Evolution only leads to increases in complexity when complexity is beneficial to survival and reproduction. Indeed, simplicity has its perks: the more simple you are, the faster you can reproduce, and thus the more offspring you can have.

Yet no true examples of irreducible complexity have ever been found. The concept is rejected by the majority of the scientific community. To understand why, it is important to remember that Behe’s main argument is that in an irreducibly complex system, every part is vital to the system’s overall operation.

With selection, evolution can also produce more complex organisms. Complexity often arises in the co-evolution of hosts and pathogens, with each side developing ever more sophisticated adaptations, such as the immune system and the many techniques pathogens have developed to evade it.

It can be defined as an emergent, or complex, system. It results from this definition that neither the properties of an integrated system, nor those of a complex system can be reduced to the properties of their component sub-systems.

It is argued that complexity, rather than fitness or organization, is the quantity whose increase gives a direction to evolution. The increase in complexity is shown to be a consequence of the process by which a self- organizing system optimizes its organization with respect to a locally defined fitness potential.

In information processing, complexity is a measure of the total number of properties transmitted by an object and detected by an observer. Such a collection of properties is often referred to as a state. In physical systems, complexity is a measure of the probability of the state vector of the system.

There are three final thresholds of increasing complexity. There is the Emergence of Humans and Learning (Threshold 6). Next is the Emergence of Agriculture or farming (Threshold 7). Finally, there was the Emergence of Modernity and Use of Fossil Fuels (Threshold 8).

The idea that the Universe tends naturally to get less ordered and less complex is expressed in one of the most fundamental of all the laws of physics: the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That’s one way of explaining why making complex things requires more work, and thus more energy, than making simple things.

The Goldilocks Zone refers to the habitable zone around a star where the temperature is just right – not too hot and not too cold – for liquid water to exist on an planet. Liquid water is essential for life as we know it. Where we find liquid water on Earth we also find life.

It is like the first threshold, The Big Bang and all the thresholds in human history. In his talk, David Christian explains the three Goldilocks Conditions for life. These are the right amount of energy, diverse chemical elements and liquids. Two of these conditions can be implemented for creativity and talent.

History [of defining complexity]. Most often complexity seems to have been thought of as associated with the presence of large numbers of components with different types or behavior, and typically also with the presence of extensive interconnections or interdependencies.

Abstract: Complexity arises from many sources: both within and outside the system. Internal sources include modern hardware, e.g. super-scalar processors, and external sources include the requirements for evolving already successful systems.

In machine learning, model complexity often refers to the number of features or terms included in a given predictive model, as well as whether the chosen model is linear, nonlinear, and so on. It can also refer to the algorithmic learning complexity or computational complexity.

In response, we developed an approach we call the “five C’s of historical thinking.” The concepts of change over time, causality, context, complexity, and contingency, we believe, together describe the shared foundations of our discipline.

Historical thinking is a set of critical literacy skills for evaluating and analyzing primary source documents to construct a meaningful account of the past. Sometimes called historical reasoning skills, historical thinking skills are frequently described in contrast to history content such as names, dates, and places.

The six “historical thinking concepts” are: historical significance, primary source evidence, continuity and change, cause and consequence, historical perspectives and ethical dimensions. Together, these concepts form the basis of historical inquiry.

“We emphasize how historians think and how that thinking can change one’s understanding of topics past and present. “History is not just a collection of facts,” Cohn says, “but a linking of facts to a broader context to develop meaning out of them.

Train students in the four key strategies historians use to analyze documents: sourcing, corroboration, close reading, and contextualization. With these skills, students can read, evaluate, and interpret historical documents in order to determine what happened in the past. [3] Demonstrate through modeling.

By using primary sources to answer a series of questions, they will see that, much like detectives, historians have to prove that their answers are correct by providing evidence. …

Historians study the past by interpreting evidence. The historian works by examining primary sources — texts, artifacts, and other materials from the time period. The interpretative writings of historians –books, journal articles, encyclopedia entries — are considered secondary sources.

Examples of Primary Sources:

• Letters.
• Diaries.
• Eyewitness articles.
• Videotapes.
• Speeches.
• Photographs.
• Artifacts.

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time.

Use your primary sources as evidence for answering your research question and write based on those sources, rather than “plugging them in” after the fact to bolster your argument. In short, primary sources should drive the paper, not the other way around.

Examples of Primary Sources

• archives and manuscript material.
• photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, films.
• journals, letters and diaries.
• speeches.
• scrapbooks.
• published books, newspapers and magazine clippings published at the time.
• government publications.
• oral histories.

Examples of secondary sources include:

• journal articles that comment on or analyse research.
• textbooks.
• dictionaries and encyclopaedias.
• books that interpret, analyse.
• political commentary.
• biographies.
• dissertations.
• newspaper editorial/opinion pieces.

Secondary Sources

• Bibliographies.
• Biographical works.
• Reference books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases.
• Articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers after the event.
• Literature reviews and review articles (e.g., movie reviews, book reviews)
• History books and other popular or scholarly books.

Primary sources can be described as those sources that are closest to the origin of the information. Secondary sources often use generalizations, analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of primary sources. Examples of secondary sources include textbooks, articles, and reference books.