment German theologians, especially Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl , used

3102-491: Is directly tied to every other individual, ' social circles ' if there is less stringency of direct contact, which is imprecise, or as structurally cohesive blocks if precision is wanted. Clustering coefficient : A measure of the likelihood that two associates of a node are associates. A higher clustering coefficient indicates a greater 'cliquishness'. Cohesion: The degree to which actors are connected directly to each other by cohesive bonds . Structural cohesion refers to

3196-537: Is now commonly available as a consumer tool (see the list of SNA software ). Social network analysis has its theoretical roots in the work of early sociologists such as Georg Simmel and Émile Durkheim , who wrote about the importance of studying patterns of relationships that connect social actors. Social scientists have used the concept of " social networks " since early in the 20th century to connote complex sets of relationships between members of social systems at all scales, from interpersonal to international. In

3290-399: Is the process by which a more general theory absorbs a special theory. It can be further divided into translation, derivation, and explanation. For example, both Kepler's laws of the motion of the planets and Galileo 's theories of motion formulated for terrestrial objects are reducible to Newtonian theories of mechanics because all the explanatory power of the former are contained within

3384-834: Is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory . It characterizes networked structures in terms of nodes (individual actors, people, or things within the network) and the ties , edges , or links (relationships or interactions) that connect them. Examples of social structures commonly visualized through social network analysis include social media networks , meme spread, information circulation, friendship and acquaintance networks , business networks, knowledge networks, difficult working relationships, collaboration graphs , kinship , disease transmission , and sexual relationships . These networks are often visualized through sociograms in which nodes are represented as points and ties are represented as lines. These visualizations provide

3478-489: Is their history. Chaotic systems do not rely on their history as complex ones do. Chaotic behavior pushes a system in equilibrium into chaotic order, which means, in other words, out of what we traditionally define as 'order'. On the other hand, complex systems evolve far from equilibrium at the edge of chaos. They evolve at a critical state built up by a history of irreversible and unexpected events, which physicist Murray Gell-Mann called "an accumulation of frozen accidents". In

3572-495: Is unfeasible due to a high risk of message distortion or delivery failure. Centrality : Centrality refers to a group of metrics that aim to quantify the "importance" or "influence" (in a variety of senses) of a particular node (or group) within a network. Examples of common methods of measuring "centrality" include betweenness centrality , closeness centrality , eigenvector centrality , alpha centrality , and degree centrality . Density : The proportion of direct ties in

3666-848: Is usually composed of many components and their interactions. Such a system can be represented by a network where nodes represent the components and links represent their interactions. For example, the Internet can be represented as a network composed of nodes (computers) and links (direct connections between computers). Other examples of complex networks include social networks, financial institution interdependencies, airline networks, and biological networks. Social network analysis 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville  ·  Marx ·  Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto ·  Tönnies · Veblen ·  Simmel · Durkheim ·  Addams ·  Mead · Weber ·  Du Bois ·  Mannheim · Elias Social network analysis ( SNA )

3760-450: Is very different from ontological or strong emergentism , which intends that what emerges in "emergence" is more than the sum of the processes from which it emerges, respectively either in the ontological sense or in the epistemological sense. Richard Jones divides ontological reductionism into two: the reductionism of substances (e.g., the reduction of mind to matter) and the reduction of the number of structures operating in nature (e.g.,

3854-515: Is very likely to morph into a balanced cycle, such as one where B only has a good relationship with A, and both A and B have a negative relationship with C. By using the concept of balanced and unbalanced cycles, the evolution of signed social network graphs can be predicted. Especially when using social network analysis as a tool for facilitating change, different approaches of participatory network mapping have proven useful. Here participants / interviewers provide network data by actually mapping out

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3948-459: The Romantic method of basing religion on the human spirit, so that it is a person's feeling or sensibility about spiritual matters that comprises religion. Most common philosophical understandings of causation involve reducing it to some collection of non-causal facts. Opponents of these reductionist views have given arguments that the non-causal facts in question are insufficient to determine

4042-534: The Santa Fe Institute , was founded in 1984. Early Santa Fe Institute participants included physics Nobel laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Philip Anderson , economics Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow , and Manhattan Project scientists George Cowan and Herb Anderson . Today, there are over 50 institutes and research centers focusing on complex systems. Since the late 1990s, the interest of mathematical physicists in researching economic phenomena has been on

4136-469: The September 11 attacks . Large textual corpora can be turned into networks and then analysed with the method of social network analysis. In these networks, the nodes are Social Actors, and the links are Actions. The extraction of these networks can be automated by using parsers. The resulting networks, which can contain thousands of nodes, are then analysed by using tools from network theory to identify

4230-491: The continuum hypothesis is undecidable in the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory as shown by Cohen . Reductionist thinking and methods form the basis for many of the well-developed topics of modern science , including much of physics , chemistry and molecular biology . Classical mechanics in particular is seen as a reductionist framework. For instance, we understand the solar system in terms of its components (the sun and

4324-462: The stock market , social insect and ant colonies, the biosphere and the ecosystem , the brain and the immune system , the cell and the developing embryo , cities, manufacturing businesses and any human social group-based endeavor in a cultural and social system such as political parties or communities . Complex systems may have the following features: In 1948, Dr. Warren Weaver published an essay on "Science and Complexity", exploring

4418-708: The "viability of using complexity science as a frame to extend methodological applications for physics education research", finding that "framing a social network analysis within a complexity science perspective offers a new and powerful applicability across a broad range of PER topics". Healthcare systems are prime examples of complex systems, characterized by interactions among diverse stakeholders, such as patients, providers, policymakers, and researchers, across various sectors like health, government, community, and education. These systems demonstrate properties like non-linearity, emergence, adaptation, and feedback loops. Complexity science in healthcare frames knowledge translation as

4512-585: The 1930s Jacob Moreno and Helen Jennings introduced basic analytical methods. In 1954, John Arundel Barnes started using the term systematically to denote patterns of ties, encompassing concepts traditionally used by the public and those used by social scientists: bounded groups (e.g., tribes, families) and social categories (e.g., gender, ethnicity). Starting in the 1970s, scholars such as Ronald Burt , Kathleen Carley , Mark Granovetter , David Krackhardt , Edward Laumann , Anatol Rapoport , Barry Wellman , Douglas R. White , and Harrison White expanded

4606-499: The Earth's climate. The traditional approach to dealing with complexity is to reduce or constrain it. Typically, this involves compartmentalization: dividing a large system into separate parts. Organizations, for instance, divide their work into departments that each deal with separate issues. Engineering systems are often designed using modular components. However, modular designs become susceptible to failure when issues arise that bridge

4700-491: The French mathematician Henri Poincaré . Chaos is sometimes viewed as extremely complicated information, rather than as an absence of order. Chaotic systems remain deterministic, though their long-term behavior can be difficult to predict with any accuracy. With perfect knowledge of the initial conditions and the relevant equations describing the chaotic system's behavior, one can theoretically make perfectly accurate predictions of

4794-525: The R package SIENA (Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analyses), developed by Tom Snijders and colleagues. Longitudinal social network analysis became mainstream after the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Research on Adolescence in 2013, edited by René Veenstra and containing 15 empirical papers. Social network analysis is also used in intelligence, counter-intelligence and law enforcement activities. This technique allows

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4888-715: The SNP of respondents and by targeting High SNP respondents, the strength and relevance of quantitative marketing research used to drive viral marketing strategies is enhanced. Variables used to calculate an individual's SNP include but are not limited to: participation in Social Networking activities, group memberships, leadership roles, recognition, publication/editing/contributing to non-electronic media, publication/editing/contributing to electronic media (websites, blogs), and frequency of past distribution of information within their network. The acronym "SNP" and some of

4982-476: The analysis is on the "connections" made among the participants – how they interact and communicate – as opposed to how each participant behaved on his or her own. There are several key terms associated with social network analysis research in computer-supported collaborative learning such as: density , centrality , indegree , outdegree , and sociogram . In-degree and out-degree variables are related to centrality. Researchers employ social network analysis in

5076-405: The analysts to map covert organizations such as an espionage ring, an organized crime family or a street gang. The National Security Agency (NSA) uses its electronic surveillance programs to generate the data needed to perform this type of analysis on terrorist cells and other networks deemed relevant to national security. The NSA looks up to three nodes deep during this network analysis. After

5170-549: The associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy suggests that reductionism is "one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon" and suggests a three-part division: Reductionism can be applied to any phenomenon , including objects , problems, explanations , theories , and meanings. For

5264-440: The causal facts. Alfred North Whitehead 's metaphysics opposed reductionism. He refers to this as the " fallacy of the misplaced concreteness ". His scheme was to frame a rational, general understanding of phenomena, derived from our reality. An alternative term for ontological reductionism is fragmentalism , often used in a pejorative sense. In cognitive psychology , George Kelly developed "constructive alternativism" as

5358-485: The context of social marketing intelligence was Communities Dominate Brands by Ahonen & Moore in 2005. In 2012, Nicola Greco ( UCL ) presents at TEDx the Social Networking Potential as a parallelism to the potential energy that users generate and companies should use, stating that "SNP is the new asset that every company should aim to have". Social network analysis is used extensively in

5452-419: The corporate dynamics in terms of mutual synchronization and chaos regularization of bursts in a group of chaotically bursting cells and Orlando et al. who modelled financial data (Financial Stress Index, swap and equity, emerging and developed, corporate and government, short and long maturity) with a low-dimensional deterministic model. Therefore, the main difference between chaotic systems and complex systems

5546-553: The data is done through displaying nodes and ties in various layouts, and attributing colors, size and other advanced properties to nodes. Visual representations of networks may be a powerful method for conveying complex information, but care should be taken in interpreting node and graph properties from visual displays alone, as they may misrepresent structural properties better captured through quantitative analyses. Signed graphs can be used to illustrate good and bad relationships between humans. A positive edge between two nodes denotes

5640-405: The diversity of problem types by contrasting problems of simplicity, disorganized complexity, and organized complexity. Weaver described these as "problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole." While the explicit study of complex systems dates at least to the 1970s, the first research institute focused on complex systems,

5734-467: The divisions. Jane Jacobs described cities as being a problem in organized complexity in 1961, citing Dr. Weaver's 1948 essay. As an example, she explains how an abundance of factors interplay into how various urban spaces lead to a diversity of interactions, and how changing those factors can change how the space is used, and how well the space supports the functions of the city. She further illustrates how cities have been severely damaged when approached as

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5828-582: The emergence of new data available about online social networks as well as "digital traces" regarding face-to-face networks. Computational SNA has been extensively used in research on study-abroad second language acquisition. Even in the study of literature, network analysis has been applied by Anheier, Gerhards and Romo, Wouter De Nooy, and Burgert Senekal. Indeed, social network analysis has found applications in various academic disciplines as well as practical contexts such as countering money laundering and terrorism . Size: The number of network members in

5922-402: The emerging field of fractal physiology , bodily signals, such as heart rate or brain activity, are characterized using entropy or fractal indices. The goal is often to assess the state and the health of the underlying system, and diagnose potential disorders and illnesses. Complex systems theory is related to chaos theory , which in turn has its origins more than a century ago in the work of

6016-490: The entire universe . Complex systems are systems whose behavior is intrinsically difficult to model due to the dependencies, competitions, relationships, or other types of interactions between their parts or between a given system and its environment. Systems that are " complex " have distinct properties that arise from these relationships, such as nonlinearity , emergence , spontaneous order , adaptation , and feedback loops , among others. Because such systems appear in

6110-402: The first algorithms developed to quantify an individual's social networking potential were described in the white paper "Advertising Research is Changing" (Gerstley, 2003) See Viral Marketing . The first book to discuss the commercial use of Alpha Users among mobile telecoms audiences was 3G Marketing by Ahonen, Kasper and Melkko in 2004. The first book to discuss Alpha Users more generally in

6204-428: The form of e.g. Turing reduction , but also in the realm of real-world computation in time (or space) complexity analysis of algorithms, where it assumes the form of e.g. polynomial-time reduction . Further, in the even more practical domain of software development, reduction can be seen as the inverse of composition and the conceptual process a programmer applies to a problem in order to produce an alogrithm which solves

6298-399: The former. Reduction in theoretical computer science is pervasive in both: the mathematical abstract foundations of computation; and in real-world performance or capability analysis of algorithms . More specifically, reduction is a foundational and central concept, not only in the realm of mathematical logic and abstract computation in computability (or recursive) theory , where it assumes

6392-406: The individual interactions between them. As an interdisciplinary domain, complex systems draw contributions from many different fields, such as the study of self-organization and critical phenomena from physics, of spontaneous order from the social sciences, chaos from mathematics, adaptation from biology, and many others. Complex systems is therefore often used as a broad term encompassing

6486-501: The initial mapping of the social network is complete, analysis is performed to determine the structure of the network and determine, for example, the leaders within the network. This allows military or law enforcement assets to launch capture-or-kill decapitation attacks on the high-value targets in leadership positions to disrupt the functioning of the network. The NSA has been performing social network analysis on call detail records (CDRs), also known as metadata , since shortly after

6580-414: The key actors, the key communities or parties, and general properties such as robustness or structural stability of the overall network, or centrality of certain nodes. This automates the approach introduced by Quantitative Narrative Analysis, whereby subject-verb-object triplets are identified with pairs of actors linked by an action, or pairs formed by actor-object. In other approaches, textual analysis

6674-423: The latter. Furthermore, the reduction is considered beneficial because Newtonian mechanics is a more general theory—that is, it explains more events than Galileo's or Kepler's. Besides scientific theories, theory reduction more generally can be the process by which one explanation subsumes another. In mathematics , reductionism can be interpreted as the philosophy that all mathematics can (or ought to) be based on

6768-406: The minimum number of members who, if removed from a group, would disconnect the group. Visual representation of social networks is important to understand the network data and convey the result of the analysis. Numerous methods of visualization for data produced by social network analysis have been presented. Many of the analytic software have modules for network visualization. Exploration of

6862-579: The models built by the Santa Fe Institute in 1989 and the more recent economic complexity index (ECI), introduced by the MIT physicist Cesar A. Hidalgo and the Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann . Recurrence quantification analysis has been employed to detect the characteristic of business cycles and economic development . To this end, Orlando et al. developed the so-called recurrence quantification correlation index (RQCI) to test correlations of RQA on

6956-399: The natural numbers (a subset of all mathematics). Yet Gödel proved that, for any consistent recursively enumerable axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers, there are (model-theoretically) true propositions about the natural numbers that cannot be proved from the axioms. Such propositions are known as formally undecidable propositions . For example,

7050-406: The network (with pen and paper or digitally) during the data collection session. An example of a pen-and-paper network mapping approach, which also includes the collection of some actor attributes (perceived influence and goals of actors) is the * Net-map toolbox . One benefit of this approach is that it allows researchers to collect qualitative data and ask clarifying questions while the network data

7144-409: The parts." Other definitions are used by other authors. For example, what John Polkinghorne terms 'conceptual' or 'epistemological' reductionism is the definition provided by Simon Blackburn and by Jaegwon Kim : that form of reductionism which concerns a program of replacing the facts or entities involved in one type of discourse with other facts or entities from another type, thereby providing

7238-429: The philosophical idea of " theory reductionism ". In a general sense, a problem (or set) is said to be reducible to another problem (or set), if there is a computable/feasible method to translate the questions of the former into the latter, so that, if one knows how to computably/feasibly solve the latter problem, then one can computably/feasibly solve the former. Thus, the latter can only be at least as " hard " to solve as

7332-511: The phrase "really real" is apparently senseless but she has tried to explicate the supposed difference between the two. Ontological reductionism denies the idea of ontological emergence , and claims that emergence is an epistemological phenomenon that only exists through analysis or description of a system, and does not exist fundamentally. In some scientific disciplines, ontological reductionism takes two forms: token-identity theory and type-identity theory . In this case, "token" refers to

7426-454: The planets) and their interactions. Statistical mechanics can be considered as a reconciliation of macroscopic thermodynamic laws with the reductionist method of explaining macroscopic properties in terms of microscopic components, although it has been argued that reduction in physics 'never goes all the way in practice'. The role of reduction in computer science can be thought as a precise and unambiguous mathematical formalization of

7520-471: The private sector, businesses use social network analysis to support activities such as customer interaction and analysis, information system development analysis, marketing, and business intelligence needs (see social media analytics ). Some public sector uses include development of leader engagement strategies, analysis of individual and group engagement and media use , and community-based problem solving . Large numbers of researchers worldwide examine

7614-512: The problem using a composition of existing algorithms (encoded as subroutines, or subclasses). Philosophers of the Enlightenment worked to insulate human free will from reductionism. Descartes separated the material world of mechanical necessity from the world of mental free will. German philosophers introduced the concept of the " noumenal " realm that is not governed by the deterministic laws of " phenomenal " nature, where every event

7708-426: The quality, topic, and strategies of communication. Additionally, SNA can focus on specific aspects of the network connection, or the entire network as a whole. It uses graphical representations, written representations, and data representations to help examine the connections within a CSCL network. When applying SNA to a CSCL environment the interactions of the participants are treated as a social network. The focus of

7802-399: The reduction of one physical force to another). This permits scientists and philosophers to affirm the former while being anti-reductionists regarding the latter. Nancey Murphy has claimed that there are two species of ontological reductionism: one that claims that wholes are nothing more than their parts; and atomist reductionism, claiming that wholes are not "really real". She admits that

7896-410: The rise. The proliferation of cross-disciplinary research with the application of solutions originated from the physics epistemology has entailed a gradual paradigm shift in the theoretical articulations and methodological approaches in economics, primarily in financial economics. The development has resulted in the emergence of a new branch of discipline, namely "econophysics", which is broadly defined as

7990-536: The sciences, application of methodological reductionism attempts explanation of entire systems in terms of their individual, constituent parts and their interactions. For example, the temperature of a gas is reduced to nothing beyond the average kinetic energy of its molecules in motion. Thomas Nagel and others speak of 'psychophysical reductionism' (the attempted reduction of psychological phenomena to physics and chemistry), and 'physico-chemical reductionism' (the attempted reduction of biology to physics and chemistry). In

8084-399: The social networks of children and adolescents. In questionnaires, they list all classmates, students in the same grade, or schoolmates, asking: "who are your best friends?". Students may sometimes nominate as many peers as they wish; other times, the number of nominations is limited. Social network researchers have investigated similarities in friendship networks. The similarity between friends

8178-474: The strategies used to communicate within the group. Some authors also suggest that SNA provides a method of easily analyzing changes in participatory patterns of members over time. A number of research studies have applied SNA to CSCL across a variety of contexts. The findings include the correlation between a network's density and the teacher's presence, a greater regard for the recommendations of "central" participants, infrequency of cross-gender interaction in

8272-468: The study of complexity is the opposite of the study of chaos. Complexity is about how a huge number of extremely complicated and dynamic sets of relationships can generate some simple behavioral patterns, whereas chaotic behavior, in the sense of deterministic chaos, is the result of a relatively small number of non-linear interactions. For recent examples in economics and business see Stoop et al. who discussed Android 's market position, Orlando who explained

8366-417: The study of computer-supported collaborative learning in part due to the unique capabilities it offers. This particular method allows the study of interaction patterns within a networked learning community and can help illustrate the extent of the participants' interactions with the other members of the group. The graphics created using SNA tools provide visualizations of the connections among participants and

8460-433: The system, though in practice this is impossible to do with arbitrary accuracy. The emergence of complex systems theory shows a domain between deterministic order and randomness which is complex. This is referred to as the " edge of chaos ". When one analyzes complex systems, sensitivity to initial conditions, for example, is not an issue as important as it is within chaos theory, in which it prevails. As stated by Colander,

8554-478: The use of systematic social network analysis. Beginning in the late 1990s, social network analysis experienced a further resurgence with work by sociologists, political scientists, economists, computer scientists, and physicists such as Duncan J. Watts , Albert-László Barabási , Peter Bearman , Nicholas A. Christakis , James H. Fowler , Mark Newman , Matthew Jackson , Jon Kleinberg , and others, developing and applying new models and methods, prompted in part by

8648-550: The web. The connections between organizations has been analyzed via hyperlink analysis to examine which organizations within an issue community. Another concept that has emerged from this connection between social network theory and the Internet is the concept of netocracy , where several authors have emerged studying the correlation between the extended use of online social networks, and changes in social power dynamics. Social network analysis has been applied to social media as

8742-419: Was developed by sociologist Ronald Burt , and is sometimes referred to as an alternate conception of social capital. Tie Strength: Defined by the linear combination of time, emotional intensity, intimacy and reciprocity (i.e. mutuality). Strong ties are associated with homophily, propinquity and transitivity, while weak ties are associated with bridges. Groups are identified as ' cliques ' if every individual

8836-691: Was established as far back as classical antiquity. Resemblance is an important basis for the survival of friendships. Similarity in characteristics, attitudes, or behaviors means that friends understand each other more quickly, have common interests to talk about, know better where they stand with each other, and have more trust in each other. As a result, such relationships are more stable and valuable. Moreover, looking more alike makes young people more confident and strengthens them in developing their identity. Similarity in behavior can result from two processes: selection and influence. These two processes can be distinguished using longitudinal social network analysis in

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