"The Origin of Wealth" - Revisited

The Origin of Wealth - and Phase Transitions in Complex, Nonlinear Systems

Once again, after a nearly two-year hiatus (off by only a week from my first posting on this in May of 2010), I'm getting back to one of my great passions in life - emergent behavior in complex, adaptive systems. And I'm once again starting a discussion/blog-theme referencing Eric Beinhocker's work, The Origin of Wealth. Since this book was originally published (in 2006), we've seen an ongoing series of "phase transitions" and other "emergent behavior" in the world-wide economy, which is arguably one of the most "complex adaptive systems" that exists.



I recommend jumping to the Amazon page in the link above and reading Origin of Wealth reviews before reading any of my further comments; they're good for situating perspective. Beinhocker's book has a fascinating and enticing range of subjects, linking together thoughts from multiple disciplines. However, he constrains himself (probably per terms of his writing agreement) to present all of his descriptions using text, and a few graphs - with nary an equation to be found.

One of my dear friends once described mathematics as a "compact notational framework," which is a useful way to view it. It's hard to envision all the subjects which Beinhocker describes without mathematics. Further, it's very hard to make clear associations between equations - and what they functionally portray - with any sort of external "reality," unless we have the equations to hand. So one of my goals, as I pick up this blogging thread once again, is to correlate some formal representation - yes, this is mathematics - with some of Beinhocker's significant points. This may take a while, but it is more for my benefit than anyone else's. So this will - like Beinhocker's projection of the economy, "evolve over time."