Toward a foundation for interdisciplinary science: A model of special sciences and levels of complexity.

摘要

As interdisciplinary sciences like cognitive science become more common, the need to understand the connections between scientific disciplines increases. This thesis develops a model of the special sciences and levels of complexity which aims to describe such relations. My starting points are Daniel Dennett's stances view and his real patterns picture. The central task is to establish a means to measure the complexity of an object within the domain of a special science. For this purpose I develop an extension of the mathematical theory of Kolmogorov complexity (algorithmic complexity). Measurements of complexity allow us to differentiate between levels and then to build a new hierarchy of sciences. With an account of the relations between states, systems, and objects, we can move between levels of complexity and between special sciences, navigating through the hierarchy. The result is a first pass at a framework for understanding interdisciplinary science.