Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #pasturbanlife
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Thread: More is Different. I just heard that physicist Philip Anderson passed away a month ago. I knew him from his paper, "More is Different" (Science, 1972). This was one of the foundational papers for complexity science. 
2/ Anderson was one of the founders of the Santa Fe Institute. See their obituary: santafe.edu/news-center/ne… The basic point of "More is different" is that increases in size or quantity bring about qualitative differences. I use this principle in my book #PastUrbanLife
3/ My pal and partner-in-crime Jose Lobo noted that the "more is different" principle explains why physicists are interested in working with archaeologists: we both acknowledge this process and use it analytically. This is one reason I am so big on population size...
Short thread: The "urban prestige effect." For whatever reason, cities, urbanism (and social complexity) are seen as realms of prestige by some archaeologists. This leads them to think that if they can call their sites "urban", that is some kind of positive result. 1/
2/ But how does this help anybody? It make comparative analysis more difficult, since the category "urban settlement" now includes smaller or simpler sites. Now, there is nothing wrong with using "urban" concepts to analyze "non-urban" settlements. I do this a lot.
3/ But the urban prestige effect is applied without reference to theory or detailed comparative evidence; the urban nature is asserted with respect to some vague or idiosyncratic definition. So, I was thinking how clever I am to recognize this and write about it.
