COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

Are there universal laws of life and can we find them? Is there a physics of society, of ecology, of evolution? Join us for six episodes of thought-provoking insights on the physics of life and its profound implications on our understanding of the universe. In this season of the Santa Fe Institute’s Complexity podcast’s relaunch, we talk to researchers who have been exploring these questions and more through the lens of complexity science. Subscribe now and be part of the exploration!

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episode 67: Tyler Marghetis on Breakdowns & Breakthroughs: Critical Transitions in Jazz & Mathematics


Whether in an ecosystem, an economy, a jazz ensemble, or a lone scholar thinking through a problem, critical transitions — breakdowns and breakthroughs — appear to follow universal patterns. Creative leaps that take place in how mathematicians “think out loud” with body, chalk, and board look much like changes in the movement through “music-space” traced by groups of improvisers. Society itself appears to have an “aha moment” when a meme goes viral or a new word emerges in the popular vocabulary. How do collectives at all scales — be they neurons, research groups, or a society at large — suddenly change shape…and what early warning signs portend a pending bolt of inspiration?

This week we talk to SFI Fellow Tyler Marghetis of UC Merced about regimes and ruptures across timescales — from the frustration and creativity of mathematicians and musicians to the bursts of innovation that appear to punctuate civilization and the biosphere alike.

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Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

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Related Reading & Listening:

“Creative leaps in musical ecosystems: early warning signals of critical transitions in professional jazz” by Matt Setzler, Tyler Marghetis, Minje Kim

“The complex system of mathematical creativity: Modularity, burstiness, and the network structure of how experts use inscriptions” by Tyler Marghetis, Kate Sampson, David Landy

“An Integrated Mess of Music Lovers in Science” – press release with video playlist of the 2020 Musicology & Complexity Working Group

“Explosive Proofs of Mathematical Truths” – Simon DeDeo SFI Seminar on inductive networks

Complexity 29: David Krakauer

Complexity 33: Tim Kohler & Marten Scheffer

Complexity 35, 36: Geoffrey West

Complexity 37: Laurence Gonzales

Complexity 65: Deborah Gordon

Topics Discussed:

• competitive wrestling to complex systems science
• free jazz ensembles as a mode of distributed cognition like ant colonies
• creative transitions as analogous to ecosystemic transitions (loss of resilience due to autocorrelation, etc)
• the difference between composed and improvised music
• creativity and boredom
• the relationship between improvisation and trauma, exploration and nonlinearity
• the death of the genre (?)
• the role of the body in thought
• how can you tell an “aha moment” is about to happen?
• what does a healthy mathematical ecosystem look like?
• burstiness and virality


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 September 9, 2021  1h4m