Download or read book Artefacts of Complexity written by J. N. Postgate and published by Aris & Phillips. This book was released on 2002 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late 4th millennium in South Mesopotamia is universally known as the Uruk Period because it is at Uruk that the German excavations have exposed the most remarkable manifestations of this complex society. Although the Uruk period in Iraq itself remains little understood, in recent decades artefacts and entire settlements have been discovered in places as far apart as the Mahi Dasht in Iran and the Euphrates in South-eastern Turkey. This volume attempts to track the Uruk phenomenon in the Near East, bringing together research on some of the most significant individual sites within the Levant and Egypt, placing emphasis on the artefactual evidence. The eleven papers were originally presented at a conference in Manchester in 1998. The contributors are Hans Nissen, Renate Gut, Mitchell Rothman, Virginia Badler, Joan Oates, Marcella Frangipane, Gil Stein, Fiona Stephen, Edgar Peltenburg, Govert van Driel, Graham Philip and Toby Wilkinson.
Download or read book Aristotle s Ontology of Artefacts written by Marilù Papandreou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-21 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thorough reconstruction of Aristotle's account of artefacts that is sensitive to modern debates.
Download or read book Computer Science written by Subrata Dasgupta and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the development of Information Technology has been obvious to all, the underpinning computer science has been less apparent. Subrata Dasgupta provides a thought-provoking introduction to the field and its core principles, considering computer science as a science of symbol processing.
Download or read book Artefacts of Complexity written by J. N. Postgate and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Artifacts and Organizations written by Anat Rafaeli and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artifacts in organizations are ubiquitous but often overlooked. The chapters in this book illustrate that artifacts are everywhere in organizational life. They prevail in how offices are decorated, language is used, business cards are designed, and office cartoons are displayed. In addition, artifacts can be seen in the name of an organization and its employees, products, buildings, processes, and contracts, and they represent people, organizations, and professions. Artifacts and Organizations suggests that artifacts are neither superficial nor pertinent only to organizational culture. They are relevant to a rich and diverse set of organizational processes within and across multiple levels of analysis. Artifacts are shown to be integral to identity, sense-giving and sense-making processes, interpretation and negotiation, legitimacy, and branding. The book seeks to communicate that artifacts are often much more than what is currently recognized in organizational research. The four sections of this edited volume address various aspects of what is known about and known through artifacts. Together, the full set of chapters challenge the field to move beyond a narrow conceptualization and understanding of artifacts in organizations. This book leads students to embrace the full complexity and richness of artifacts. In addition, the text seeks to inspire those who focus on artifacts as symbols to delve deeper into the complexities of artifacts-in-use, for individuals, organizations, and institutions.
Download or read book Engineering and Philosophy written by Zachary Pirtle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engineers love to build “things” and have an innate sense of wanting to help society. However, these desires are often not connected or developed through reflections on the complexities of philosophy, biology, economics, politics, environment, and culture. To guide future efforts and to best bring about human flourishment and a just world, Engineering and Philosophy: Reimagining Technology and Progress brings together practitioners and scholars to inspire deeper conversations on the nature and varieties of engineering. The perspectives in this book are an act of reimagination: how does engineering serve society, and in a vital sense, how should it.
Download or read book The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies written by Steven L. Kuhn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term trajectories of evolutionary change in Paleolithic tools and tool-makers. Members of the human lineage have been producing stone tools for more than 3 million years. These artefacts provide key evidence for important evolutionary developments in hominin behaviour and cognition. Avoiding conventional approaches based on progressive stages of development, this book instead examines global trends in six separate dimensions of technological behaviour between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago. Combining these independent trends results in both a broader and a more finely punctuated perspective on key intervals of change in hominin behaviour. To draw this picture together, the concluding section explores behavioural, cognitive, and demographic implications of developments in material culture and technological procedures at seven key intervals during the Pleistocene. Researchers interested in Paleolithic archaeology will find this book invaluable. It will also be of interest to archaeologists researching stone tool technology and to students of human evolution and behavioural change in prehistory.
Download or read book Simulating Social Complexity written by Bruce Edmonds and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-24 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines all aspects of using agent or individual-based simulation. This approach represents systems as individual elements having their own set of differing states and internal processes. The interactions between elements in the simulation represent interactions in the target systems. What makes this "social" is that it can represent an observed society. Social systems include all those systems where the components have individual agency but also interact with each other. This includes human societies and groups, but also increasingly socio-technical systems where the internet-based devices form the substrate for interaction. These systems are central to our lives, but are among the most complex known. This poses particular problems for those who wish to understand them. The complexity often makes analytic approaches infeasible but, on the other hand, natural language approaches are also inadequate for relating intricate cause and effect. This is why individual and agent-based computational approaches hold out the possibility of new and deeper understanding of such systems. This handbook marks the maturation of this new field. It brings together summaries of the best thinking and practices in this area from leading researchers in the field and constitutes a reference point for standards against which future methodological advances can be judged. This second edition adds new chapters on different modelling purposes and applying software engineering methods to simulation development. Revised existing content will keep the book up-to-date with recent developments. This volume will help those new to the field avoid "reinventing the wheel" each time, and give them a solid and wide grounding in the essential issues. It will also help those already in the field by providing accessible overviews of current thought. The material is divided into four sections: Introduction, Methodology, Mechanisms, and Applications. Each chapter starts with a very brief section called ‘Why read this chapter?’ followed by an abstract, which summarizes the content of the chapter. Each chapter also ends with a section on ‘Further Reading’. Whilst sometimes covering technical aspects, this second edition of Simulating Social Complexity is designed to be accessible to a wide range of researchers, including both those from the social sciences as well as those with a more formal background. It will be of use as a standard reference text in the field and also be suitable for graduate level courses.
Download or read book Complexity Theories of Cities Have Come of Age written by Juval Portugali and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-03 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, our cities are an embodiment of the complex, historical evolution of knowledge, desires and technology. Our planned and designed activities co-evolve with our aspirations, mediated by the existing technologies and social structures. The city represents the accretion and accumulation of successive layers of collective activity, structuring and being structured by other, increasingly distant cities, reaching now right around the globe. This historical and structural development cannot therefore be understood or captured by any set of fixed quantitative relations. Structural changes imply that the patterns of growth, and their underlying reasons change over time, and therefore that any attempt to control the morphology of cities and their patterns of flow by means of planning and design, must be dynamical, based on the mechanisms that drive the changes occurring at a given moment. This carefully edited post-proceedings volume gathers a snapshot view by leading researchers in field, of current complexity theories of cities. In it, the achievements, criticisms and potentials yet to be realized are reviewed and the implications to planning and urban design are assessed.
Download or read book Epestemic Artefacts written by Matthias Ballestrem and published by AADR – Art Architecture Design Research. This book was released on 2022-09-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epistemic Artefacts A Dialogical Reflection on Design Research in Architecture Edited by Matthias Ballestrem and Lidia Gasperoni Architectural artefacts are negotiated as epistemic objects, an autonomous and innovative form of knowledge capable of inaugurating and institutionalising architectural research. The backbone of this publication is a dialogue between the architect Matthias Ballestrem and the philosopher and architectural theorist Lidia Gasperoni. In a vibrant discussion, they consider the epistemic value of the architectural artefact, the role of research practices in making this knowledge explicit and accessible, and the criteria for qualifying as design-based research. Alex Arteaga, Fabrizia Berlingieri, Peter Bertram, Helga Blocksdorf, Anđelka Bnin-Bninski, Marta Fernández Guardado, Joerg Fingerhut, Anke Haarmann, Rolf Hughes, Rachel Hurst, Daniel Norell, Tomas Ooms, Claus Peder Pedersen, Tim Simon-Meyer, and Philip Ursprung have added short comments and images to enrich the arguments with criticism, extensions, associations, and references. An afterword by Marcelo Stamm provides a theoretical reflection on a possible taxonomy of epistemic artefacts.
Download or read book Functions From Organisms to Artefacts written by Jean Gayon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-25 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, originally published in French, examines the philosophical debates on functions over the last forty years and proposes new ways of analysis. Pervasive throughout the life sciences, the concept of function has the air of an epistemological scandal: ascribing a function to a biological structure or process amounts to suggesting that it is explained by its effects. This book confronts the debates on function with the use of the notion in a wide range of disciplines, such as biology, psychology, and medicine. It also raises the question of whether this notion, which is as old in the history of technology as it is in the life sciences, has the same meaning in these two domains.
Download or read book Designing for the 21st Century written by Tom Inns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we become familiar with the 21st century we can see that what we are designing is changing, new technologies support the creation of new forms of product and service, and new pressures on business and society demand the design of solutions to increasingly complex problems, sometimes local, often global in nature. Customers, users and stakeholders are no longer passive recipients of design, expectations are higher, and increased participation is often essential. This book explores these issues through the work of 21 research teams. Over a twelve-month period each of these groups held a series of workshops and events to examine different facets of future design activity as part of the UK's research council supported Designing for the 21st Century Research Initiative. Each of these 21 contributions describes the context of enquiry, the journey taken by the research team and key insights generated through discourse. Editor and Initiative Director, Tom Inns, provides an introductory chapter that suggests ways that the reader might navigate these different viewpoints.
Download or read book Making Objects and Events written by Simon J. Evnine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-07 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon J. Evnine explores the view (which he calls amorphic hylomorphism) that some objects have matter from which they are distinct but that this distinctness is not due to the existence of anything like a form. He draws on Aristotle's insight that such objects must be understood in terms of an account that links what they are essentially with how they come to exist and what their functions are (the coincidence of formal, final, and efficient causes). Artifacts are the most prominent kind of objects where these three features coincide, and Evnine develops a detailed account of the existence and identity conditions of artifacts, and the origins of their functions, in terms of how they come into existence. This process is, in general terms, that they are made out of their initial matter by an agent acting with the intention to make an object of the given kind. Evnine extends the account to organisms, where evolution accomplishes what is effected by intentional making in the case of artifacts, and to actions, which are seen as artifactual events.
Download or read book Computational Semiotics written by Jean-Guy Meunier and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can semiotics and computers be compatible? Can computation advance semiotics by enhancing the scientific basis of the theory of signs? Coupling semiotics, a philosophical and phenomenological tradition concerned with theories of signs, with computation, a formal discipline, may seem controversial and paradoxical. Computational Semiotics tackles these controversies head-on and attempts to bridge this gap. Showing how semiotics can build the same type of conceptual, formal, and computational models as other scientific projects, this book opens up a rich domain of inquiry toward the formal understanding of semiotic artifacts and processes. Examining how pairing semiotics with computation can bring more methodological rigor and logical consistency to the epistemic quest for the forms and functions of meaning, without compromising the important interpretive dynamics of semiotics, this book offers a new cutting-edge, model-driven theory to the field.
Download or read book Complexity Science Living Systems and Reflexing Interfaces New Models and Perspectives written by Orsucci, Franco and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2012-09-30 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are new and important advancements in todays complexity theories in ICT and requires an extraordinary perspective on the interaction between living systems and information technologies. With human evolution and its continuous link with the development of new tools and environmental changes, technological advancements are paving the way for new evolutionary steps. Complexity Science, Living Systems, and Reflexing Interfaces: New Models and Perspectives is a collection of research provided by academics and scholars aiming to introduce important advancements in areas such as artificial intelligence, evolutionary computation, neural networks, and much more. This scholarly piece will provide contributions that will define the line of development in complexity science.
Download or read book Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology written by Dries Daems and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology turns to complex systems thinking in search of a suitable framework to explore social complexity in Archaeology. Social complexity in archaeology is commonly related to properties of complex societies such as states, as opposed to so-called simple societies such as tribes or chiefdoms. These conceptualisations of complexity are ultimately rooted in Eurocentric perspectives with problematic implications for the field of archaeology. This book provides an in-depth conceptualisation of social complexity as the core concept in archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of the past, integrating approaches from complex systems thinking, archaeological theory, social practice theory, and sustainability and resilience science. The book covers a long-term perspective of social change and stability, tracing the full cycle of complexity trajectories, from emergence and development to collapse, regeneration and transformation of communities and societies. It offers a broad vision on social complexity as a core concept for the present and future development of archaeology. This book is intended to be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field of archaeology and related disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, as well as the natural sciences studying human-environment interactions in the past.
Download or read book Foundations for Functional Modeling of Technical Artefacts written by Morten Lind and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-27 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph provides a new framework for modelling goals and functions of control systems. It demonstrates how to use means-end concepts and various aspects of action to describe the relations between the structure, dispositions, functions, and goals of technical systems and with human action. The author developed this approach as part of his research on Multilevel Flow Modelling (MFM). He based the framework on concepts of action and means-end analysis drawing on existing theories from several areas of study, including philosophical logic, semiotics, and phenomenological approaches to social science. Here, he applies it to three modeling situations related to the interaction of technical artefacts and humans. One involves the relation between designer and artefact, another the relation between technical artefact and its user, and the third the relation between a natural object and its user. All three are relevant for modelling complex automated processes interacting with human operators. The book also discusses challenges when applying the foundations for modelling of technical artefacts. Overall, it provides a cross disciplinary integration of several fields of knowledge. These disciplines include intelligent process control, human machine interaction, and process and automation design. As a result, researchers and graduate students in computer science, engineering, and philosophy of technology will find it a valuable resource.
