Carlos Gershenson

This is an old webpage. Updated information about the author can be found here.

I am a Mexican researcher, just finished a PhD within the ECCO group at the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels. My promoters were Francis Heylighen, Diederik Aerts, and Bart D'Hooghe.

Recent work is down here.
Or if you need my contact details.

Publication list with abstracts, or without, or BibTeX.    Curriculum Vitæ. Short CV.

I have a wide variety of academic interests, including self-organizing systems, artificial life, evolution, complexity, cognition, artificial societies, and philosophy. I am also Contributing Editor for Complexity Digest, Book Review Editor of Artificial Life, and webmaster of alife.org.

I studied the MSc in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems in the School of Cognitive and Computer Sciences (COGS) of the University of Sussex (2001-2002). My thesis "A Comparison of Different Cognitive Paradigms Using Simple Animats in a Virtual Laboratory, with Implications to the Notion of Cognition" was supervised by Chris Thornton and Inman Harvey. You can find my webpage from that period here.

Before that, I did a BEng in Computer Engineering at the Fundación Arturo Rosenblueth in Mexico City (1996-2001), from which my thesis was "Artificial Societies of Intelligent Agents". My advisors were José Negrete Martínez, Pedro Pablo González Pérez, and Jaime Lagunez Otero. During this period I also collaborated with Jaime Lagunez's group at the Instituto de Química, UNAM and coursed five semesters of Philosophy at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM. My webpage from my undergraduate years can be found here: You will find most of my scientific and philosophical work, papers, computer programs, and art of those bygone days (1997-2001).

A bit more about me.

| Colección de Aforismos / Aphorisms Collection | (1997-)

• Zire Notes

Gallery, my recent paintings and drawings. Some photos. Complex Humour

My blog: Complexes [E-mail subscribe][Feed]

Latest headlines:

Recent work

I defended my PhD thesis on May 2^nd, 2007!!! (see media coverage)

The World as Evolving Information.

I organized together with Tom Lenaerts a workshop on the "Evolution of Complexity", which was held at the ALife X conference. As an outcome, we are organizing a Special Issue on the same topic on the Artificial Life journal. Submission deadline was December 15th, 2006.

I organized a session on Philosophy and Complexity at the Complexity, Science & Society Conference, which was held in Liverpool, UK, 11-14 September 2005. The book "Worldviews, Science, and Us: Philosophy and Complexity" is a follow-up of this session, edited by myself, Diederik Aerts, and Bruce Edmonds.

On Self-organizing Systems

• When Can we Call a System Self-organizing?, together with Francis Heylighen
• The Meaning of Self-organization in Computing, together with Francis Heylighen
• Protocol Requirements for Self-organizing Artifacts: Towards an Ambient Intelligence, together with Francis Heylighen. Featured in: TRN
• Self-organizing Traffic Lights. Featured in: News @ Nature, TRN, ACM TechNews, Trends, De Tijd, Science & Vie, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Berliner Morgenpost, Wienweb.at, Pagina 12, Le peuple des connecteurs.
• A General Methodology for Designing Self-Organizing Systems. Invited talk at CSS'05. Video Summary 2:40 [asf: 3.1 Mb]. Full talk Audio 38:30 [mp3: 64Kbps, 17.6 Mb] Slides [pdf]. Featured in: Complexity.
• Towards Self-organizing Bureaucracies. Random Agent Networks
• Self-organizing traffic lights: A realistic simulation, together with Seung Bae Cools and Bart D'Hooghe. Featured in Discovery News and Complexity
• Self-organizing Traffic Control

On Random Boolean Networks

RBNLab 5.0 released! (04/09/03) Classification of Random Boolean Networks Contextual Random Boolean Networks, together with Jan Broekaert and Diederik Aerts Phase Transitions in Random Boolean Networks with Different Updating Schemes Updating Schemes in Random Boolean Networks: Do They Really Matter? I presented with Andy Wuensche the tutorial Introduction to Random Boolean Networks at the ALife IX conference (text, slides, and video summary available) (we did a repeat at ECAL 2005). The Role of Redundancy in the Robustness of Random Boolean Networks, together with Stuart Kauffman and Ilya Shmulevich.

Cognitive Paradigms: Which One is the Best? Cognitive Systems Research 5(2):135-156, June 2004.

Complexity and Philosophy, together with Francis Heylighen and Paul Cilliers.

How can we think the complex?, together with Francis Heylighen.

Programming projects (including source code) 1996 - .

Essays

• Informal Comments to "Investigations" by Stuart Kauffman. [pdf]
• Based on C. S. Lewis, “The Four Loves” as a Metaphor for Evolution. A loose philosophical essay.
• Informal Comments to "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawikins.
• Why Computers Will Not Take Over the World. En Español fue publicado en La Jornada como "Porqué las Máquinas No Conquistarán al Mundo"

Contact details

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