Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1994

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Computer Science

Major Professor

Bruce J. MacLennan

Committee Members

Brad Vander Zanden, Donald R. Ploch

Abstract

The period of time during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., when the Greek society moved out of the Dark Ages and into the "golden" period of so many great scientific, philosophical, and literary achievements, has often been called the "Greek Miracle." Many historians claim this cultural shift of Greece was "pro- foundly influenced" by the introduction of alphabetic literacy to the population.

After discussing this impact from a humanities standpoint, an artificial life simulation is used to investigate the dynamics of communication found in both a primarily oral population as well as a literate one. In each simulation, we find complex systems known as simorgs, or simulated organisms, whose behavior is determined by a transition table. The communication found in both simulations is compared in terms of different parameters such as population size, interconnect probability, and transition table entries. In the literate simulation, we find more activity and longer cycle lengths.

One powerful parameter that we focus much of our attention on is the lambda parameter, a parameter first investigated by Christopher Langton in his research on the emergence of computation in complex systems. The lambda parameter is used to create different levels of behavior complexity. As we increase this value, we observe similar patterns of behavior. In particular, we find a region of "complex structure" between orderly and chaotic behavior which exhibits the greatest potential for the storage and transmission of information. We infer that it was in this region that the Greek culture reached such lofty heights after finding the perfect balance between order and chaos. We are not able to infer that the alphabet was the sole of primary cause of this miracle however after finding a similar "explosion" of activity as we enter the region of complexity. However, we conclude that this was most likely the area where the Greek Miracle occurred and should be the area of focus for future investigation to possibly determine the exact cause of the cultural shift we saw in ancient Greece.

Finally, we attempt to model two separate populations one which uses an alphabetic script and another which uses a hieroglyphic one. Alphabetic Literacy is defined to be achieved at ten times the rate of hieroglyphic literacy due to its simplicity and flexibility. As a result, we find alphabetic literacy spreading throughout the population at a much faster rate and close to a 100% literate population in that region "on the edge of chaos."

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