The department applies formal and computational methods — dynamical systems theory, statistical analysis, information theory, and mathematical modeling — to problems traditionally belonging to the humanities and social sciences. Its founding principle is substrate independence: the same structural tools that detect systematic distortion in medieval chronicles can reveal positional regularities in undeciphered scripts or expose behavioral lock-in in algorithmic platforms. The department does not replace domain expertise; it provides the formal scaffolding that turns qualitative humanistic hypotheses into quantitatively testable claims.
Research Programs
2. Structural Blindness in Historical Records Detection of systematic gaps and distortions in historical documentation through the Undirected Multidisciplinary Sweep method. The flagship case study — the absence of SN 1054 from all European records — demonstrates how institutional and cognitive filters produce coherent yet structurally incomplete archives.
3. Algorithmic Governance and Platform Power Mathematical frameworks for attention dynamics, cognitive suppression, and behavioral lock-in in digital platform ecosystems. The program models algorithmic governance as subjectless power operating through feedback loops rather than deliberate authority.
4. Political Economy of Automation Formal analysis of labor displacement, consumption dynamics, and resource allocation in economies transformed by artificial intelligence. The program critically reassesses classical political economy using dynamical systems tools.
5. Cooperative Dynamics Across Scales Formal models of mutual aid as a stability principle, linking evolutionary biology, neurochemistry, and distributed computational systems within a single dynamical framework.
Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research 