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Abstracts
The study of the growing complexity of the physical world is of great value to many scientific disciplines, including philosophy of nature, complexity theory, thermodynamics, and others. Here, I propose a systematic and quantitative method of describing the process of natural complexification throughout cosmic history, based on a list of the topical categories of PACS® 2008: Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme 2008, published by the American Institute of Physics. I assume that each of the selected 349 level-3 categories corresponds to a certain subset of natural phenomena, and I group them according to their first appearance in natural history. By analyzing their distribution, I derive certain qualitative and (tentatively) quantitative generalizations concerning the pace and scale of the growth of natural complexity. I contrast this approach with the results achieved by other methods and discuss its relevance to selected topics in philosophy of nature and philosophy of science.
Journal
Year
Volume
Physical description
Dates
published
2011
online
2011-01-01
Contributors
author
References
Document Type
Publication order reference
Identifiers
DOI
YADDA identifier
bwmeta1.element.ojs-doi-10_15633_ss_1557
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