It seems prudent that from time to time we assess what our group
is doing, what is working well, and what could be improved.
Especially with many relatively new members, we should reflect on
past goals and history as well as recent trends. As with most
complex systems, we need to evolve and self-organize to approach
an optimal dynamic state. Accordingly, I have prepared this
document as a basis to begin that discussion.
The Chaos and Complex System Seminar began in the Fall of 1994
under the leadership of Prof. Blake LeBaron in the Economics
Department and myself in the Physics Department with the support
of John Wiley who was then Dean of the Graduate School. The goal
was to identify researchers on campus working on chaotic and
complex systems, and bring them together on a regular basis to
exchange ideas and develop interdisciplinary collaborations
modeled after the Santa Fe
Institute in New Mexico.
During the first academic year, we had talks by 16 local
researchers who had expressed interest in the endeavor and 8
prominent outside speakers, most of whom Blake LeBaron had met
during his previous sabbatical year at the Santa Fe Institute.
John Wiley attended many of the seminars and provided Graduate
School funds to pay the expenses of the visitors. Attendance at
some of the talks was over 100, but was more typically 25 to 50.
Topics and abstracts for these and subsequent talks are on our web
page. For the first year, most seminars were held in 8417
Social Science Building, after which we moved permanently to 4274
Chamberlin Hall to be closer to the center of mass of the speakers
and audience.
In the second year, we approached John Wiley for additional
funding to continue inviting outside speakers but were told that
the previous funding was seed money and that we were expected to
procure extramural funding to continue. While debating how to
proceed, we continued having talks from local speakers but were
exhausting our list of people who had shown interest and whose
work fit squarely within the specified topic areas. We also
noticed that many of the local scientists who had given talks were
not regularly attending the seminars. Then in 1998, Blake LeBaron
resigned his position at UW and moved to Brandeis University to be
with his wife who had a position at MIT.
On the verge of ending the effort, Robin Chapman of the
Communicative Disorders Department, who had been attending the
seminars, stepped forward and volunteered to help keep the them
going by finding more local speakers. However, we had to greatly
broaden the definition of who we considered to be a chaos or
complex systems researcher. Under those relaxed constraints, we
found it easy to recruit speakers from sources like the Experts Database and UW in the News and
suggestions from seminar participants, and we had about 600 talks
from over 60 campus departments during the next 20 years with
attendance ranging from about 10 to 50. However, the original
group of researchers attended even less often because the topics
were of less interest, but they were replaced by students and
members of the public, mostly retirees, who had heard about the
interesting seminars that were announced in the University Events Calendar
and elsewhere.
One of those people was Myrna Casebolt, a retired clinical
psychologist. Sometime around 2005, she commented that we had a
mainly passive audience who interacted mostly in a 5- or 10-minute
discussion period at the end of the talk and then dispersed,
sometimes never to be seen again. She suggested a longer more
informal discussion, not accompanied by a formal lecture. Thus
began the summer
discussions on the Memorial Union Terrace under Myrna's
leadership, where many of us became acquainted on a personal level
for the first time. At the end of each academic year, we made a
list of topics chosen from talks heard during the year to discuss
over the summer, sometimes with the speaker present. Anyone who
came with an agenda or launched into a diatribe on any topic was
quickly silenced and occasionally encouraged not to return. In
2015, we decided to make the discussions slightly more formal by
having an announced topic, a facilitator, and a web-accessible
reading or video. We continued alternating summer discussions on
the Terrace with formal talks on campus during the academic year.
Both formats had strengths and weaknesses, but they nicely
reinforced one another. The talks provided a constant stream of
new people and ideas, while the discussions allowed us to delve
more deeply into the topics and get better acquainted with one
another. Then COVID-19 hit, and everything changed.
At the start of the COVID hiatus, we set up an on-line
discussion group, to which 29 people eventually subscribed,
but it was lightly used. After the year-long hiatus, we began to
discuss if or how we should resume the meetings. Neither Robin nor
I felt we had the energy to continue recruiting weekly speakers,
and Myrna was reluctant to continue organizing the summer sessions
for health reasons and asked if anyone was willing to take over.
To his credit, for which we should all be thankful, Peter Sobol
volunteered, and we decided to continue the summer discussions for
the entire calendar year. The regular seminar room in Chamberlin
Hall was not ideally configured for group discussions and was
being converted into a lab, and so we moved inside to a free room
in the Union once it became too cold to meet outdoors. We also
changed the name from C&CS Seminar to C&CS Discussion
Group. Peter has done a superb job for the past 5 years picking
topics, keeping us on time and on topic, and encouraging everyone
to participate in the discussion. A number of new people joined us
during this period. That brings us up to the present.
From our email list of 115 former participants who requested
weekly announcements, we now have a core group of about a dozen
people who attend the discussions regularly with occasional
surprise visitors who are enthusiastically welcomed. Most of the
group are elderly male retirees, and none are currently employed
by or are students at the University. Apparently the campus
scientists and students who previously attended the seminars and
summer discussions are disinclined to traipse down to the Union,
especially in the dead of winter, or perhaps they do not find the
topics sufficiently relevant or do not like the format of the
meetings. The discussion topics, while broadly interesting, now
stray even further from the original scope of chaos and complex
systems, encompassing basically anything that the group finds
interesting. Members usually come to the discussions well
prepared, and the discussions are lively, occasionally heated but
respectful, with a wide range of views expressed. Sometimes we
veer into areas that were previously considered taboo. We now know
one another well enough that we can usually predict others' views
on most topics. There are very few topics that have not been
discussed, and some have been discussed multiple times. We rarely
have experts on the topics present at the meeting. It is
interesting from a dynamical systems point of view how we have
morphed into the exact opposite of what we originally aspired to
be. Rather than an open group of campus scientists discussing
their research with colleagues from other departments, we have
become a mostly closed group of retirees discussing current events
and issues.
During the post-COVID years, I continued looking for a room
closer to the center of research activities and classrooms on
campus that is well-configured for our discussions and that has
good audio-visual capabilities and the option of video-streaming
our discussions, which several former members of the group had
requested, and to avoid the $75/week fee that the Union now
charges. These charges are being paid from a gift donation by
Clarence Clay, a deceased geophysics professor and former
participant in the seminars. The gift money was previously used
for invited speakers and for refreshments, and it will be
exhausted in 100 weeks at the Union, after which it will be harder
for us to do anything that requires funding. In January of this
year, what seemed like the perfect room in 3290 Chamberlin Hall
became available, but the current core group members by a vote of
7 to 3 preferred to remain at the Union, primarily for more
convenient parking. Other former participants voted with their
feet.
