This set of math techniques that Kauffman, Holland and others
devised is still without a proper name, but I'll call it here
"net math." Some of the techniques are known informally as
parallel distributed processing, Boolean nets, neural nets, spin
glasses, cellular automata, classifier systems, genetic
algorithms, and swarm computation. Each flavor of net math
incorporates the lateral causality of thousands of simultaneous
interacting functions. And each type of net math attempts to
coordinate massively concurrent events -- the kind of nonlinear
happenings ubiquitous in the real world of living beings. Net
math is in contradistinction to Newtonian math, a classical math
so well suited to most physics problems that it had been seen as
the only kind of math a careful scientist needed. Net math is
almost impossible to use practically without computers. The wide
variety of swarm systems and net maths got Kauffman to wondering
if this kind of weird swarm logic -- and the inevitable order he
was sure it birthed --