Vincent creates

This page describes the organizational forces that limit change. It explains how to overcome them when necessary.

This page uses an example to illustrate how:

A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence.
A program approach can ensure strategic alignment.

This page uses the example of HP's printer organization freeing itself from its organizational constraints to sell a printer targeted at the IBM pc user.
The constraints are described.
The techniques to overcome them are implied.

We are products of complexity, but our evolution has focused our understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the African savanna. As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend them. So this web frame explores significant real world complex adaptive systems (CAS): Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and retirement savings of the working class. The assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched. The US nation was built from two divergent political views of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also reflects the development of competing ancient ideas of Epicurus and Cyril. But the collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall Street into a position of power, while the middle and working class were abandoned by the elites. Housing financed with cash from oil and derivative transactions helped hide the shift. Most US health care is still operating the way cars built in the 1940s did. Geisinger is an example of better solution. But transforming the whole network is a challenge. And public health investment has proved far more beneficial. Helping our children learn to be effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have created a robust but deeply flawed education system. Better alternatives have emerged. Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our good ideas to become a second genetic material. The emergence of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent development; It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It outlines the items we see as key to the system and why. Example systems frame
Dietrich Dorner argues complex adaptive systems (CAS) are hard to understand and manage. He provides examples of how this feature of these systems can have disastrous consequences for their human managers. Dorner suggests this is due to CAS properties psychological impact on our otherwise successful mental strategic toolkit. To prepare to more effectively manage CAS, Dorner recommends use of: Effective iterative planning and Practice with complex scenario simulations; tools which he reviews. Complexity catastrophes
E. O. Wilson reviews the effect of man on the natural world to date and explains how the two systems can coexist most effectively. Adaptive ecology
Barton Gellman details the strategies used by Vice President Cheney to align the global system with his economics, defense, and energy goals. US vds alignment
Kevin Kruse argues that from 1930 onwards the corporate elite and the Republican party have developed and relentlessly executed strategies to undermine Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Their successful strategy used the credibility of conservative religious leaders to: Demonstrate religious issues with the New Deal. Integrate the corporate elite and evangelicals. Use the power of corporate advertising and Hollywood to reeducate the American people to view the US as historically religious and the New Deal and liberalism as anti-religious socialism. Focus the message through evangelicals including Vereide and Graham. Centralize the strategy through President Eisenhower. Add religious elements to mainstream American symbols: money, pledge; Push for prayer in public school Push Congress to promote prayer Make elections more about religious positions. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Strategy is the art of the possible. But it also depends on persistence. Inventing Christian America
Charles Ferguson argues that the US power structure has become highly corrupt. Ferguson identifies key events which contributed to the transformation: Junk bonds, Derivative deregulation, CMOs, ABS and analyst fraud, Financial network deregulation, Financial network consolidation, Short term incentives Subsequently the George W. Bush administration used the situation to build a global bubble, which Wall Street leveraged. The bursting of the bubble: managed by the Bush Administration and Bernanke Federal Reserve; was advantageous to some. Ferguson concludes that the restructured and deregulated financial services industry is damaging to the American economy. And it is supported by powerful, incentive aligned academics. He sees the result being a rigged system. Ferguson offers his proposals for change and offers hope that a charismatic young FDR will appear. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Once the constraints are removed from CAS amplifiers, it becomes advantageous to leverage the increased flows. And it is often relatively damaging not to participate. Corruption and parasitism can become entrenched. Financial WMD
Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic alignment of the American justice system. The result he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected. Even as it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to extract profits and leave the victim deflated. Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the: activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes, prisons and deportation network. The scenarios are: Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The alignment of the justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to win. Aligned justice
Jonathan Powell describes how the government of, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, actually operated. Powell was Blair's only chief of staff. Mechanics of power
H. A. Hayek compares and contrasts collectivism and libertarianism. Libertarianism
John Doerr argues that company leaders and their organizations, hugely benefit from Andy Grove's OKRs. He promotes strategies that help OKR success: Focus, Align, Track, Stretch; replaces yearly performance reviews, and provides illustrative success stories. Doerr stresses Dov Seidman's view that employees are adaptive and will respond to what they see being measured. He asserts culturally supported OKRs/CFR processes will be transformative. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Doerr's architecture is tailored for the startups KPCB invests in. It is a subset of the general case of schematic plans, genetic operators and Shewhart cycles that drive all CAS. Doerr's approach limits support of learning and deemphasizes the association to planning. Startup PDCA
David Bodanis illustrates how disruptive effects can take hold. While the French revolution had many driving forces including famine and oppression the emergence of a new philosophical vision ensured that thoughtful leaders were constrained and conflicted in their responses to the crisis. Voltaire's disruptive network
An epistatic meme suppressed for a thousand years reemerges during the enlightenment. It was a poem encapsulating the ideas of Epicurus rediscovered by a humanist book hunter. Greenblatt describes the process of suppression and reemergence. He argues that the rediscovery was the foundation of the modern world. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the memetic mechanisms are discussed. Constraining happiness
Isaacson uses the historic development of the global cloud of web services to explore Ada Lovelace's ideas about thinking machines and poetic science. He highlights the value of computer augmented human creativity and the need for liberal arts to fulfill the process. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agent networks and collaboration are discussed. Arts technology & intelligence
Haikonen juxtaposes the philosophy and psychology of consciousness with engineering practice to refine the debate on the hard problem of consciousness. During the journey he describes the architecture of a robot that highlights the potential and challenges of associative neural networks. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is then used to illustrate the additional requirements and constraints of self-assembling evolved conscious animals. It will be seen that Haikonen's neural architecture, Smiley's Copycat architecture and molecular biology's intracellular architecture leverage the same associative properties. Associatively integrated robots
Good ideas are successful because they build upon prior developments that have been successfully implemented. Johnson demonstrates that they are phenotypic expressions of memetic plans subject to the laws of complex adaptive systems (CAS). Developing ideas
A government sanctioned monopoly supported the construction of a superOrganism American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). Within this Bell Labs was at the center of three networks: The evolving global scientific network. The Bell telephone network. And The military industrial network deploying 'fire and missile control' systems. Bell Labs strategically leveraged each network to create an innovation engine. They monitored the opportunities to leverage the developing ideas, reorganizing to replace incumbent opposition and enable the creation and growth of new ideas. Once the monopoly was dismantled, AT&T disrupted. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the innovation mechanisms are discussed. Strategic innovation
Roger Cohen's New York Times opinion about the implications of BREXIT is summarized. His ideas are then framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory and reviewed. BREXIT
Scott Galloway argues that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are monopolists that trade workers for technology. Monopolies that he argues should be broken up to ensure the return of a middle class. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on these arguments assuming they relate to a complex adaptive system (CAS). While Scott's issue is highly significant his analysis conflicts with relevant CAS history and theory. Monopoly job killers
The IPO of Netscape is defined as the key emergent event of the New Economy by Michael Mandel. Following the summary of Mandel's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. New economy
Ed Conway argues that Bretton Woods produced a unique set of rules and infrastructure for supporting the global economy. It was enabled by the experience of Keynes and White during and after the First World War, their dislike of the Gold Standard, the necessity of improving the situation between the wars and the opportunity created by the catastrophe of the Second World War. He describes how it was planned and developed. How it emerged from the summit. And he shows how the opportunity inevitably allowed the US to replace the UK at the center of the global economy. Like all plans there are mistakes and Conway takes us through them and how the US recovered the situation as best it could. And then Conway describes the period after Bretton Woods collapsed. He explains what followed and also compares the relative performance of the various periods before during and after Bretton Woods. Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments from the perspective of Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory. Conway's book illustrates the rule making and infrastructure that together build an evolved amplifier. He shows the strategies at play of agents that were for and against the development and deployment of the system. And The Summit provides a key piece of the history of our global economic CAS. Bretton woods
A key agent in the 1990 - 2008 housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential mortgage value delivery system (VDS) by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla. But they show the VDS was full of amplifiers and control points. With no one incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst. Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. Housing amplifiers
Satyajit Das uses an Indonesian company's derivative trades to introduce us to the workings of the international derivatives system. Das describes the components of the value delivery system and the key transactions. He demonstrates how the system interacted with emerging economies expanding them, extracting profits and then moving on as the induced bubbles burst. Following Das's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted. Derivative systems
Johnson & Kwak argue that expanding the national debt provides a hedge against unforeseen future problems, as long as creditors are willing to continue lending. They illustrate different approaches to managing the debt within the US over its history and of the eighteenth century administrations of England and France. The US embodies two different political and economic systems which approach the national debt differently: Taxes to support a sinking fund to ensure credit to leverage fiscal power in: Wars, Pandemics, Trade disputes, Hurricanes, Social programs; Starting with Hamilton, Lincoln & Chase, Wilson, FDR; Low taxes, limited infrastructure, with risk assumed by individuals: Advocated by President's Jefferson & Madison, Reagan, George W. Bush (Gingrich); Johnson & Kwak develop a model of what the US government does. They argue that the conflicting sinking fund and low tax approaches leaves the nation 'stuck in the middle' with a future problem. And they offer their list of 'first principles' to help assess the best approach for moving from 2012 into the future. They conclude the question is still political. They hope it can be resolved with an awareness of their detailed explanations. They ask who is willing to push all the coming risk onto individuals. Following our summary of their arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Historically developing within the global cotton value delivery system, key CAS features are highlighted. National debt
Robert Gordon argues that the inventions of the second industrial revolution were the foundation for American economic growth. Gordon shows how flows of people into difficult rural America built a population base which then took the opportunity to move on to urban settings: Houses, Food in supermarkets, Clothes in department stores; that supported increasing productivity and standard of living. The deployment of nationwide networks: Rail, Road, Utilities; terminating in the urban housing and work places allowing the workers to leverage time saving goods and services, which helped grow the economy. Gordon describes the concomitant transformation of: Communications and advertising Credit and finance Public health and the health care network Health insurance Education Social and welfare services Counter intuitively the constraints introduced before and in the Great Depression and the demands of World War 2 provide the amplifiers that drive the inventions deeply and fully into every aspect of the economy between 1940 and 1970 creating the exceptional growth and standard of living of post war America. Subsequently the rate of growth was limited until the shift of women into the workplace and the full networking of voice and data supported the Internet and World Wide Web completed the third industrial revolution, but the effects were muted by the narrow reach of the technologies. The development of Big Data, Robots, and Artificial Intelligence may support additional growth, but Gordon is unconvinced because of the collapse of the middle class. Following our summary of Gordon's book RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. American growth
Carl Menger argues that the market induced the emergence of money based on the attractive features of precious metals. He compares the potential for government edicts to create money but sees them as lacking. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. With two hundred years of additional knowledge we conclude that precious metals are not as attractive as Menger asserts. Government backed promissory notes are analogous to: Other evolved CAS forms of ubiquitous high energy transaction intermediates and Schematic strategies that are proving optimal in supporting survival and replication in the currently accessible niches. Emergence of money
Eric Beinhocker sets out to answer a question Adam Smith developed in the Wealth of Nations: what is wealth? To do this he replaces traditional economic theory, which is based on the assumption that an economy is a system in equilibrium, with complexity economics in which the economy is modeled as a complex adaptive system (CAS). He introduces Sugerscape to illustrate an economic CAS model in action. And then he explains the major features of a CAS economy: Dynamics, Agents, Networks, Emergence, and Evolution. Building on complexity economics Beinhocker reviews how evolution applies to the economy to build wealth. He explains how design spaces map strategies to instances of physical and social technologies. And he identifies the interactors and selection mechanism of economic evolution. This allows Beinhocker to develop a new definition of wealth. In the rest of the book Beinhocker looks at the consequences of adopting complexity economics for business and society: Strategy, Organization, Finance, & Politics & Policy. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS explores his conclusions and aligns Beinhocker's model of CAS with the CAS theory and evidence we leverage. Economic complexity
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land and labor to work it including slaves. He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages and the ways found to mobilize industrial labor. Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected. Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when the US civil war blocked access to the major production nodes in the American Deep South the CAS began adapting. Beckert describes the global reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation states. Beckert explains how other countries responded by copying the colonial strategies and creating the opportunities for future armed conflict among the original colonialists and the new upstarts. Completing the adaptive shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in the colonized global south and how over time they joined the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing nodes and creating the current global CAS dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers, spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each other on cost. Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of disconnected peasant farmers, pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over time: of military force, global transportation and communication networks, perception and representation control networks, capital stores and flows, models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. The emergent system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of extended phenotypic alignment. Globalization from cotton
The structure and problems of the US health care network is described in terms of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The network: Is deeply embedded in the US nation state. It reflects the conflict between two opposing visions for the US: high tax with safety net or low tax without. The emergence of a parasitic elite supported by tax policy, further constrains the choices available to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the network. The US is optimized to sell its citizens dangerous levels of: salt, sugar, cigarettes, guns, light, cell phones, opioids, costly education, global travel, antibacterials, formula, foods including endocrine disrupters; Accepting the US controlled global supply chain's offered goods & services results in: debt, chronic stress, amplified consumption and toxic excess, leading to obesity, addiction, driving instead of walking, microbiome collapse; Globalization connects disparate environments in a network. At the edges, humans are drastically altering the biosphere. That is reducing the proximate natural environment's connectedness, and leaving its end-nodes disconnected and far less diverse. This disconnects predators from their prey, often resulting in local booms and busts that transform the local parasite network and their reservoir and amplifier hosts. The situation is setup so that man is introduced to spillover from the local parasites' hosts. Occasionally, but increasingly, the spillover results in humanity becoming broadly infected. The evolved specialization of the immune system to the proximate environment during development becomes undermined as the environment transforms. Is incented to focus on localized competition generating massive & costly duplication of services within physician based health care operations instead of proven public health strategies. This process drives increasing research & treatment complexity and promotes hope for each new technological breakthrough. Is amplified by the legislatively structured separation and indirection of service development, provision, reimbursement and payment. Is impacted by the different political strategies for managing the increasing cost of health care for the demographic bulge of retirees. Is presented with acute and chronic problems to respond to. As currently setup the network is tuned to handle acute problems. The interactions with patients tend to be transactional. Includes a legislated health insurance infrastructure which is: Costly and inefficient Structured around yearly contracts which undermine long-term health goals and strategies. Is supported by increasingly regulated HCIT which offers to improve data sharing and quality but has entrenched commercial EHR products deep within the hospital systems. Is maintained, and kept in alignment, by massive network effects across the: Hospital platform based sub-networks connecting to Physician networks Health insurance networks - amplified by ACA narrow network legislation Hospital clinical supply and food production networks Medical school and academic research network and NIH Global transportation network Public health networks Health care IT supply network Health care
Deaton describes the wellbeing of people around the world today. He explains the powerful benefit of public health strategies and the effect of growth in material wellbeing but also the corrosive effects of aid. Following our summary of Deaton's arguments RSS comments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The situation he describes is complex including powerful amplifiers, alignment and incentives that overlap broadly with other RSS summaries of adaptations of: The biosphere, Politics, Economics, Philosophy and Health care. Improving wellbeing
Donald Barlett and James Steele write about their investigations of the major problems afflicting US health care as of 2006. Problems of US health care
Glenn Steele & David Feinberg review the development of the modern Geisinger healthcare business after its near collapse following the abandoned merger with Penn State AMC. After an overview of the business, they describe how a calamity unfolding around them supported building a vision of a better US health care network. And they explain: How they planned out the transformation, Leveraging an effective governance structure, Using a strategy to gain buy in, Enabling reengineering at the clinician patient interface. Implementing the reengineering for acute, chronic & hot spot care; to help the patients and help the physicians. Geisinger's leverage of biologics. Reengineering healing with ProvenExperience. Where Geisinger is headed next. Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments on them. We frame their ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. E2E insured quality care
Robert Pearl explains the perspectives of a health care leader and son who know that the current health care network interacts with human behavior to induce a poorly performing system that caused his father's death. But he is confident that these problem perceptions can be changed. Once that occurs he asserts the network will become more integrated, coordinated, collaborative, better led, and empathetic to their patients. The supporting technology infrastructure will be made highly interoperable. All that will reduce medical errors and make care more cost effective. Following our summary of his arguments RSS comments on them. We frame his ideas with complex adaptive system (CAS) theory including synergistic examples of these systems in operation. The health care network is built out of emergent human agents. All agents must model the signals they perceive to represent and respond to them. Pinker explains how this occurs. Sapolsky explains why fear and hierarchy are so significant. He includes details of Josh Green's research on morality and death. Charles Ferguson highlights the pernicious nature of financial incentives. Bad medical models
US healthcare is ripe for disruption. Christensen, Grossman and Hwang argue that technologies are emerging which will support low cost business models that will undermine the current network. Applying complex adaptive system (CAS) theory to these arguments suggests that the current power hierarchy can effectively resist these progressive forces. Disrupting health care
Atul Gawande writes about the opportunity for a thirty per cent improvement in quality in medicine by organizing to deploy as agent based teams using shared schematic plans and distributed signalling or as he puts it the use of checklists. With vivid examples from a variety of situations including construction, air crew support and global health care Gawande illustrates the effects of complexity and how to organize to cope with it. Following the short review RSS additionally relates Gawande's arguments to its models of complex adaptive systems (CAS) positioning his discussion within the network of US health care, contrasting our view of complexity, comparing the forces shaping his various examples and reviewing facets of complex failures. Complexity checklists
Friedman and Martin leverage the lifelong data collected on 1,528 bright individuals selected by Dr. Lewis Terman starting in 1921, to understand what aspects of the subjects' lives significantly affected their longevity. Looking broadly across each subject's: Personality, Education, Parental impacts, Energy levels, Partnering, Careers, Religion, Social networks, Gender, Impact from war and trauma; Friedman and Martin are able to develop a set of model pathways, which each individual could be seen to select and travel along. Some paths led to the traveler having a long life. Others were problematic. The models imply that the US approach to health and wellness should focus more on supporting the development and selection of beneficial pathways. Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. The pathways are most applicable to bright individuals with the resources and support necessary to make and leverage choices they make. Striving to enter and follow a beneficial pathway seems sensible but may be impossible for individuals trapped in a collapsing network, starved of resources. Promoting longevity
Gawande uses his personal experience, analytic skills and lots of stories of innovators to demonstrate better ways of coping with aging and death. He introduces the lack of focus on aging and death in traditional medicine. And goes on to show how technology has amplified this stress point. He illustrates the traditional possibility of the independent self, living fully while aging with the support of the extended family. Central planning responded to the technological and societal changes with poorly designed infrastructure and funding. But Gawande then contrasts the power of bottom up innovations created by experts responding to their own family situations and belief systems. Gawande then explores in depth the challenges that unfold currently as we age and become infirm. He notes that the world is following the US path. As such it will have to understand the dilemma of integrating medical treatment and hospice strategies. He notes that all parties involved need courage to cope. He proposes medicine must aim to assure well being. At that point all doctors will practice palliative care. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of agency, death, evolution, cooperation and adaptations to new technologies are discussed. Agent death
Sonia Shah reviews the millennia old (500,000 years) malarial arms race between Humanity, Anopheles mosquitoes and Plasmodium. 250 - 500 million people are infected each year with malaria and one million die. Malaria
Peter Medawar writes about key historic events in the evolution of medical science. Medical science events
Using John Holland's theory of adaptation in complex systems Baldwin and Clark propose an evolutionary theory of design. They show how this can limit the interdependencies that generate complexity within systems. They do this through a focus on modularity. Modular designed systems
Lou Gerstner describes the challenges he faced and the strategies he used to successfully restructure the computer company IBM. Compartmented systems
Grady Booch advocates an object oriented approach to computer software design. Object based systems
Bertrand Meyer develops arguments, principles and strategies for creating modular software. He concludes that abstract data types and inheritence make object orientation a superior methodology for software construction. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory suggests agents provide an alternative strategy to the use of objects. Software construction
Joseph Tainter introduces the problem of collapse and then develops a theory of complexity and reviews prior theories of collapse of societies. He then builds a general explanation of collapse and explains declining marginal returns in significant aspects of complex societies, and evaluates the theory by examining its applicability to historical examples. He then subsumes other explanatory themes into his marginal returns logic and applies it to our current situation. Following our summary of his arguments, RSS frames these from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory: CAS entities provide an effective emergence and collapse point. The history of events which results in each emergence point Tainter reviews introduces constraints on the aggregate entity. These constraints can help define the emergence and collapse point and remove inconsistencies from the analytic framework. Tainter's economic framework, conforming to the equilibrium proposed by Walras and Jevons, can benefit from alignment with complexity economics. Fall of societal entities
Tools and the businesses that produce them have evolved dramatically. W Brian Arthur shows how this occurred. Tools
Matt Ridley demonstrates the creative effect of man on the World. He highlights: A list of preconditions resulting in Additional niche capture & more free time Building a network to interconnect memes processes & tools which Enabling inter-generational transfers Innovations that help reduce environmental stress even as they leverage fossil fuels Memetic trading networks
E O. Wilson argues that campfire gatherings on the savanna supported the emergence of human creativity. This resulted in man building cultures and later exploring them, and their creator, through the humanities. Wilson identifies the transformative events, but he notes many of these are presently ignored by the humanities. So he calls for a change of approach. He: Explores creativity: how it emerged from the benefits of becoming an omnivore hunter-gatherer, enabled by language & its catalysis of invention, through stories told in the evening around the campfire. He notes the power of fine art, but suggests music provides the most revealing signature of aesthetic surprise. Looks at the current limitations of the humanities, as they have suffered through years of neglect. Reviews the evolutionary processes of heredity and culture: Ultimate causes viewed through art, & music The bedrock of: Ape senses and emotions, Creative arts, language, dance, song typically studied by humanities, & Exponential change in science and technology. How the breakthrough from our primate past occurred, powered by eating meat, supporting: a bigger brain, expanded memory & language. Accelerating changes now driven by genetic cultural coevolution. The impact on human nature. Considers our emotional attachment to the natural world: hunting, gardens; we are destroying. Reviews our love of metaphor, archetypes, exploration, irony, and considers the potential for a third enlightenment, supported by cooperative action of humanities and science Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames these from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory: The humanities are seen to be a functionalist framework for representing the cultural CAS while Wilson's desire to integrate the humanities and science gains support from viewing the endeavor as a network of layered CAS. Evening campfire rituals
Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore the effects of Moore's law on the economy. They argue it has generated exponential growth. This has been due to innovation. It has created a huge bounty of additional wealth. But the wealth is spread unevenly across society. They look at the short and long term implications of the innovation bounty and spread and the possible future of technology. Following our summary of their arguments RSS comments from the perspective of CAS theory. Brilliant technologies
Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles. He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative, Khan: Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging short videos focused on content, Converging on mastery, With the help of neuroscience, and filling in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach to the mainstream method. Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s, Inducing holes that are hidden by tests, Tests which ignore creativity. The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to be supplemented with homework. Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so they could mentor them while they attended school, an inversion that significantly improves the economics. Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service, Working with a real classroom, Trying stealth learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at Los Altos, Supporting life-long learning. Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with a one room school, a robust teaching team, and creativity enabled; so with some catalysis even the poorest can become educated and earn credentials for current jobs. Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education; Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure for creativity to emerge and to support risk taking. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network? Education versus guilds
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld's New York Times opinion based on The Triple Package is summarized. Their ideas are then framed by CAS theory and reviewed. What drives success
Peter Turchin describes how major pre-industrial empires developed due to effects of geographic boundaries constraining the empires and their neighbors' interactions. Turchin shows how the asymmetries of breeding rates and resource growth rates results in dynamic cycles within cycles. After the summary of Turchin's book complex adaptive system (CAS) theory is used to augment Turchins findings. Warrior groups
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael Pollan explores their relative merits. The application of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory highlights the value of evolutionary testing of the food chain. Natural systems
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can take hold. Various social insects have developed strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable available niches. Like humans they invest in specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped competitors. Insect superorganisms
Computational theory of the mind and evolutionary psychology provide Steven Pinker with a framework on which to develop his psychological arguments about the mind and its relationship to the brain. Humans captured a cognitive niche by natural selection 'building out' specialized aspects of their bodies and brains resulting in a system of mental organs we call the mind. He garnishes and defends the framework with findings from psychology regarding: The visual system - an example of natural selections solutions to the sensory challenges of inverse modeling of our environment; Intensions - where he highlights the challenges of hunter-gatherers - making sense of the objects they perceive and predicting what they imply and natural selections powerful solutions; Emotions - which Pinker argues are essential to human prioritizing and decision making; Relationships - natural selection's strategies for coping with the most dangerous competitors, other people. He helps us understand marriage, friendships and war. These conclusions allow him to understand the development and maintenance of higher callings: Art, Music, Literature, Humor, Religion, & Philosophy; and develop a position on the meaning of life. Complex adaptive system (CAS) modeling allows RSS to frame Pinker's arguments within humanity's current situation, induced by powerful evolved amplifiers: Globalization, Cliodynamics, The green revolution and resource bottlenecks; melding his powerful predictions of the drivers of human behavior with system wide constraints. The implications are discussed. Computationally adapted mind
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span: conception, infantile puberty, girlhood, juvenile pause, adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are described. Brizendine notes the significant difference in how emotions are processed by women compared to men. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and behavioral CAS. Evolved female brain
The complexity of behavior is explored through Sapolsky developing scenarios of our best and worst behaviors across time spans, and scientific subjects including: anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology. The rich network of adaptive flows he outlines provides insights and highlight challenges for scientific research on behavior. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory builds on Sapolsky's details highlighting the strategies that evolution has captured to successfully enter niches we now occupy. CAS behavior
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time: A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel Time's rhythms are due to the gravitational field Our quantized physics shows neither space nor time, just processes transforming physical variables. Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things Then he explains how in a physical world without time its perception can emerge: Our familiar time emerges Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred, quantum indeterminate The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty Directionality of time is real but perspectival. The entropy of the world in relation to us increases with our thermal time. The growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in traces and memories Each human is a unified being because: we reflect the world, we formed an image of a unified entity by interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective of memory The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions Emergence of time
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for centuries. Now it is finally being characterized scientifically. That required a transformation of approach. Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access. In the book he outlines the limitations of previous psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective assessments opened the window to contrast totally unconscious brain activity with those including consciousness. He describes the research methods. He explains the contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to specific neural activity. He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal workspace' to position all the experimental details into a whole. He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and treatment of real world mental illnesses. The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent consciousness research are outlined. Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and operation introduce constraints which are discussed. Conscious access
Reading and writing present a conundrum. The reader's brain contains neural networks tuned to reading. With imaging a written word can be followed as it progresses from the retina through a functional chain that asks: Are these letters? What do they look like? Are they a word? What does it sound like? How is it pronounced? What does it mean? Dehaene explains the importance of education in tuning the brain's networks for reading as well as good strategies for teaching reading and countering dyslexia. But he notes the reading networks developed far too recently to have directly evolved. And Dehaene asks why humans are unique in developing reading and culture. He explains the cultural engineering that shaped writing to human vision and the exaptations and neuronal structures that enable and constrain reading and culture. Dehaene's arguments show how cellular, whole animal and cultural complex adaptive system (CAS) are related. We review his explanations in CAS terms and use his insights to link cultural CAS that emerged based on reading and writing with other levels of CAS from which they emerge. Evolved reading
Read Montague explores how brains make decisions. In particular he explains how: Evolution can create indirect abstract models, such as the dopamine system, that allow Life changing real-time decisions to be made, and how Schematic structures provide encodings of computable control structures which operate through and on incomputable, schematically encoded, physically active structures and operationally associated production functions. Receptor indirection
Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson describe a scientific investigation of meditation's impact on the brain. They introduce the book by describing their experiences with meditation, science and the research establishment, their friendship, how meditation is now used in two distinct ways: deep - leading to altered traits & wide - that can reach the multitudes; which the book reviews as it critiques the claims and research used to back them up. Goleman and Davidson describe meeting as Harvard psychology graduate students, interested in consciousness, and how minds work. They rebel against the behavioral orthodoxy, visit Asia and discover the Eastern tradition of exploring and altering the mind. Goleman had travelled to Sri Lanka to understand an Asian model of the mind, which he presented to the undergraduates at Harvard. Goleman and Davidson developed it into a shared vision of consciousness. It took over twenty years for scientific theory and experimental data to catch up and align with this model. Much of the prior experimental data had to be abandoned. They introduce meditation's impact on the amygdala responding to pain and stress. They look at the changes in: Stress Compassion Attention Self-awareness; and the potential for use of mediation in psychiatry. And they warn of the occurrence of dark nights. They detail how scientists were able to study the brains of Tibetan meditation masters, starting with Mingyur Rinpoche, and detect meditation altering traits. Finally they discuss the potential benefits of meditation and strategies to distribute it broadly to a busy America. Meditating neurons
Tara Brach was worried from a young age that there was something terribly wrong with her: she like many others felt unworthy. She responded by developing Radical Acceptance. Brach then explains the steps in applying it: pause, greet what happens next with unconditional friendliness; allowing us to: Initially attend to the sensations of our body, Accept the wanting self and discover its source of boundless love. Welcome fear with a widening attention, accept the pain of death and become free. Use adversity as a gateway to limitless compassion for ourselves and others. Focus on our basic goodness to counter Western culture turning anger, at being betrayed, towards ourselves. Extend observing this goodness in everyone. This enables the use of loving-kindness. Leverage friendships to understand more about our shared nature and strengthen Radical Acceptance. Realize our Buddha nature. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory describes the emergence of the dualistic self and the tree of life linked by the genetic code and machinery. It provides an analog of the Buddhist presence. Compassionate CAS
The influence of childhood on behavior is significant. Enneagrams define personality types: Reformer, Helper, Achiever, Individualist, Investigator, Loyalist, Enthusiast, Challenger and Peacemaker; based on the impact of childhood driven wounds. The Enneagram becomes a tool to enable interested people to transform from the emotionally wounded base, hidden within the armor of the type, to the liberated underlying essence. Childhood leaves each of us with some environmentally specific Basic Fear. In response each of us adopts an induced Basic Desire of the type. But as we develop the inner observer, it will support presence and undermine the identification that supports the armor of the type. The Enneagram reveals three sets of relations about our type armor: Triadic self revealing: Instinctive, feeling, thinking; childhood needs that became significant wounds Social style groupings: Assertive, compliant, withdrawn; strategies for managing inner conflict Coping styles: Positive outlook, competency, reactive; strategies for defending childhood wounds Riso and Hudson augment the Enneagram with instinctual distortions reflected in the interests of the variants. The Enneagram also offers tools for understanding a person's level of development: unhealthy, average, healthy, liberation; including their current center of gravity, steriotypical social role, wake-up call, leaden rule, red flag, and direction of integration and disintegration. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the models presented by the Enneagram with evolved behaviors and structures in the mind: feelings, emotions, social behaviors, ideas; driven by genetic and cultural evolution and the constraints of family and social life. Emergent evolved amplifers can be constrained by Riso and Hudson's awareness strategies. Enneagram strategies
Jeff Hawkins develops a theory to explain the systemic logic of the repeating structure of the cortical columns of the neocortex. He shows each column supports modeling of objects mapped via internal reference frames. Hawkins divides the brain logically into the old brain and the neocortex, highlighting the latter's contribution to human intelligence: vision, language, music, math, science, engineering, high-level thinking; the neocortex is doing most of the cognitive interpretation. Hawkins uses his theory to develop minimal criteria for intelligence and to critique current developments in Machine Intelligence. He sees the need for a general purpose AI solution, inherently conscious being based on the brain's architecture, rather than the current highly specific technologies that demonstrate no intelligence. He outlines the broad way forward, and concludes machine intelligence will not become an existential risk for humanity. But Hawkins is less sanguine about human intelligence, noting the shortsightedness of emotions, the acceptance and impact of false beliefs and the existential risks enabled by intelligence. He explores for potential solutions to the dilemma: the potential of integrating brains and machines, preserving what we have discovered, prophylactic actions to limit the damage. Finally Hawkins issues a call to arms. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory provides an organizing framework within which organisms and knowledge emerge. CAS theory equates cortical columns to CAS action agents. Cortical columns
Antonio Damasio argues that ancient & fundamental homeostatic processes, built into behaviors and updated by evolution have resulted in the emergence of nervous systems and feelings. These feelings, representing the state of the viscera, and represented with general systems supporting enteric operation, are later ubiquitously integrated into the 'images' built by the minds of higher animals including humans. Damasio highlights the separate development of the body frame in the building of minds. Damasio explains that this integration of feelings by minds supports the development of subjectivity and consciousness. His chain of emergence suggests the 'order of things.' He stresses the end-to-end integration of the organism which undermines dualism. And he reviews Chalmers hard problem of consciousness. Damasio reviews the emergence of cultures and sees feelings, integrated with reason, as the judges of the cultural creative process, linking culture to homeostasis. He sees cultures as supporting the development of tools to improve our lives. But the results of the creative process have added stresses to our lives. Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames his arguments from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Each of the [super]organisms discussed is a CAS reflecting the theory of such systems: Damasio's proposals about homeostasis routed signalling, aligns well with CAS theory. Damasio's ideas on cultural stresses are elaborated by CAS examples. Emergence of feelings
Robert Coram highlights the noble life of John Boyd. John spent a lot of time alone during his childhood. He: excelled at swimming and was a lifeguard, enlisted in the Army Air Corp while at school which rejected him for pilot training, was part of the Japan occupation force where he swam; so the US paid for him to attend University of Iowa, where he: joined the Air Force Officers' training corps, was accepted to be an Air Force pilot, and got engaged to Mary Bruce. Boyd trained at Nellis AFB to become a combat ready pilot in the Korean War. While the US Air Force focused on Strategic bombing, Boyd loved dogfights. His exceptional tactical ability was rewarded with becoming an instructor. Boyd created new ways to think about dogfighting and beat all-comers by using them in the F-100. He was noticed and enabled by Spradling. As he trained, and defeated the top pilots from around the US and allied base network, his reputation spread. But he needed to get nearer to the hot spring in Georgia, and when his move to Tyndall AFB was blocked he used the AFIT to train in engineering at Georgia tech. While preparing to move he documented his FWS training and mentored Ronald Catton. While there he first realized the link between energy and maneuverability. At Eglin, in partnership with Tom Christie, he developed tools to model the link. They developed comparisons of US and Soviet aircraft which showed the US aircraft performing poorly. Eventually General Sweeney was briefed on the theory and issues with the F-105, F-4, and F-111. Sent to the Pentagon to help save the F-X budget, Boyd joined forces with Pierre Sprey to pressure procurement into designing and building tactically exceptional aircraft: a CAS tank killer and a lightweight maneuverable fighter. The navy aligned with Senators of states with navy bases, prepared to sink the F-X and force the F-14 on the Air Force. Boyd saved the plane from the Navy and the budget from Congress, ensuring the Air Force executive and its career focused hierarchy had the freedom to compromise on a budget expanding over-stuffed F-X (F-15). Boyd requested to retire, in disgust. Amid mounting hostility from the organizational hierarchy Boyd and Sprey secretly developed specifications for building prototype lightweight fighters with General Dynamics: YF-16; and Northrop: YF-17; and enabled by Everest Riccioni. David Packard announced a budget of $200 million for the services to spend on prototypes. Pierre Sprey's friend Lyle Cameron picked a short takeoff and landing transport aircraft and Boyd's lightweight fighter to prototype. Boyd was transferred to Thailand as Vice Commander of Task Force Alpha, inspector general and equal opportunity training officer; roles in which he excelled. And he started working on his analysis of creativity: Destruction and Creation. But on completion of the tour Boyd was apparently abandoned and sent to run a dead end office at the Pentagon. The power hierarchy moved to protect the F-15, but: Boyd, Christie, Schlesinger, and the Air Force chief of staff; kept the lightweight fighter budgeted and aligned with Boyd's requirements in a covert campaign. The Air Force threw a phalanx of developers at the F-16, distorting Boyd's concept. He accepted he had lost the fight and retired from the Air Force. Shifting to scholarship Boyd reflects on how rigidity must be destroyed to enable creative new assemblies. He uses the idea to explain the operational success of the YF16 and F-86 fighters, and then highlights how the pilot can take advantage of their infrastructure advantage with rapid decision making he explains with the O-O-D-A Loop. Boyd encouraged Chuck Spinney to expose the systemic cost overruns of the military procurement process. The military hierarchy moved to undermine the Spinney Report and understand the nature of the reformers. Boyd acted as a progressive mentor to Michael Wyly, who taught the Marine Corps about maneuver warfare, and Jim Burton. Finally, after the military hierarchy appears to have beaten him, Boyd's ideas are tested during the First Gulf War. Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Boyd was Darwinesque, placing the art of air-to-air combat within a CAS framework. Air warrior
Vincent creates
Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John, writes a hilarious memoir, full of anecdotal and sometimes morbid humor and gossip, which describes his immediate family, upbringing, development as a singer songwriter, stardom and its support for his problems, collapse and eventual recovery. Elton stresses the serendipitous nature of his emergence as a musician. He describes the contributions of his parents, Stanley & Sheila, mother's sister, and her mother Ivy; who formed his early childhood proximate environment which prepared him for a job in entertainment: he developed his performance in the club circuits, setup a commercial partnership with Bernie Taupin to write songs; entering a network based around Dick James Music. And he almost got married. DJM focused Elton and Bernie's initial song writing while they studied the songs they admired and Elton did session work, tightening his performance skills and paying for the food. A first album supported touring and the formation of a band. A second one sent them to the US where Elton became an overnight sensation. And during this period of time Elton's testosterone level ramped. Life changed dramatically. Stardom provided many rewards but there were still life's problems to deal with. Elton was befriended by his idol, John Lennon; he achieved new heights of success but, sensitive to any hint of failure and fraud, suicidally disassociated. His career crested, he struggled with loneliness and drugs, and foresaw a fearful vision of his future, as fame caged him idly in hotels between concerts. His hair abandoned him. But he was saved by the challenge of transforming the collapsed Watford football club. He retired from touring which allowed him the time to reconstruct his life. Empowered by success, supported by the removal of constraints, Elton dominates - limiting feedback, doing whatever he hopes will bring him happiness: trying new options, expanding the range and increasing the quantity of mind altering substances; eventually hitting John Reid and marrying Renata. He allows his drug use to enter the recording studio. Problems stress him. He is frightened by a cancer scare, AIDS, inspired by Ryan White, angered by the Sun, and saddened at breaking Renata's heart. But he was there for Ryan White's final days. And his lover Hugh Williams confronted Elton about his string of addictions. Elton finally agreed he had a problem. He went to rehab, stopped hating himself, gave up his current addictions, accepted the influence of a higher force, and began admiring the everyday world and other people. It seemed the higher force was supporting Elton's progress: he wrote the music for the Lion King, met David Furnish who accepted Elton warts and all; they both enjoyed a friendship with Gianni Versace; until Gianni was murdered. Princess Diana died soon after, and Elton performed at the funeral. He toured with Billy Joel and aimed to do the same with Tina Turner. While his new records sold well he found himself in debt and terminated the management relationship with John Reid Enterprises. Elton and Bernie improved their situations: Elton started writing film scores, he helped turn the film Billy Elliot into a musical, Bernie lobbied Elton to improve the way they were making records, Elton and David entered into a civil partnership, and Elton made a record with his seminal influence: Leon Russell. Elton and David became parents of two boys: Zachary and Elijah; using their sperm a surrogate mother and network in California. They quietly get married when the UK allows. Elton's mum remains difficult and cruel to him, but he is sad when she dies, and many at the funeral recall her fun side with him. Being parents increases the long-term stresses on their lives, forcing them to adjust, so they can be there for their boys. But Elton needs to go out with a bang! And everyone helps. Following our summary of his main points, RSS frames the details of the creative process from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. My song
Bob Iger writes about his leadership strategies based on his life experiences, which describes his immediate family, upbringing, development as a weatherman, production studio supervisor, divisional: ABC Television, Disney Media - where he had the challenge of integrating a centralized and a distributed corporate culture; and enterprise leader at ABC, Capital Cities and Disney: COO, and CEO. He describes the struggle Disney CEO Eisner had with giving Iger the COO role, explaining how he learned to approach this challenge. When the board concluded Disney was floundering and forced out Eisner, Iger had to convince them he was the solution to their dilemma. Iger was chosen as the next CEO by the board but also had to convince Roy Disney, and signal the world that he could revitalize the company and partner with Steve Jobs. Jobs was a catalyst in Iger's acquisition of Marvel, and Lucas Film, and he became a friend and advisor who died too young. Iger had to respond to the disruption of Disney's mainline businesses. He transformed Disney's loose aggregate of businesses into a platform based on BAMTech's streaming media platform which supported the delivery of emotionally charged content direct to the consumer. Rupert Murdoch agreed with Iger's response to the disruptive environment and decided to sell Fox to Disney, but there were complications. Following our summary of his main points, RSS places Iger's creations within the phalanx of global forces buffeting Disney using the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Bob's global technology marvel
Richard Feynman outlines a series of amusing vignettes, as he reviews his life story. Richard's personality encouraged him to patiently seek out fun: performing Shewhart cycles with electricity, in his childhood laboratory, and aligning theory, and practice through building and fixing radios. Leonardo's life inspired him to try innovation, which he concluded was hard. He played with the emotion in communications, a skill which he used later at Caltech. And he made a game of avoiding following orders at MIT. Working during the holidays revealed the benefit of joining theory and practice. Feynman enrolled as a graduate student at Princeton, where the successful approach to science was just like his. His approach was based on patience and fun: he used his home lab and other tools for qualitative exploration. Overtime he added experimental techniques. He would test the assertions in articles with amusing investigations; with his mind aligned by feelings of joy. Everyone at Princeton heard he would want to be hypnotized. He was driven to compare the challenges of complex subjects being taught at Princeton to his current pick. In his summer recess he explored biology. Gathering problems in challenging areas of science, and then picking one to solve, supported his creativity. And his practical orientation and situation when growing up in Far Rockaway, supported his desire for choices and adolescent dislike for purely intellectual and cultural pursuits. Being mostly self-taught, he developed different approaches to problems than the standard strategies provided by mass education. Richard saw his skill set as very different to that exhibited by his father. But are they very different? While Richard was at Princeton, America became concerned about the implications of the European war. After a friend enlisted he decided to dedicate his summer holiday to helping the war effort. Feynman got involved in the Manhattan Project, and went to Los Alamos where he experienced constraints, applied by: the military, the physics of the project, him on Niels Bohr; but was freed from them by Von Neumann. The records & reports of the project were kept in filing cabinets. Richard explored the weaknesses of the locks and safes deployed to secure these secrets. Just after the war he was called up by the draft board for a medical but was rejected for being mentally unfit. After the war, Richard was asked to become a professor at Cornell. He initially struggled in this role: Too young to match expectations, stressed by the demands of his new job and his recent experiences; until he adopted an approach that focused on fun. He enjoyed knowing about numbers: using, learning about them and the tools to use them, and competing with others; to calculate, interpolate and approximate a value the fastest. Traveling to Buffalo in a light plane once a week to give a physics lecture before flying back the next morning wasn't much fun for Richard. So he used the stipend to visit a bar after each lecture to meet beautiful women. Richard liked bars and nightclubs, spending a summer in Albuquerque frequenting one, and later ones in Las Vegas, as he explored how to get the girls he drank with to sleep with him. Richard reflects on various times when he made government officials obey their parts of contracts: patent fees, limits on red tape; Richard became frustrated with his life at Cornell, seeing more things that interested him on the sunny west coast at Caltech. Both institutions, and Chicago, offered him incentives to help his decision making, but Richard began to find reevaluating the alternatives a waste of time and he saw risks in a really high salary, deciding he would move to Caltech and stay there. Richard is invited to attend a scientific symposium in Japan. Each of the US attendees is asked to learn a little Japanese. Richard takes lessons, persists, can converse effectively, but stops when he finds the cultural parts of the language conflict with his individualism. Richard was unhappy with his achievements in physics. He felt: slower than his peers, not keeping up or understanding the latest details, fearful that he could not cope; as the community worked to understand the laws of beta decay. But Martin Block pushed him to question the troubling parity premise. Encouraged by Oppenheimer the community focused on parity and failures were discovered in a cascade of reports. Richard attended a meeting where Lee & Yang discussed a failure and a theory to explain it. Richard felt terrified and could not understand what they said. His sister pushed him to change his attitude: act like a student having fun, read every line and equation of their paper; he would understand it. And he did, as well as developing additional insights about what was happening and what still seemed conflicted. He reported his ideas back to the community. After Richard returned from Brazil he reviewed the confusion of facts with Caltech's experimental physicists who made him aware of Gell-mann abandoning another former premise of Beta decay. Feynman realized his ideas were consistent: fully and simply describing the details of beta decay. He had identified the workings of a fundamental law. Years later he was awarded the Nobel prize for physics. He was conflicted about the prize and attending the ceremony, but eventually enjoyed the trip, where he discussed cultural achievement with the Japanese ambassador. Richard was interested in the operation of the brain, modeling it on a digital computer. He explored hallucinations and the reality of experiences. Richard lobbies for integrity in science. In aspects of his life that weren't focused directly on science, Richard was quirky. He would tease those who asked for his help: pushing bargains to their logical conclusion; insisting on everyone keeping to their part of the agreement. And he paid no attention to the logistical details of planning. He loved percussion, playing: drums, bongos, baskets, tables, Frigideira; and became quite a success. He eventually discovered art could be fun, and tried to express his joy at the underlying mathematical beauty of the physical world. He had a great art teacher. But he discovered although he could eventually draw well he did not understand art. Many of the artists he met were fakers, and even the powerful, who were interested in integrating art and science, did not understand either subject. He found the situation was similar in other complex adaptive systems: philosophy, religion and economics; which he dabbled in for a while but found the strategies of other people practicing the study of such subjects made him angry and disturbed, so he avoided participating in them. It seemed ironic that he was eventually asked to help in bringing culture to the physicists! He discusses issues in teaching creative physics in Brazil. He gets involved in the California public school text book selection process which he concluded was totally broken, but also reveals how his father provided him with a vision of how our world works, inspiring his interest in experimentation and physical theory. Following our summary of his main points, RSS reviews how his personality, family and cultural history supported his creative development from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Richard draws
Desmond & Moore paint a picture of Charles Darwin's life, expanded from his own highlights: His naughty childhood, Wasted schooldays, Apprenticeship with Grant, His extramural activities at Cambridge, walks with Henslow, life with FitzRoy on the Beagle, His growing love for science, London: geology, journal and Lyell. Moving from Gower Street to Down and writing Origin and other books. He reviewed his position on religion: the long dispute with Emma, his slow collapse of belief - damnation for unbelievers like his father and brother, inward conviction being evolved and unreliable, regretting he had ignored his father's advice; while describing Emma's side of the argument. He felt happy with his decision to dedicate his life to science. He closed by asserting after Self & Cross-fertilization his strength will be exhausted. Following our summary of their main points, RSS frames the details from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Darwin placed evolution within a CAS framework, and built a network of supporters whose complementary skills helped drive the innovation. Darwin emerges
Richard Dawkin's explores how nature has created implementations of designs, without any need for planning or design, through the accumulation of small advantageous changes. Accumulating small changes
Russ Abbott explores the impact on science of epiphenomena and the emergence of agents. Autonomous emergence
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can induce emergent phenomena which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are sustained. The mechanism enables the development of Darwinian competition. Constraint based phenomena

Primary Navigation

In this page we:

Introduce some current problems of complexity for humanity
Explain how to use the site.

There are two main starting points:

The example systems frame and
The presentation frame.
And then there is how we use the site.

The site uses lots of click through. That's so that you can see the underlying principles that are contributing to the system being discussed. We hope that as you internalize and reflect on the principles the system should appear in a new light. At this site clicking is good!

Opportunities

This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is used by 'life.' It can illuminate and clarify complex situations and be applied flexibly. It can be used to evaluate and rank models that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems that are based on the interaction of emergent agents. It highlights the constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A proposal that does not conform is wrong.

John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.

Theory

We are products of complexity, but our evolution has focused our understanding on the situation of hunter gatherers on the African savanna. As humanity has become more powerful we can significantly impact the systems we depend on. But we struggle to comprehend them. So this web frame explores significant real world complex adaptive systems (CAS):

Assumptions of randomness & equilibrium allowed the wealthy & powerful to expand the size and leverage of stock markets, by placing at risk the insurance and retirement savings of the working class. The assumptions are wrong but remain entrenched.
The US nation was built from two divergent political views of: Jefferson and Hamilton. It also reflects the development of competing ancient ideas of Epicurus and Cyril. But the collapse of Bretton Woods forced Wall Street into a position of power, while the middle and working class were abandoned by the elites. Housing financed with cash from oil and derivative transactions helped hide the shift.
Most US health care is still operating the way cars built in the 1940s did. Geisinger is an example of better solution. But transforming the whole network is a challenge. And public health investment has proved far more beneficial.
Helping our children learn to be effective adults is part of our humanity, but we have created a robust but deeply flawed education system. Better alternatives have emerged.
Spoken language, reading and writing emerged allowing our good ideas to become a second genetic material.
The emergence of the global economy in the 1600s and its subsequent development;

It explains how the examples relate to each other, why we all have trouble effectively comprehending these systems and explains how our inexperience with CAS can lead to catastrophe. It outlines the items we see as key to the system and why.

Examples

This page presents a search result list covering each linked region of rob's strategy studio.

Search

Rob's Strategy Studio aims to celebrate and illuminate complex adaptive systems (CAS) just as an art studio does art.

By way of introduction it notes the complex interactions that led to the partnership that discovered the DNA double helix and genetic code.

The page introduces the RSS vision 'I act, therefore I think' approach and the RSS mission.

It describes how many key aspects of the world are CAS including businesses.

Finally the page explains each of the framed pictures displayed at the studio including the other aspects explored in this vision frame.

Vision

This page introduces the programs that the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF) develops and uses to deploy Rob's Strategy Studio (RSS).
The programs are structured to obey complex adaptive system (CAS) principles. That allows AWF to experiment and examine the effects.
A production program generates the web pages.
A testing system tests the production program. It uses a framework to support the test programs. This is AWF's agent programming framework as described in the agent-based programming presentation.
An example of the other AWF agent-based programs that are also described in the frame is the virtual robot.
Finally a strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats assessment is presented.

Perl

This page introduces a series of asymmetries which encourage different strategic approaches.
The differences found in business, sexual selection, gamete structure, as well as in chess encourage escalations in the interactions.
And yet the systems including these asymmetries can be quite stable.

Asymmetries

This web frame includes a set of presentations about complex adaptive systems (CAS)

Presentations

Vincent creates

Summary

Alfred Nemeczek reveals the chaotic, stressful is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis.

The short term response to the stressor

activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is

long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:

Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.

Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.

Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)

During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.

life of Vincent van Gogh in Arles.

Nemeczek shows that Vincent was driven to create, and successfully invented new methods of representing feeling are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits. These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula. Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience. Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism. They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles. Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience. Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints. Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture:

As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time

in paintings, and especially portraits. Vincent worked hard to allow artists like him-self to innovate is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. Keynes noted it provided the unquantifiable beneficial possibility that limits fear of uncertainty. Innovation operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy.
. But Vincent failed in this goal, collapsing into psychosis.

Nemeczek also provides a brief history of Vincent's life.

Following our summary of his main points, RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio frames the details from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS)

theory.

Van Gogh in Arles

In Alfred Nemeczek's biographic study 'Van Gogh in Arles', Vincent van Gogh's hugely creative period in Arles is discussed.

Nemeczek writes that Vincent came to Arles, an eccentric failure, on his fifth attempt to find out what he should be doing with his life, after: art dealer, lay preacher, book seller, pastor; all failures & now artist, to which he could bring his: patient and methodical approach, experiences as an art dealer, his acquaintance with old masters works from visits to galleries, his intense interest in clever painters, his discovery of Shakespeare, and his collection of reproductions of artists of the Barbizon and Hague.

Vincent's study of art had raised three aspects on to a pedestal: Delacroix's use of color, the intonation of Jean-Francois Millet, and stylized Japanese woodcuts; which he was convinced provided a way forward to a new Renaissance.

Even as a child, Vincent had suffered from 'the blues also termed manic-depression is an episodic developmental disorder beginning in late adolescence, which can stimulate great creativity during the manic phase and suicide in the depressive phase. Vincent van Gough suffered from depression for much of his adult life, and killed himself at thirty seven. He produced three hundred of his greatest art works, using color to convey mood, while struggling with psychotic depression and mania in the last two years of his life. Only the first manic phase requires a significant positive or negative stressful situation. Type I bipolar includes more manic situations which may include psychosis. Type II does not include psychosis. Some people suffer 'mixed state' where mania and depression occur at the same time. Sleep deprivation activates the amygdala and can induce mania in some people with bipolar disorder. It affects 3 million Americans. The amygdala is more active in people with bipolar disorder. Franz Kallman found identical twins are likely (70% chance) to share the disorder. Swedish researchers studying thousands of families in 2009 showed a strong hereditary link between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which was corroborated in 2012. Genetic analysis of 2.3 million different regions of DNA of 9,747 people with bipolar disorder and 14,278 comparable people without, found five regions that appear connected with bipolar disorder. Gene ADCY2, was identified, supports production of an enzyme facilitating neural signalling, and correlates with observed impairment of communication in certain brain regions in bipolar disorder. GWAS implicate ANK3 and CACNA1C SNPs in bipolar disorder. And de Novo mutations increase the risk. Lithium limits the extremes of the mood swings in some patients but has side effects. Anti-psychotic medications are prescribed. .' He described his symptoms "I am often terribly melancholy, irritable, hungering and thirsting, as it were, for sympathy; and when I do not get it, I try to act indifferently, speak sharply, and often even pour oil on the fire. I do not like to be in company, and often find it painful and difficult to mingle with people, to speak with them."

Van Gogh wrote to his sister, Wil, about how he responded to the stress is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis.

The short term response to the stressor

activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is

long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:

Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.

Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.

Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)

During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.

of his life: "The more ugly, old, vicious, ill, poor I get, the more I want to take my revenge by producing a brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent." Nemeczek notes, Vincent never allowed him-self to be photographed as an adult.

He was helped by his younger brother, Theo, who after Vincent fell out with the rest of his family, and his father died, was his main financial support, friend and confidant.

He sent Theo any faint news of success, which Nemeczek highlights, was key to Vincent being able to feel that "his own thoughts and deeds were the result of serious intellectual reflection and reasoning," in an analysis by Roland Dorn. Dorn questions the quality of Vincent's reflections as being conceptually imprecise, with a good deal of undisciplined thought. Dorn concludes that "avoiding any very rigorous intellectual hold on the seemingly obvious had some dubious advantages: it allowed the artist to generalize his own personal experiences and to hide his own personal needs behind perfectly good reasons without having to face up to the now irrational, now sentimental, now idealistically utopian core of his thinking."

Bold Ideas

Nemeczek explains that Vincent travelled to Arles with a goal: to help the plight of young Impressionist painters: Armand Guillaumin, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro (the last two both bankrupt is a legal status for an entity that cannot repay its creditor's loans. It holds creditor lawsuits in abeyance while the restructuring process proceeds to allow the entity to continue operations. It also has legal tools for forcing holdout creditors to accept repayments that are lower than the bond sale initially promised.
) and himself; by building a commune where they could support one another, and leveraging Theo, and hence his employer's resources, to push the commune's works to the buyers of art around the globe. He hoped for the support of established older artists: Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Pissarro; who had benefited from a clever ruse by a dealer, where their paintings were shipped to the US, building some awareness of their names.

Vincent reported to Theo, that his trip to Paris, made him "so seriously sick at heart and in body" that he had to go "off somewhere down south, to get away from the sight of so many painters that disgust me as men." Here he meant the Salon system, which excluded his talented friends, controlled the training, management and organization of the art world and left artists struggling and stressed is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis.

The short term response to the stressor

activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is

long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:

Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.

Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.

Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)

During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.

at best, destitute more generally. Even when artists sold a creation, it realized little for them, the leverage was achieved as it passed through the dealer network building profits.

Modern Paintings

Nemeczek writes that there is snow in Arles when Vincent first arrives. Vincent recalls the Japanese representation of snow topped mountains which inspires his initial landscapes in the techniques he learned in Paris. Then as spring begins Vincent takes the opportunity to paint fruit trees using both Impressionist and Pointillist techniques. His ability to shift, challenges people's ideas about technique. Vincent draws a variety of scenes, drawing at great speed, while demonstrating precision, control and drive of one of the great graphic artists. He is driven by fear that he will be overcome by depression is a debilitating episodic state of extreme sadness, typically beginning in late teens or early twenties. This is accompanied by a lack of energy and emotion, which is facilitated by genetic predisposition - for example genes coding for relatively low serotonin levels, estrogen sensitive CREB-1 gene which increases women's incidence of depression at puberty; and an accumulation of traumatic events. There is a significant risk of suicide: depression is involved in 50% of the 43,000 suicides in the US, and 15% of people with depression commit suicide. Depression is the primary cause of disability with about 20 million Americans impacted by depression at any time. There is evidence of shifts in the sleep/wake cycle in affected individuals (Dec 2015). The affected person will experience a pathological sense of loss of control, prolonged sadness with feelings of hopelessness, helplessness & worthlessness, irritability, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and inability to experience pleasure. Michael Pollan concludes depression is fear of the past. It affects 12% of men and 20% of women. It appears to be associated with androgen deprivation therapy treatment for prostate cancer (Apr 2016). Chronic stress depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine, biasing humans towards depression. Depression easily leads to following unhealthy pathways: drinking, overeating; which increase the risk of heart disease. It has been associated with an aging related B12 deficiency (Sep 2016). During depression, stress mediates inhibition of dopamine signalling. Both depression and stress activate the adrenal glands' release of cortisol, which will, over the long term, impact the PFC. There is an association between depression and additional brain regions: Enlarged & more active amygdala, Hippocampal dendrite and spine number reductions & in longer bouts hippocampal volume reductions and memory problems, Dorsal raphe nucleus linked to loneliness, Defective functioning of the hypothalamus undermining appetite and sex drive, Abnormalities of the ACC. Mayberg notes ACC area 25: serotonin transporters are particularly active in depressed people and lower the serotonin in area 25 impacting the emotion circuit it hubs, inducing bodily sensations that patients can't place or consciously do anything about; and right anterior insula: which normally generates emotions from internal feelings instead feel dead inside; are critical in depression. Childhood adversity can increase depression risk by linking recollections of uncontrollable situations to overgeneralizations that life will always be terrible and uncontrollable. Sufferers of mild autism often develop depression. Treatments include: CBT which works well for cases with below average activity of the right anterior insula (mild and moderate depression), UMHS depression management, deep-brain stimulation of the anterior insula to slow firing of area 25. Drug treatments are required for cases with above average activity of the right anterior insula. As of 2010 drug treatments: SSRIs (Prozac), MAO, monoamine reuptake inhibitors; take weeks to facilitate a response & many patients do not respond to the first drug applied, often prolonging the agony. By 2018, Kandel notes, Ketamine is being tested as a short term treatment, as it acts much faster, reversing the effect of cortisol in stimulating glutamate signalling, and because it reverses the atrophy induced by chronic stress. Genomic predictions of which treatment will be effective have not been possible because: Not all clinical depressions are the same, a standard definition of drug response is difficult; and stop producing. For the remainder of his life this fear is not realized. Vincent brilliantly mixes hatching from the pen with the unmarked paper.

Vincent rated highly the Harvest landscape, which he compared to all the other works he developed at the same period. But it is still an exercise in technique. The Millet inspired Sower with Setting Sun, developed as a study for a larger picture, introduces a new strategy, associated with his observations of Japanese art: Vincent shifts the colors, making the sky yellow, earth violet and yellow, the sun painted chrome yellow no 1 with just a little white; making the sun a radiant object for the first time.

Nemeczek notes that Vincent has a method, he aims to use: drawing, study, picture; which as usual he explains in his letters. Nemeczek highlights the creative need for the correspondence, since the ideas behind Vincent's new form of art were developed in isolation, but the ideas must be introduced to the viewers.

Real Life

Vincent finds it impossible to understand the Provencale dialect spoken by the people of Arles, and so is isolated and lonely, but for his correspondence with Theo, Wil and Bernard. He seems more negative and writes that the artist and whore are both exiled from society. He gives up on the idea of succeeding in his quest. He still paints, but in an attempt to remove his suffering. He is disappointed with God's design of the world, equating it to one of his failed practice sessions.

Theo reflects in a note to Wil, that Vincent is two different people: one hugely talented, fine and tender; the other egotistic and hard-hearted.

Vincent worries about:

Theo's health, and his job
Vincent's health. He has: eye strain, toothache, lack of appetite, stomach pain;
Wil
Loneliness trapped not understanding. Bernard and Paul Gauguin would exchange pictures with Vincent. Theo takes advantage of Gauguin's debt to incent him to spend time in Arles working with Vincent.
Gauguin's visit. When Vincent hears of Gauguin's planned visit he feels compelled to accelerate the production of his art.

Truer colors

Nemeczek explains that, over time living in Arles, Vincent found a number of people who would sit for portraits. He identifies three approaches to painting portraits: start from the soul is an ancient concept that was eternal according to Plato. In his cave analogy he promotes the ideal and the sensory which highlights the dualism of soul and body. The soul was eternal - being simple, pure and generated by the creator. Bodies were associated with souls by gods at birth. Epicurus argued that souls were constructed from atoms, were complex and died. CAS theory likens:

'souls' to schematic strings, and 'bodies' to organisms, and
'souls' to the mind's well known entities: amygdala, insula etc, and the 'bodies' to the percepts & representations that the well known entities become conscious hubs for; which agrees in part with both positions.

, start from the clothes, or focus on the infinitely beautiful nature; and he selects to paint the most beautiful representation. In so doing Vincent creates a new color symbolism:

With a young girl's portrait, where he transforms the seat to envelope her and represents her arm as a long thin signature,
He abandons the Impressionist and Pointillist techniques for his own ideas - where colors '
feel
are subjective models: sad, glad, mad, scared, surprised, and compassionate; of the organism and its proximate environment, including ratings of situations signalled by broadly distributed chemicals and neural circuits. These feelings become highly salient inputs, evolutionarily associated, to higher level emotions encoded in neural circuits: amygdala, and insula. Deacon shows James' conception of feeling can build sentience. Damasio, similarly, asserts feelings reveal to the conscious mind the subjective status of life: good, bad, in between; within a higher organism. They especially indicate the affective situation within the old interior world of the viscera located in the abdomen, thorax and thick of the skin - so smiling makes one feel happy; but augmented with the reports from the situation of the new interior world of voluntary muscles. Repeated experiences build intermediate narratives, in the mind, which reduce the salience. Damasio concludes feelings relate closely and consistently with homeostasis, acting as its mental deputies once organisms developed 'nervous systems' about 600 million years ago, and building on the precursor regulatory devices supplied by evolution to social insects and prokaryotes and leveraging analogous dynamic constraints. Damasio suggests feelings contribute to the development of culture:
- As motives for intellectual creation: prompting detection and diagnosis of homeostatic deficiencies, identifying desirable states worthy of creative effort.
- As monitors of the success and failure of cultural instruments and practices
- As participants in the negotiation of adjustments required by the cultural process over time
' the environment as in his use of stars in the sky as a background behind Eugene Boch, to highlight the deep ideas of his friend.
Nemeczek explains that in Arles, Vincent felt gripped by the properties of color more intensely than he had ever felt before, writing about this revelation to Theo. The ideal "portrait showing the model's soul." This color symbolism began a transformation in modern art.
A Self-Portrait where Vincent notes "I also exaggerate my
personality
describes the operation of the mind from the perspective of psychological models and tests based on them. Early 'Western' models of personality resulted in a simple segmentation noting the tension between: individual desires and group needs, and developing models and performing actions. Dualistic 'Eastern' philosophies promote the legitimacy of an essence which Riso & Hudson argue is hidden within a shell of personality types and is only reached by developing presence. The logic of a coherent essence is in conflict with the evolved nature of emotions outlined by Pinker. Terman's studies of personality identified types which Friedman and Martin link to healthy and unhealthy pathways. Current psychiatric models highlight at least five key aspects:
- Extroversion-introversion - whether the person gains mental dynamism from socializing or retiring
- Neuroticism-stability - does a person worry or are they calm and self-satisfied
- Agreeableness-antagonism - is a person courteous & trusting or rude and suspicious
- Conscientiousness-un-directedness - is a person careful or careless
- Openness-non-openness - are they daring or conforming
, I have in the first place aimed at a character of a simple admirer worshipping the Eternal Buddha. It cost me a lot of trouble."
Vincent wrote that he was trapped on the horns of a dilemma:

His material difficulties demanded he think about making a living
Thinking about the study of color suggested enticing discoveries were possible for Vincent:

"Presenting two lovers by the wedding of two complementary colors - their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones."
"Expressing the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a somber background."
"Expressing hope by a star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance."

His enthusiasm kept him up all night as he painted the Cafe Terrace at Night, and again as he created the, Millet inspired and drastically unreal, Starry Night by the Rhone, potentially adding to his risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty.
of mania is an extreme form of elation and hyperactivity. Kandel explains, it is characterized by an elated, expansive or irritable mood, together with several other symptoms, including heightened activity, racing thoughts, impulsiveness, and decreased need for sleep. There may be high-risk behaviors: substance abuse, sexual promiscurity, excessive spending, and violence.
.

Nemeczek notes that today we find no conflict in viewing these emotional are low level fast unconscious agents distributed across the brain and body which associate, via the amygdala and rich club hubs, important environmental signals with encoded high speed sensors, and distributed programs of action to model: predict, prioritize guidance signals, select and respond effectively, coherently and rapidly to the initial signal. The majority of emotion centered brain regions interface to the midbrain through the hypothalamus. The cerebellum and basal ganglia support the integration of emotion and motor functions, rewarding rhythmic movement. The most accessible signs of emotions are the hard to control and universal facial expressions. Emotions provide prioritization for conscious access given that an animal has only one body, but possibly many cells, with which to achieve its highest level goals. Because of this, base emotions clash with group goals and are disparaged by the powerful. Pinker notes a set of group selected emotions which he classes as: other-condemning, other-praising, other-suffering and self-conscious emotions. Evolutionary psychology argues evolution shaped human emotions during the long period of hunter-gatherer existence in the African savanna. Human emotions are universal and include: Anger, Appreciation of natural beauty, Contempt, Disgust, Embarrassment, Fear, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Happiness, Honor, Jealousy, Liking, Love, Moral awe, Rage, Romantic love, Lust for revenge, Passion, Sadness, Self-control, Shame, Sympathy, Surprise; and the sham emotions and distrust induced by reciprocal altruism.
masterpieces, proving Vincent right in his choices. But Vincent was becoming obsessed with working: Sunflowers, Bedroom, Stage coach; a set of work Vincent viewed as forming one whole when hung correctly, to prepare the Yellow House for the arrival of Gauguin, and demonstrate Vincent's progress.

A complete void

Nemeczek describes Vincent becoming stressed is a multi-faceted condition reflecting high cortisol levels. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's studies of baboons indicate that stress helps build readiness for fight or flight. As these actions occur the levels of cortisol return to the baseline rate. A stressor is anything that disrupts the regular homeostatic balance. The stress response is the array of neural and endocrine changes that occur to respond effectively to the crisis and reestablish homeostasis.

The short term response to the stressor

activates the amygdala which: Stimulates the brain stem resulting in inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system and activation of the sympathetic nervous system with the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine deployed around the body, Activates the PVN which generates a cascade resulting in glucocorticoid secretion to: get energy to the muscles with increased blood pressure for a powerful response. The brain's acuity and cognition are stimulated. The immune system is stimulated with beta-endorphin and repair activities curtail. In order for the body to destroy bacteria in wounds, pro-inflammatory cytokines increase blood flow to the area. The induced inflammation signals the brain to activate the insula and through it the ACC. But when the stressor is

long term: loneliness, debt; and no action is necessary, or possible, long term damage ensues. Damage from such stress may only occur in specific situations: Nuclear families coping with parents moving in. Sustained stress provides an evolved amplifier of a position of dominance and status. It is a strategy in female aggression used to limit reproductive competition. Sustained stress:

Stops the frontal cortex from ensuring we do the harder thing, instead substituting amplification of the individual's propensity for risk-taking and impairing risk assessment!
Activates the integration between the thalamus and amygdala.

Acts differently on the amygdala in comparison to the frontal cortex and hippocampus: Stress strengthens the integration between the Amygdala and the hippocampus, making the hippocampus fearful.
BLA & BNST respond with increased BDNF levels and expanded dendrites persistently increasing anxiety and fear conditioning.

Makes it easier to learn a fear association and to consolidate it into long-term memory. Sustained stress makes it harder to unlearn fear by making the prefrontal cortex inhibit the BLA from learning to break the fear association and weakening the prefrontal cortex's hold over the amygdala. And glucocorticoids decrease activation of the medial prefrontal cortex during processing of emotional faces. Accuracy of assessing emotions from faces suffers. A terrified rat generating lots of glucocorticoids will cause dendrites in the hippocampus to atrophy but when it generates the same amount from excitement of running on a wheel the dendrites expand. The activation of the amygdala seems to determine how the hippocampus responds.
Depletes the nucleus accumbens of dopamine biasing rats toward social subordination and biasing humans toward depression.
Disrupts working memory by amplifying norepinephrine signalling in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala to prefrontal cortex signalling until they become destructive. It also desynchronizes activation in different frontal lobe regions impacting shifting of attention.
Increases the risk of autoimmune disease (Jan 2017)

During depression, stress inhibits dopamine signalling.
Strategies for stress reduction include: Mindfulness.

at Paul Gauguin's planned arrival. Vincent responds by increasing his production of pieces of art. Gauguin, who is visiting under sufferance, incented to come by Theo, finds Vincent behaving oddly. They paint together and visit Montpellier to study and discuss works by Delacroix and Courbet. Vincent feels the distance between them and paints their two chairs, including signals, is an emergent capability which is used by cooperating agents to support coordination & rival agents to support control and dominance. In eukaryotic cells signalling is used extensively. A signal interacts with the exposed region of a receptor molecule inducing it to change shape to an activated form. Chains of enzymes interact with the activated receptor relaying, amplifying and responding to the signal to change the state of the cell. Many of the signalling pathways pass through the nuclear membrane and interact with the DNA to change its state. Enzymes sensitive to the changes induced in the DNA then start to operate generating actions including sending further signals. Cell signalling is reviewed by Helmreich. Signalling is a fundamental aspect of CAS theory and is discussed from the abstract CAS perspective in signals and sensors. In AWF the eukaryotic signalling architecture has been abstracted in a codelet based implementation. To be credible signals must be hard to fake. To be effective they must be easily detected by the target recipient. To be efficient they are low cost to produce and destroy.
of their dissonance. Vincent suffers a psychotic are diseases of the brain which impact the patient's models of reality and their ability to differentiate illusion from reality. Anti-psychotic medications are prescribed: Risperdal; attack, cuts off his ear, enters a hospital and Gauguin leaves.

Vincent is seen as dangerous by the people of Arles. They have him committed again, although he is subsequently released. Vincent checks into a sanatorium where he remains for a year. All the while, Vincent continues creating art, until he mortally injures himself.

CAS comparison and analysis suggests various contributors to Vincent van Gogh's creation of artistic masterpieces:

Van Gogh bibliographic notes:

30 Mar 1853 Vincent Willem van Gogh is born in Zundert. He is the second child of Pastor Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelius Garbentus.
1 May 1857 Theo van Gogh is born
1861 Vincent 8, attends Zundert village school
16 Mar 1862 Wilhelmien van Gogh born
Jun 1862 Vincent 9, switches to private lessons
Oct 1864 Vincent 11, boards at Zevenbergen school
Aug 1866 Vincent 13, boards at King Wilhelm II middle school in Tilburg until returned home in 1868
30 Jul 1869 Vincent 16, starts an apprenticeship with Hague branch of art dealers Goupil & Cie
1 Jan 1873 Theo starts an apprenticeship with Brussels branch of Goupil & Cie
12 May 1873 Vincent
20
in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents:
- Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
, transfers to Paris head office of Goupil and Cie
Jun 1873 Vincent 20, transfers to London branch of Goupil and Cie and falls in love with Eugenie Loyer, his land lady's daughter
1875 to 1876 Vincent 22, becomes assistant in the Paris art dealership Boussod and Valadon, which is the successor to Goupil & Cie, but is dismissed at the end of May. Vincent starts intensive study of the Bible and becomes obsessively pietist.
Apr to Dec 1876 Vincent
23
in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents:
- Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
, travels to England, works as a private tutor and as a lay preacher in Ramsgate, Isleworth and other parts of London, before returning to Etten for Christmas.
May 1877 Vincent 24, moves to Amsterdam to gain qualifications to enter the university and study theology.
Sep 1877 Vincent
24
in humans supports the transition from a juvenile configuration, dependent on parents and structured to learn & logistically transform, to adult optimized to the proximate environment. And it is staged, encouraging male adolescents to escape the hierarchy they grew up in and enter other groups where they may bring in: fresh ideas, risk taking; and alter the existing hierarchy: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates & Paul Allen; while females become highly focused on friendships and communications. It marks the beginning of Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development. The limbic, autonomic and hormone networks are already deployed and functioning effectively. The frontal cortex has to be pruned: winning neurons move to their final highly connected positions, and are myelinated over time. The rest dissolve. So the frontal lobe does not obtain its adult configuration and networked integration until the mid-twenties when prefrontal cortex control becomes optimal. The evolutionarily oldest areas of the frontal cortex mature first. The PFC must be iteratively customized by experience to do the right thing as an adult. Adolescents:
- Don't detect irony effectively. They depend on the DMPFC to do this, unlike adults who leverage the fusiform face area.
- Regulate emotions with the ventral striatum while the prefrontal cortex is still being setup. Dopamine projection density and signalling increase from the ventral tegmentum catalyzing increased interest in dopamine based rewards. Novelty seeking allows for creative exploration which was necessary to move beyond the familial pack. Criticisms do not get incorporated into learning models by adolescents leaving their risk assessments very poor. The target of the dopamine networks, the adolescent accumbens, responds to rewards like a gyrating top - hugely to large rewards, and negatively to small rewards. Eventually as the frontal regions increase in contribution there are steady improvements in: working memory, flexible rule use, executive organization and task shifting. And adolescents start to see other people's perspective.
- Drive the cellular transformations with post-pubescent high levels of testosterone in males, and high but fluctuating estrogen & progesterone levels in females. Blood flow to the frontal cortex is also diverted on occasion to the groin.
- Peer pressure is exceptionally influential in adolescents. Admired peer comments reduce vmPFC activity and enhance ventral striatal activity. Adults modulate the mental impact of socially mean treatment: the initial activation of the PAG, anterior cingulate, amygdala, insula cortex; which generate feelings of pain, anger, and disgust, with the VLPFC but that does not occur in adolescents.
- Feel empathy intensely, supported by their rampant emotions, interest in novelty, ego. But feeling the pain of others can induce self-oriented avoidance of the situations.
, starts training at the Evangelical College in Laeken near Brussels, but he failed the final examination. Turned down for permanent employment he studies drawing, aiming to become an artist. Theo starts to provide financial support for Vincent.
Oct 1880 Vincent 27, enrolls in a beginners' art course at the Academy in Brussels
Apr 1881 Vincent 28, falls in unrequited love with his widowed cousin Kee Vos, and draws at his parents' house in Etten
1882 Vincent 29, moves to a studio in the Hague where a distant cousin & leading painter Anton Mauve encourage Vincent to paint with oils. Cornelius van Gogh, Vincent's uncle and an art dealer orders 20 drawings. Vincent is stopped from cohabiting with prostitute Clasina Maria Hoornik.
Sep 1883 Vincent 30, moves to the province of Drente
Jan 1884 Vincent 31, moves back to stay with his parents, who have moved to Nuenen. By Nov 1884 Vincent has completed 200 tonally expressive oil paintings including: The Potato Eaters; his first masterpiece. Vincent works on six decorative pictures for Charles Hermans. Vincent's neighbor, Margot Begemann falls in love with Vincent and attempts suicide.
26 Mar 1885 Vincent's father dies of a stroke is when brain cells are deprived of oxygen and begin to die. 750,000 patients a year suffer strokes in the US. 85% of those strokes are caused by clots. There are two structural types: Ischemic and hemorrhagic. Thrombectomy has been found to be a highly effective treatment for some stroke situations (Jan 2018).
Aug 1885 Vincent 32, has a first exhibition of his pictures in the shop windows of paint dealer Leurs in The Hague
Sep 1885 Vincent 32, starts to refer to Japanese woodcuts
Jan 1886 Vincent 32, enrolls in the Academy of Art and friend Horace Mann Livens produces a portrait of him
Mar 1886 Vincent 33, moves to Paris, staying with Theo. Studies for three months with Salon artist Fernand Cormon. Meets Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, and John Russell. While in Paris also meets Paul Gaugin, Camille Pisarro, and Edgar Degas. Vincent starts painting in the style of the Impressionists and Pointillists, lightens the tones of his palette and includes aspects of Japanese woodcuts. Completes more than 300 drawings and paintings including 29 self-portraits. Exhibits and sells paintings. Has his last documented love affair, with Agostina Segatori
20 Feb 1888 Vincent 34, arrives in Arles, staying at the Hotel-Restaurant Carrel, 30 rue Cavalerie
Mar 1888 to May 1888 Vincent 35, paints the Langlois Drawbridge, an Orchard series, and makes large drawings. He makes acquaintanceship with painters: Chrisian Mourier-Peterson, Dodge Macknight; and after an argument about the hotel's charges moves to Cafe de la Gare, and rents four rooms in the Yellow House as a studio
30 May 1888 Vincent 35, goes to Les-Staintes-Maries-de-la-Mer where he creates three paintings and eight drawings
Jun 1888 Vincent 35, takes a trip to Tarascon where he meets: Belgian painter Eugen Boch, Second Lieutenant Paul-Eugene Millet of the Zouaves and postman Joseph Roulin; who he later makes portraits of. At the end of June Vincent is working on the harvest pictures, including Sower with Setting Sun. In the late summer and autumn Vincent completes the most famous works created in Arles including: Sunflowers series, the Night Cafe, Cafe Terrace at Night, the Starry Night, the Bedroom, group of Vincent's best portraits.
29 Jun 1888 Paul Gauguin accepts an invitation to come to Arles, arriving 23 Oct 1888.
17 Sep 1888 Vincent 35, moves into the Yellow House
Nov 1888 Vincent and Paul Gauguin paint together in Arles and travel to Montpellier where they discuss the works of Delacroix and Courbet
23 Dec 1888 Vincent suffers a breakdown after a disagreement with Gauguin, chops off his right ear and leaves it with Rachel at Arles Brothel No. 1.
24 Dec 1888 Back at the Yellow House, Vincent 35, worries about madness, becomes psychotic are diseases of the brain which impact the patient's models of reality and their ability to differentiate illusion from reality. Anti-psychotic medications are prescribed: Risperdal; again - thinking everyone is trying to poison him & is committed at the request of his house cleaner
26 Dec 1888 Theo arrives in Arles and leaves with Gauguin for Paris
8 Jan 1889 Vincent 35, is discharged from hospital and starts painting again
7 Feb 1889 Vincent 35, has another psychotic attack and a second stay in hospital until 17 Feb 1889
18 Feb 1889 Citizens of Arles petition for Vincent's confinement for immoral conduct. Placed back in hospital he is visited by Paul Signac on March 23
8 May 1889 Vincent 36, admits himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole Sanatorium in Saint-Remy de Provence for a stay of 53 weeks, where he has four serious relapses. He completes almost 300 drawings and paintings including: Irises, Starry Night;
17 May 1890 Vincent 37, leaves the sanitorium, spends three days with Theo and his wife, in Paris. He moves to Auvers-sur-Oise and completes 60 drawings and 82 oil paintings in then weeks: Wheatfield with Crows;
8 Jun 1890 Theo, wife and baby son, visit Vincent in Auvers
6 Jul 1890 Vincent 37, visits with Theo in Paris
27 Jul 1890 Vincent 37, shoots himself in his room in Auvers
29 Jul 1890 Vincent 37, dies in his room with Theo beside him

Alfred Nemeczek's focused study highlights the dramatic creativity of Van Gogh.

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