Dan Costa Baciu

Delft University of Technology | TU

Much attention has been given to game theory analysis in understanding the evolution of cooperation. Research has shown that the amount of cooperation fluctuates and depends on the specific game. Cooperation has been analyzed in spatial arrays, in sets, in small groups and in many other settings. The toughest cooperative dilemma is the public goods...

"What is life?" and Erwin Schrödinger's answer, "negative entropy", inspired researchers in the 20th century to unite physics, chemistry, and physiology into a new synthesis that many believe to be an important foundation for life science today. Decades after Schrödinger, life scientists are still fascinated by the riddle that entropy can only accu...

“What is life?” and Erwin Schrödinger's answer, “negative entropy”, inspired researchers in the 20th century to unite physics, chemistry, and physiology into a new synthesis that many believe to be an important foundation for life science today. Decades after Schrödinger, life scientists are still fascinated by the riddle that entropy can only accu...

Causal models find application in almost all areas of science, and they often support the development of theories that are straightforward and testable. Yet scientists also observe things that surprise them. Fascinated by such observations, they learn to admire the playful aspects of life, as well as its creativity and diversity. Under these circum...

Using computational means to understand patterns in how the humanities are mentioned in U.S. journalism, the WhatEvery1Says project brings into focus challenging problems in the perception of the humanities. This essay reports on the project's findings and some of the further questions that emerged from them. For example, how does the “humanities c...

A large body of research across science and humanities has come to deal with diversity, which, as a scientific concept, has proved immensely relevant in helping researchers understand anything from ecosystems and natural habitats to cities and culture. Here, we develop a first method to quantify and map urban diversity. Our article begins with a co...

People have a "right to the city", at least if one is to agree with French philosopher Henri Lefebvre. But if cities are places that everyone has a right to, they must be places for diverse people, and hence, places for diversity. This insight makes it all the more relevant to quantify and map urban diversity, which has become an emerging field of...

In earlier articles we developed and applied a method to map urban diversity. This preprint contains additional maps of urban diversity, and it also contains simulations and proposed applications. The preprint will be expanded and updated over time.

Maritime heritage structures, such as cranes or warehouses, are typical for historical port cities around the world and many of them have received recognition as having Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) and have been listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites. They have often been preserved and revitalized as expressions of former shipping networks and...

Causality applies everywhere, and it is hard even to imagine a world in which it does not. Yet, one must acknowledge that life also is creative and diverse. Un-der these circumstances, the question emerges whether causal models can ex-plain life's creativity and diversity. Some life scientists say yes, yet many hu-manities scholars cast doubts or h...

Creativity is everywhere. Diversity is everywhere. Digitization is everywhere. This present article gives a new perspective on my and my laboratory's work over the last decade, explaining why creativity, diversity, and digitization go everywhere together.

Evolution goes through cycles of diversification and growth. Here, we report empir-ical evidence to support this thesis in urbanism. Our research broadens theoretical work on evolutionary theory and breaks new ground for an entire range of applica-tions in the precise planning and management of urban environments and their architecture.

This article summarizes the author’s past research and reports empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that cycles of growth and diversification exist in urban space.

Culture, people, and goods flow together. While studying UNESCO world heritage sites, we found empirical evidence to support this thesis. The cultural connections between world herit-age sites, and between the sites and the rest of the world follow paths already beaten by other global activities. The UNESCO world heritage sites in particular are a...

Digitization? What does the term mean; and why does it matter? One can occasionally read in news or social media that the United States and the Netherlands were among the first countries in the world to be digitized, while most other countries stayed behind, much to their own disadvantage. However, such statements only reflect a partial truth. They...

A large body of research across science and humanities has come to deal with diversity, which, as a scientific concept, proved immensely relevant in understanding anything from nature and ecosystems to cities and culture. Here, we develop a first method to quantify and map urban diversity. Our article begins with a concrete example through which we...

In philosophy, “liar’s paradoxes” are a category of self-denying statements that have been known and studied for more than two millennia. Figuratively, operating with a liar’s paradox is like pulling the rug under your own feet. The statement that the digital humanities have no theory (no-theory-statement) falls into this same category of paradoxes...

This article is an introduction to and press review of the theory of cultural life developed by Dan C. Baciu and laid down in his research article "Cultural life: Theory and empirical testing" (BioSystems, 2020, 197.104208). The article was written for the magazine "Igloo."

This article is an introduction to and press review of the theory of cultural life developed by Dan C. Baciu and laid down in his research article "Cultural life: Theory and empirical testing" (BioSystems, 2020, 197.104208).

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/923145cj

There is no end to the questions you can ask, and no end to the answers you can give. Where then, in this space of endless possibilities, can research begin; and how can researchers be expected to reach any consensus on what are useful question-answer-pairs? This present article recounts the story of Sigfried Giedion and Bruno Zevi. Space, Time and...

Cultural life renews itself constantly, uniting people, and diversifying thought. In this process, new thought emerges, and new varieties depart further and further away from pre-existent types. To study this evolution, the present article defines large-scale variation and selection and models them as variation-selection processes. On this basis, e...

Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) was a foremost Swiss architectural historian. Teaching at Harvard, Yale, MIT, the Chicago School of Design, and at ETH Zurich, he deeply shaped the idea of modern architecture. One of Giedion’s best known works was his book chapter on the Chicago school. It was a key piece of historiography, embedded in the broader cont...

Culture is the integration of thought shared by entire collectives of people. In my research, I ask how entire groups of authors and audiences shape culture: What is it that evolves; what rules can be observed; and how are multiple observations related to each other? Answering these questions requires not only exact thinking and hypothesis testing...

This document contains several articles published in 2019.

Brief commentary introducing the Illinois Institute of Technology's 2018 PhD Program Symposium, 'Chicago Schools: Authors, Audiences and History.' Discusses the enduring appeal of the Chicago School of Architecture in poplar culture and as a subject of academic research.

Wie fühlt es sich an, Architekturikonen der Moderne zu restaurieren? Dieser Artikel eröffnet die Perspektive auf ein ausgezeichnetes Architektur­ büro in Chicago: Harboe Architects hat kürzlich das «Emil Bach House» fertiggestellt und beschäftigt sich zurzeit mit drei von zehn Bauten Frank Lloyd Wrights, die für eine Aufnahme in das UNESCO­ Weltkul...

Among the historians of the modern movement, Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) was the most internationally active. His textbook, Space, Time and Architecture (1941), shaped the Avantgarde like no other. Giedion stood out from his contemporaries by framing the story of the early Chicago high-rise under the headline The Chicago School. He suggested that...

Als die Weltausstellung «Exposition Universelle» 1889 ihre Tore in Paris öffnete, war «La Tour Eif- fel» das höchste und wichtigste Schaustück der Ausstellung. Eine Big-Data-Analyse französischer Publikationen zeigt auf, dass der Eiffelturm während der Ausstellungsphase in französischen Publikationen häu- ger genannt wurde als die Expo selbst. Die...

Airolo ist eine Ortschaft am Gotthard, dem bekanntesten Schweizer Pass. Dieser Artikel analysiert die Auswirkungen der neuen Transportmethoden auf die sozialen Räume. Die Ortschaften am Gotthardpass haben seit ihrer Entstehung am meisten von den Gästen profitiert, die privat nach Italien und zurück reisten, die Geschichte der Transporttechnik verkn...