On the origin of the hierarchy of the sciences

TL;DR

This paper introduces an evolutionary sandpile model demonstrating self-organised criticality and $1/f$-noise, illustrating how higher-level scientific processes may emerge from lower-level laws in a complex hierarchical system.

Contribution

It presents a simple model that captures the emergence of hierarchical phenomena, providing insights into the origin of the hierarchy of sciences.

Findings

Model exhibits self-organised criticality and $1/f$-noise

Emergent phenomena on higher levels mimic real hierarchical systems

Hierarchical processes can be modeled with simple computational rules

Abstract

We propose a simple "evolutionary" sandpile model exhibiting self-organised criticality and exactly $1/f$-noise (i.e. the critical exponent is equal to $-1$) and observe emergent phenomena of the same type self-organised criticality on the "next level" sandpile. In this way we try to model climbing by the so-called hierarchy of sciences, where processes on a higher level can, in principle, be derived by laws of a lower level but this derivation is computationally unfeasible and useless from the explanatory point of view.